The "chocolate factory"?
I don't get the title, but nevermind...
Anyway, to put it bluntly, we're on a mission. We're on a mission to screw Google before Google screws us.
You see, there will be many comparisons between Google and Microsoft, and while it may seem fair comparison, Microsoft's business practice was only really an issue for those using Microsoft products and/or PCs. For most of the '90s I can thank Microsoft for making big harddiscs real cheap - to use on my old RISC OS machine.
Given the various legal actions, Microsoft didn't play the game nicely and they were brought to task for that. Some jurisdictions didn't have the balls to do much more than a token fine, but this is not really relevant as the practise is in the open and people know about it. At a deep subconscious level, this may drive business decisions to use alternative platforms, even if they aren't as pointy-clicky to administer.
Google, on the other hand, is not interested in crappy restricted licences and stomping on box shifters that don't like to play their game. No, they want their fingers in every pie. From a good idea of a search engine, to custom advertising to DNS services, it all looks fairly useful on the outside. But inside, it is a massive data collection service. They want to know everything about everybody, piss all over privacy and copyright laws (them giving themselves full permissions over your IP because their Ts&Cs says so, is that even legal?), and - here's the crunch - it isn't done to monitor the world, it isn't done because they're data freaks like the Mormons. It isn't even done because they are paranoid-as-hell like NuLabour. It is done, purely and simply, to sell to the highest bidder. Do WE have a say in this? Like hell. Do we even get to see what data they have amassed? I don't believe they give a toss about the DPA. Is there an arbitration/correction service for data that is just invalid? What if somebody, as a prank, goes to your computer and looks for... oh, I dunno... "catholic schoolgirl upskirt" and switches Google into piccies mode with sanity-filtering turned off. No doubt you'll get what was asked for, and Google will be able to tick a bunch of flags in their records of you, either by email address or IP address or both (can a remote site read a machine's MAC address?), you know, like "this dude's a pervert", YOU try explaining that away if it comes up in a reference on you flogged by GoogleCorp twenty years in the future.
Microsoft was a danger, but it was a limited danger. It wasn't really until XP and a third-hand computer that I really even gave a crap about Microsoft.
Google is a danger, but it is setting itself up as a pervasive danger while spouting the mantra "Do No Evil" as a reassurance to the weak-minded. Any number of articles and comments on El Reg carry a negative tone because, frankly, you want to stab yourself with a plastic spork just to be sure you aren't dreaming. They did WHAT and NOBODY is making a fuss? If it was a normal company there'd be lawyers and anti-trust suits and all sorts. But it's the Internet. Time and again governments and companies and Joe Public really doesn't have a clue what to do about the Internet - from MPs on TV saying "It's shocking, the Internet should be policed" to Bono saying something that I won't even give him the grace of quoting, to Italy considering that according to some obscure law the very concept may be illegal. Nobody knows how the hell to deal with it...
...except Google.
Some sites, Twitter for example, are doing quite well. But it's because it is the "in" thing (or we like antagonising Stephen Fry, you decide). When something better comes along, Twitter will flounder. TimeWarner-AOL was a marriage made in heaven that went tits up. Media moguls are trying desperately to pervert justice with shite like Hadopi because it's the only concept their pathetic little minds can handle. Embracing the Internet and what it has to offer doesn't make sense to them. Maybe they should talk to Red Hat who have run as a viable business selling a *free* product. But no, its too much of a paradigm shift.
But one company has it sussed. And off the back of the misunderstandings and general cluelessness, they are going to bend and buckle the thing until they see themselves and Lord And Master. And if we don't watch it, they will have manipulated themselves into exactly that position and we will be screwed... for all the open source and cool toys and gadgets probably aren't sufficient trade-off for the invasion of any pretence at privacy we have.
Enter the supposed Google laptop. It sounds nifty. It sounds awesome. As a geek, ARM. Whoo! But there's a darker side. With analytics and such your browsing history is only partly monitored, and with NoScript and such you can block a lot of this tracing. Google, for example, does not know my address, for I have not ever made it available. Through corrections I have made to their mapping service (evidently ignored, I might add...), they could take a guess as to my location and perhaps be correct to within 20-odd miles. But that's a lot of space. For everybody else, you'll get as far as I'm in Brittany. You might narrow it down to the lower-right part. But that' a lot of space. Enter the GoogleBook (or whatever they plan to call the thing). No more need for analytics, they'll be able to tell every page, how long you're there, whether you bother to scroll... an absolute goldmine of floggable data. Those SEO types would give their lives for that sort of information. Oh, and this same machine by this information obsessed company can no doubt be used for online banking, buying stuff off eBay or Amazon... Hell, there will probably be BitTorrent clients released "as a public service" all dutifuly recording every activity. Are alarm bells ringing in your head yet?
Sure. I know. There's a lot of conjecture here, and some stuff plain made up. But take off the rose-tinted glasses and ask yourself "how believable is it?". I believe *all* of the above will not only be possible, but stands to be in implementation within a year or two. THAT is why people who ask questions are starting to ask questions about Google. For on the face of it Google hasn't really done anything terribly bad, other than show gross disregard for other people's privacy and property - but on the Internet anything goes, right? The problem, and some of the little warnings El Reg puts out, are because Google is manouvring itself in the background. To put them in a good position to one day say "Check..... and Mate".
Tell me you can't see this coming?
No? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist nutjob? Go read some of the archives. Then, repeat, tell me you can't see this coming?
Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’
