“Beneath the sheen of do-gooder ideology, FairSearch can be most charitably described as a Google watchdog. It seeks to fan the flames of disapproval where they’ve started organically, originate them where they haven’t, and generally disseminate negativity toward the Google brand. Think of it as a PR firm working to destroy rather than create goodwill.” To make matters worse, FairSearch’ work isn’t even very good.
On one hand, Google is getting way too big. They practically own the web already, have a sizable chunk of the smartphone market, and are now laying down fiber to become their own ISP. So I think people have a good reason to be weary. I know a lot of people look at Google as ‘the good guys’, but I think that’s extremely short-sighted. They are a publicly traded corporation, which means they’re going to screw you over as soon as it serves their bottom line.
On the other hand, it gives me great joy to see MS crying foul. MS have been such dicks for so long, the company deserves every bit of bad karma that it gets. And I think the Fairsearch group would be better off without them, because MS being a part of this group only serves as a distraction. It’s kind of like having a pedophile as part of a coalition to fight child sex abuse.
No, I don’t think it’s like that at all.
How is it not? Its a practical monopoly speaking out against a practical monopoly.
While the analogy is rather tasteless it’s still pretty spot on.
It is, kind of.
To me, it’s more like those “neutral” political pressure groups or NGOs, who really are just secretly funded lackeys/proxies for some politician who wants to badmouth his opposition.
Related to google fibre:
you noticed that you can get google fibre for free (just some little connection costs) and forever (as long as it exists). And even the bandwith of the free version is not that slow. In a lot of countries for that bandwith you pay a lot of money every month.
Nobody is forcing you do be a client of google.
There others too that offer searching services, others who offer a replacement of google maps, g+, youtube,… the list is very long.
A tone of opensource projects are sponsored by google, that’s why a lot of commercial products, became more cheap or even free.
Try to imagine how it was in the era before google, when you had to pay a lot for even simple software of services, or you had to pirate. Now, with the help of google, we have a quite good open source community, that offers a lot of operating systems and software, which are sufficient for most of people.
Take a look for example how much money google invested in opensource projects, and how much patents they bought from others, and then released it under opensource licenses. Google chrome improved my web experience a lot, and the sync function works great, nomatter on what device I am (at home, or at a computer at school, etc..).
Why is google so successful? Because they are intelligent, because they have great developers, and it’s fine if the market is dominated by the capable and intelligent once. And the others who are incapable of good innovations, come up with license claims for inventing the wheel and the fire.
Ask yourself why does CERN (fundamental research center) use the google hangouts?
Because they are not ideologic idiots.
Kasparov was for about 20 years the world champion in chess. Should somebody have told him: mr. kasparov, please slow down, so that others have a chance too, otherwise you have the monopole in chess.
What do you expect, that the stupid ones should have the same success as the intelligent ones?
What should google do? Send some of its developers to microsoft to help them finally make a good browser and search engine?
Microsoft has a lot of money. If they want, they can buy good developers too, and they also can make their OS (windows) open source and microsoft can start supporting open source projects, if they think that these “unfair methods” are making google successfull.
Edited 2013-04-12 23:06 UTC
Oh yeah, they’re intelligent alright… intelligent enough to have people believing that all the free and open shit they’re currently getting is going to stay free and open forever. But once their competition is eliminated and they have your balls in the vice grip, it’s going to be a thousand hells worse than anything we saw with Microsoft and IE6/Office.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use their products, just that we should be weary of them, and shouldn’t blindly trust that they’re always going to do the right thing. Why? Because they’re a publicly-traded corporation. These entities ONLY do the right thing so long as it serves their bottom line.
Why do you assume that once their competition is gone they are going to turn into something worse than Microsoft? You seem to be missing one important thing in my opinion. Microsoft turned into a monster by eliminating the competition. Their monopoly came from shady business practices and a will to own the entire market. Google’s success comes from being more innovative that the competition. Google is doing none of the things that Microsoft did to eliminate competition. In fact, they are for the most part going out of their way to promote open technologies.
I know its not popular, but contrary to most people’s beliefs, you don’t have to be a total douchebag if you run a corporation. There are some corporations that actually have a set of values. Do you think Red Hat is going to turn around some day and go all close source and scorn the open source community?
You can’t compare companies like Google and Red Hat with other companies. They are companies whose business is built on community good will. When that’s gone they will be out of business. Considering there are alternatives for everything Red Hat and Google do, do you really think they would stay in business is the community turned against them?
‘Values’ and ‘corporations’ do not mix. Remember, we’re talking about a company that got caught red-handed, driving down streets and slurping public wifi data, and then had the brazen brass balls to say they did it on accident. LMAO, are you f’ing kidding me? Google itself makes its money on advertising, so right off the bat, to steal a quote from a famous movie, they rank in my book somewhere between a cockroach and the white stuff that accumulates in the corner of your mouth when you’re really thirsty. Hell, they recently yanked all of the ad blockers from the Play store, which drew the ire of many users, including myself.
I work for a company who claims to have values and to operate at the highest ethical standards, but it’s only lip service at best; I’ve seen them do some pretty shady stuff, like dialing into clients’ systems in the middle of the night and downloading their customer data. They do this because it is actually in the fine print of their contracts with the client, so they can get away with it. So what a company says and what it actually does are two completely different things.
I don’t really consider Redhat a threat; they’re ‘nice’ because they have to be, and probably always will. Google, on the other hand, is a different story. Once they become the ‘de facto’ for many of their services/apps, where it becoems difficult-to-impossible to leave (like Youtube), it’s gonna be game over. How do I know this? You ever heard the parable of the frog and the scorpion?
You are making an argument based on guilt by association. Sure Google has made some mistakes. But you can’t write them off like they have been anti-competitive until they actually are. Or is the whole innocent until proven guilty thing beyond your reasoning?
Edited 2013-04-14 00:02 UTC
If we were talking about a person? Sure, I’d be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But a corporation, especially one that is as big as Google is and getting bigger? Never. Not in a million years. They will continue to do the ‘right thing’ as long as they feel like they’ll make more money that way. As soon as that is not the case though, then no more mr nice guy. This is a guarantee – just as inexorable as the law of gravity. Mind you, I don’t hate Google, and don’t consider them any better/worse than their contemporaries. They’re just a little smarter with their deception, and lulling people into a false sense of security.
Am I saying we should boycott? Nah. After all, unless you want to go live in a cabin somewhere, you have to interact with these psychopaths, so you gotta pick the lesser of all evils. And right now, that’s Google. But I do think we should treat them like a lion in the wild. I don’t give a shit how friendly a lion appears to be… you better be on your guard at all times. One minute he could be cordial with you, and the next minute you’re lunch.
Edited 2013-04-14 09:49 UTC
Red hat is actually not a good example for the point that you are trying to make. They have demonstrated already that they will go as far as the license permits to gain advantages over their competitors. It was big news when they made the commit history of their RHEL kernel source non-public in order to combat Oracle Enterprise Linux.
That was unfortunate, but they have also gone out of their way to pay for closed source technology, including patents, and given them back to the community. Frankly, if Oracle wasn’t trying to leach off Red Hat, it would have never been done. But like I said, no one is perfect.
Seeing as how GPL doesn’t require you to make commit history available along with the source, they were going beyond the requirements of the licence in the first place.
No comments on other points but…
“and microsoft can start supporting open source projects”
Actually they have CodePlex to host open source projects. Many Windows (Phone) development components are hosted over CodePlex (from Microsoft and 3rd party developers).
when I say support, I also mean real money, like Google Summer of Code.
I am going to disagree with everything you said about Google. Yes they are big. But success shouldn’t be punished. Their grasp on the smartphone market is tenuous at best. They author a free phone OS. However, Samsung is making anew one. So the fight over that market certainly isn’t over. As for being an ISP, they as a company have not been given any of the subsidies that the telecoms have, and are still doing a better job. They even provide free service to low income households. On top of all that they spend millions of dollars funding open source projects. Yes they are publicly traded. Yes they have made some mistakes. But they have done a thousand times better than anything Microsoft has done. They do not actively target their competition, opting to innovate in order to stay competitive. They are doing most things “right”.
Fairsearch on the other hand exists solely to harass Google. The companies that make up Fairsearch are companies that can’t compete or that Google won’t let manipulate Google search to make a profit. If they had a legitimate grievance, the FTC would have done something about it during the investigation. Its guerrilla business tactics, thats all.
More than that, Google put all of the changes to the Linux kernel to support Android smartphones into upstream, and Canonical is now using the Android kernel unmodified for Ubuntu Mobile. Talk about lowering barriers to market entry!
Kind of hard to imagine Microsoft putting all of their kernel mods into an open kernel so that other companies can make competing operating systems for their smartphones.
Regarding google fiber, I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. We’ve had a similar situation in France before, where the ISP ecosystem stagnated in suckiness until an obscure company aptly called Free decided to brutally shake things up. What happened is just that the other historical ISPs aligned themselves on Free’s offerings, and everything ended up for the better in the end.
I am fairly skeptical of the economics dogma that fair competition can solve all problems, but sometimes it does work.
Edited 2013-04-13 06:44 UTC
Did you just compare MSFT to a pedo? Really? Me thinks you have a little too much anger for a company which at best would have been a fourth tier Adam West batman villain. heck you can look at every major success of that company and its ALWAYS preceded by “And then the other guy did something REALLY dumb” so if you want to blame somebody for the MSFT of old blame the retarded competition.
As for TFA? Personally I’m 110% behind fair search, why? Because I thought what the EU did with the “ballot box” concept should be applied across the board to all devices because it takes power out of the hands of the corps and puts it in the hands of the consumers where it belongs. lets face it we have ALL seen the power of bundling, and its even worse with mobile as its often a PITB if not some crazy hoop jumps to replace the bundled apps with alternatives. Heck does Apple even ALLOW other browsers on iOS?
That is why I think their idea of the ballot box should not only apply to MSFT but to everybody. Why shouldn’t I be able to decide I want FF Mobile and Bing Maps on my Android? what if I want to run IE on my iPhone? It should be MY choice NOT theirs and anything that puts that choice back in the hands of the users is fine by me.
Silly argument in the sense that, well, you can already do that.
No it isn’t, tell me how do I replace Safari with FF on iPhone? Last I checked I CAN’T without jailbreaking. And how many NORMAL users, not geeks, but normal users, can easily swap apps on these things from the default?
If you argument was true then bundling wouldn’t be an issue at all, would it? But it is because the vast majority only use the defaults because in most cases they don’t even know there ARE alternatives, much less how to install them. the ballot box was a success on windows, why not extend it to the rest? Are you really against putting choice in the hands of the consumer?
iPhone is not an Android-phone. See my comment, you’ll very, very clearly see I deliberately said “Android” there. Go complain to Apple about your effing iPhone.
And my argument holds JUST as well. If you hand an Android phone to Joe average on the street and say “Change the default browser” how many do you HONESTLY think will be able to do it out of 100 people? 5? 10? If you even found 5 frankly I would be amazed.
And I honestly don’t see what makes you so hostile to this idea, does having choice make you mad? is having your choices even easier somehow bad to you? Are you worried that whatever corp you are a fan of won’t “win” if users have choices?
Again look at the ballot box on windows, its only there one time, it takes you less than 30 seconds to choose, what EXACTLY do you find so horrible about that werecat? Wouldn’t you rather not have to go look up the browsers in Google play (or WinPhone or iPhone appstores) but instead simply make a couple of choices and have the browser, maps, and email set up the way YOU want with the programs YOU want?
So I don’t get your argument, I really don’t. what we are talking about here is making initial setup of ANY device easier for ALL, you included. What is not to like about that? Isn’t choice good? Isn’t ease of setup good? If it works on Windows and encourages diversity and choice why is it so bad to have that same choice across devices? Is it REALLY so bad to make choice simple and easy for all, or is that something only us geeks should have?
Personally I think its a great idea, one of the best the EU regs ever came up with, and see absolutely zero reason why it shouldn’t be applied to all devices. what could be simpler than on first start the phone gives you a list and you just pick what you want and be done with it?
So when I browse to google.com to do a search Google should provide me a ballot box to select what search i want to use? When I go to Gmail.com you are saying that Google should provide me a ballot box to select what email service I want? Please explain how that is good for consumers. pray tell.
I really fail to see how. They’ve made it work for them. Really well. But that’s not the same as owning. They don’t even own the web video media codec space.
It’s more like having Joseph Ratzinger as head of the Catholic Church.
Short sighted? Not even close. Google is better than the alternative of a divided web, not Bing vs Google. By divided I mean, use Bing for searches within US, Baidu for Chinese searches, Yandex for Russian searches, search-engine-X for X country specific searches.
And letting Microsoft usurp the web is even worse than letting Google have it. Imagine Microsoft having Windows and a dominant Bing…
Choosing Google is a choice of lesser of two evils.
So… you kinda agree with him, it’s not “Google as ‘the good guys'”, but “a choice of lesser of two evils” :p
…haters gonna hate.
I want to say one more thing about Google. And that is Google culture. Google attracts the best and the brightest because they have a business attitude and culture that make people want to work there. People want to believe in the work they are doing. If Google starts acting like Microsoft, you will see the stars leave Google like a sinking ship. Its a somewhat new idea in careers I think, but people realize that they will be happiest in life when they are happy with their jobs. Its not just about earning a salary anymore. People want to make a difference. Google epitomizes that belief.
Edited 2013-04-13 01:36 UTC
Microsoft rage and Google circle jerks are so boring and played out. It would be nice if not every thread devolved into that. (No offense to those of you who had something worthwhile to say without putting on a display.)
They now support cispa. They are now evil. It seems inevitably every large corporation becomes inherently evil due to economic realities. In closing: Google is now Microsoft, and I look forward to their demise.
Using Google Chrome and Google search engine is one of the worst privacy nightmares.
If you want to use Chrome because it’s technically the best browser and use Google search, there are some ways to do it and still don’t send personal info and track data to Google servers.
You can install a Chromium based browser with tracking and data collecting remove like Srware Iron.
You can use a search engine like startpage, https://startpage.com/ which is basically google but going through startpage’s servers and with data tracking removed.
I don’t trust duckduckgo either, they might be tracking or collecting data.
Also, if you fancy your privacy, don’t use gmail. Even if you delete your emails and account, all your data will sit on google servers for years and they can use your data and even share it with others.