

Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel
http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html

======
ZeroGravitas
Am I wrong or is this just not true:

 _"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has
often been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android
platform instead of as iPhone applications"_

I don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of
but there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any
decent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f)
Mac, g) Linux.

He state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think
this is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've
recently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of
other browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff.

~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with
iPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the
Mobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones
because he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough
ordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like
Firefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only
browser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera
(sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut
for Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support
our own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market.

------
iamelgringo
I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not
comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If
someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring
system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was
keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly.

~~~
jsz0
Safe from what?

Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third
party provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security
through obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special
enough to be legitimate targets.

Safe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm
pretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also
have a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are
looking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at
least know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They
could have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know.
Even bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report
problems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the
wrong command and every bit gets leaked.

Safe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates
its data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me.

Overall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there
isn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using.
If you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you
might at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s)
you quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a
pro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so
that already puts you at a disadvantage.

~~~
tome
What worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a
_massive_ cross section of my data:

    
    
       * search records
       * e-mail
       * calendaring
       * documents
       * which youtube videos I've watched
    

etc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this
information the wider the spread of it they have.

~~~
jodrellblank
You wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google
ads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you
go to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular
web tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to
www.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's
public graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa.

The bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and
they spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your
existing data then they can try linking them together.

If you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place
to find directions is from/to your home and from/to your workplace, so they
can get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?).

Shop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products> ?

~~~
dflock
Ok, serious question: what's the worst that could happen?

Some internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything
about me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet
that wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically?

~~~
jodrellblank
WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;)

I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting
rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to
constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things
I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is
power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in
exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul.

(That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much
worse, and in unpredictable ways).

However, let's see:

1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power"
scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who
calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far
fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up
suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation
mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate
Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so
good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power
and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are
picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical
fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in
a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender,
sexual orientation, political leanings?

2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in
the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search
all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever
wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to
forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't
get much worse?

3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto
choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google
CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web
accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed,
people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all
companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across
systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population-
scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by
dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different
slants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone?
Which way you vote?

3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate,
Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly
training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google
mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car
stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because
you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on
channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now
they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're
talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3).

4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by
some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards.
Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors
results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen.
Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The
only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are
those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_
buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank
because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with
them).

5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All
international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All
international _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate
isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations.

Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more
information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad
things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees,
hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that
can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn
in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch
hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that
doesn't even notice us.

We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for
those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently
pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb.

(And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it?
Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart
people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale
processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you.
Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html)
;) )

~~~
jsz0
You forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and
enslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones
you list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating
their customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday
scenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google
does anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open
the flood gates for their competitors to rush in.

I do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should
consider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for
every second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every
single photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you
do choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank
account information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting
themselves.

------
rjurney
The problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the
platform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists.
That IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical
douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control
before contributing anything.

Watching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt
wearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant
peppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and
forth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one
thing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round
and round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of "Developers,
Developers, Developers, Developers!"

At least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of
dignity.

I think I prefer this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/pwGXs> to this stagecraft
<http://bit.ly/15aSar> because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to
disgust me.

~~~
freetard
> It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull:
> pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything.

Well no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole
protocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released.
Microsoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone
unless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they
can't be sued. Not quite the same thing.

~~~
rjurney
Granted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google
for almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of
this... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship
bothers me. They've turned a corner.

------
stilist
Interesting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about
exactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've
seen. I suppose it has been long enough—and Google is big and broad
enough—that a real backlash could begin to appear.

~~~
anigbrowl
Agree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before.

------
dustice
I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser
to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key
distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like
the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want.
No lock-ins, no harm to the user.

~~~
trezor
Chrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly
notice they are using a much less polished product.

Chromium may be open source, but Chrome is not.

~~~
ljlolel
If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right
now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful.

Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work
yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the
configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I
see they have added many of them).

~~~
trezor
It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain
Chrome.

Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't
even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that
you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode.

------
tybris
I thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In
general, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if
these people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be
wondering why.

If a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the
competitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs
of the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has
nothing to do with stupid or evil, just business.

~~~
rdrimmie
The post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended
Microsoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past
the point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs
largely from the external concept of its identity that the public has.

