"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?).
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?
Ok look, I'm really not trying to make a nut-case argument, but cost of information allows aggregation of badness as well as goodness. Google is an extreme example but the level of information in the hands of a malicious government or other self-interested entity should not be relegated to 'could never happen here'.
I've little problem the the current Google, but 10-30 years from now will other forces in the world have access? But the issue is less google than the massive changes tech is making to the world.
Identity theft (since they have all your details), blackmail of some kind (perhaps someone malicious at Google has discovered you're having an affair)?
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"?
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.
If Microsoft word sent a unique identifier to Microsoft every time we updated a Word document, made an entry in a Outlook calendar or sent an e-mail we'd be up in arms.
We do this with Google every day, without thinking about it.
Wow, very good examples! So what can be done to anonymise access to these services? Tor of course is one idea, or a different proxy server. Anything else, or other considerations?
I can't answer that yet, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to ignore it. We are talking about the world's leading search company. There's no such thing as security through obscurity for them - they find needles in haystacks for a living.
We're also talking long term - none of this stuff is going to be deleted, it's only ever going to grow in their collective. What if you do become someone famous or important in twenty years?
Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third party provider
But it's more of a risk from Google for several reasons - 1) they have so much of it, and 2) they're so good at searching and correlating, and 3) they're so big their data is a major drooling point for .gov legislation or hacker interests.
Chances are most of us are just not special enough to be legitimate targets.
Agreed. But if anyone can automate something they-think-is-benign-but-I-disagree on everyone's data all at once, Google can.
The problem with Google is that they have all the data in one place. If you use multiple services they all know a lot less about you. This makes it a lot harder for a government or a person in the company to combine the information into a full picture. I agree that the ISP is a huge problem too.
Hmmm, i sometimes get that same kind of feeling though i always tell myself, "no it should be ok", they are trusted, smart, respect my privacy my data and benevolant ...
I store my emails using gmail, my code for my startup is backed up in my emails as a final restore point should something bad happen to my servers and source control, my design specs, tasks list are all stored within google document, my calculations and budgeting is done using googles spreadsheet. I still trust them and that is why i am still comfortable but to tell you the truth, the slightest glitch or security leak, or signs of evilism would really make me think twice.
To add to this discussion a few things i have noticed (could be my paranoia, but who knows ..). A while back during uni there was this company called bullant (not sure if anyone ever heard of them). They had a decent product which consisted of a browser and a backend VM engine. There were a few features of the backend engine that i thought were really good and nice to develop in and generated really great apps that could be delivered over the internet. However i think the product didnt fly because it required users to change and use their own proprietry browser, the change was to drastic for users, it wasnt gradual enough as many users were already used to mozilla/netscape and ie.
If i draw the comparisions sometimes i wonder if the introduction of chrome, the new V8 engine and all the hype of SaaS, whether this is a slow movement similar to what bullant all those years back tried to do. I wonder whether slowly and incrementally certain really great google apps will be just that tiny bit slower in ie or ff and slowly over time would certain features of the new great google app that everyone uses and loves stop working in those other browsers requiring us to all change to chrome to get the most out of it ? I sometims think whether the vision is that sometime in the future we all log into our linux/apple/windows computers and for 80% of the time fire up our chrome browsers go straight to our favourite google app saved in our favourites and no longer require 80% of the applications that we now have installed on our PC's ?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Assuming you were buying Windows because you wanted Windows for some unrelated reason, or buying a computer with Windows, then you also got IE, but you were free to run other browsers.
How is it being closed source a meaningful distinction?
Free is not, and never has been, a defense to antitrust. Indeed, free offerings are generally considered very good evidence of antitrust: the company at issue is abusing its market power in one market to increase its market power in another market in non-competitive ways (i.e., by using money earned from a separate market to undermine the target market through under-priced goods). The obvious worry is that the products will stop being free (or so cheap) once the company has achieved sufficient market control.
It does not matter what the end user can do, antitrust focuses on what the alleged monopolist is doing.
Also, choice is not a defense to antitrust under the Sherman Act. That's a common misconception among non-lawyers. Choice is only weak evidence, at best, that the an alleged monopolist's activities are not anti-competitive.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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.