Firefox Creator No Longer Trusts Google 528
watashi writes "Blake Ross the man whose scratched itch became the Firefox browser explains on his blog why he has a problem with Google's policy of promoting their own products over competitors' in search results. His main gripe is that the tips (e.g. "Want to share pictures? Try Google Picasa") result in an inability for other products (perhaps even Parakey?) to compete for the top slot on Google."
Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is stopping you from using those other search engines.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't confuse covert action with inaction. Microsoft has definitely tried to stop you from using Linux. They've done everything that they could possibly get away with to prevent you from using ANYTHING but Microsoft products on your PC.
But it was covert - you didn't witness the exclusive deals, threats and haggles yourself, your vendor(s) did.
You might remember a certain antitrust trial, in which Microsoft played one of the sides? Perhaps you were sleeping under a rock or something...?
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Please, go back and do some more reading on natural monopolies, and 'barriers to entry' in general. Operating Systems and search engines are NOT like utilities.
Consider a utility. To enter the market you need licenses from federal, state, and local governments. Property easements. And capital costs for plants and infrastructure. Monopo
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any company would, and that's why we have anti-trust laws. If Google gets a defacto monopoly on searches (which it hasn't got yet), then manipulating the search results to promote it's own non-search related products would be a clear anti-trust violation. Plus, Google has told us their motto is "don't be evil", and manipulating search results is at the very least naughty.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW, a google for "Online Maps" brings up Mapquest in second place. You know who was in first? Multimap.com. Google maps hit the top of the blue bar; Mapquest was the top of the sidebar. Google maps, btw, wasn't in the first two pages of search results. (A Google search for "map" has maps.google.com first, mapquest second, with that order recreated in the blue bar)
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
> We can all tell the difference
There is opinion and then there is fact [usatoday.com].
> An ad placed by google has opportunity cost associated with it.
A tip does not.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Insightful)
> There is opinion and then there is fact.
No one considers banning the lotteries yet. Isn't it fair for stupidity to be taxed?
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I disagree. The opportunity cost is the money google could have made by selling the tip to another provider. As you point out, tips have icons - and are also phrased in terms of advice by a trusted party rather than advertising - two attributes which no doubt would attract a price premium.
While your argument is well thought out, I don't have a huge problem with google cross-marketing its products in this way, probably because (a)
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Probably because all Communist regimes really were, and continue to be, pretty much pure evil.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google had a de facto monopoly on search, it wouldn't mean squat. A company that wants to promote its photo app on Google isn't competing with Google in the search market. It's using Google as an advertising medium. The only way for antitrust law to come into play is if Google gets some kind of monopoly on 'advertising media', and there's no way that can possibly happen.
Nothing Google does in its search results page prevents a company from running print ads in trade magazines or doing TV and radio spots. If you want to restrict the discussion to 'online advertising', nothing Google does on its search results page will prevent a company from hiring an actual marketing agent who's willing to do the legwork of finding the top 100 websites visited by the company's core audience and buying ad space there, or better still, working deals that will see the company's product discussed in the direct content of those sites (thus gaining the product a high page rank in Google's non-paid search results, and avoiding the "nobody actually talks about our product but we're going to buy our way onto the search page anyway" games entirely).
This whole "Google won't let me buy the top slot, waah-waah-waah" bullshit is the sound made by people who are too cheap, stupid, or lazy to get out there and do some actual MARKETING. They want to click a "send me business" button and have the world beat a path to their door, largely based on the hard-earned-and-diligently-maintained reputation Google has won for providing relevant and trustworthy search results.
People also have this strange notion that 'top slot' has some magical value that no other slot has. Seriously: I defy anyone to show me a meaningful financial breakdown of the difference in value between "number one slot on Google's paid search list" and "number two slot on Google's paid search list." If Google is 'harming' its competitors by keeping the #1 slot for itself, someone please define that 'harm' in actual shillings and pence. If you can't, there's no way you could establish standing to file a lawsuit, let alone claim any damages.
Besides, Google putting its own products at the top of the paid links list is the very antithesis of anticompetitive behavior. When you see the link to Google's product, you also see links to other products that compete directly with Google's stuff. Please explain how we entered the Bizarro World where 'giving everyone the URLs to all your competitors' has come to be construed as 'anticompetitive behavior'. Christ on a pogo stick, people, show me three other companies that devote half as many resources to 'promoting competing products' as Google.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.
Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Informative)
I agree, but google doesn't necessarilly agree. If you search google for "search" [google.com], you will find that MSN Search is the top hit. If you instead choose "search engine", google is at the top.
As long as the google hints are clearly marked as distinct from the search results, and are not intrusive, I see no problem with this. In the actual results google seems to be fairly honest to the algorithm for now.
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Let's face it, the whole paid-advertising thing is a direct violation of Google's page rank system. Users know it, and that's why Google makes a clear distinction between paid ads and unpaid search results.
If Google were giving its own products an artifically high page rank, yes, they'd probably los
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Microsoft. Microsoft would never leverage their leadership position in one market to capture new markets or lock out competitors. They would never bundle or cross-promote their products. They would never prevent their competitors from reaching their customers. They would never use their monopoly position to push into other spaces or prevent competition.
Wait... they do do that. But... Slashd
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the devil is in the details. As the article says very clearly, Google is in a (near monopoly) position to direct users to "the best" of the web. When they do so with their own products in a way that is inaccessible to other vendors, questions begin to be asked.
At the moment, it's more of a concern to advertisers. If I were Kodak trying to advertise my photo sharing product on Google, I'd be pretty upset that their competing product has far better visibility.
It's a very clear conflict of interests -- just like MS with IE. Or MS with Office using "secret" API calls.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are several things that google has done I'm not happy about. This is very small on my list. As a geek, I realize that many of us have stronger ethics than most others. The public will continue to use google just as they love their Windows install. The difference is that its much easier to unseat a search engine.
Now if the developers at Mozilla wish to look down on google, they could stop making it default in Firefox as a search engine. Frankly I find it interesting after Microsoft started giving them help with Vista compatibility that we hear this negative google talk. I can say things about others just as easy as the Firefox guy.
I think its time some of you realized that google is not this amazing company that is totally different. Its similar to the argument I have with my mother over Yahoo. She views them as the best thing the internet has ever seen. She chooses them over google daily. For a long time I tried to talk her into using another search tool and game site. She stuck with Yahoo because of her personal experiences. I stay away from Yahoo because of my personal experience*. If you don't like google, just don't use any of their products and chose something else. The same goes for IE, Windows, etc. Modern computing is about choice.
* If you are curious about my hatred of Yahoo, its simply a flaw in their early childrens search feature. Their advertising code displayed a porno ad to a 7 year old I was watching and nearly lost me my job. His search was totally unrelated and quite clean.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Funny)
I knew someone would figure it out eventually. Yes, the Vista workshop was so valuable that I decided to cut all ties with Google. They may be supplying millions of dollars and free promotions across the globe, but... man, it was such a great workshop!
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I'm told that Mozilla.com makes a "bit" too much money from that little textbox, so I don't think they'd like to remove it.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Insightful)
While your wording is careful and not technically untrue, don't you think that it's a rather smug-sounding assertion? Almost any large group can make some claim that a sizable number of its members are more _____fill-in-the-blank___ than most others. Try it out. As a left-handed person, I realize that many of us have longer shinbones than most others.
But, given the prepositional phrase that you began the sentence with, I wonder if you didn't mean to imply that geeks are generally more ethical than most other subgroups of the population. If so, what is the ethical mesuring stick? As far as I can tell, the prevailing ethical system here is a relativistic/existential one (meaning that a universal moral code is rejected in favor of a personal/subjective one). I'm not necessarily against that, but it does seem a little easier to be "moral" when one has the ability to decide for oneself what that means. At least in comparison to some externally imposed ethical system. In any event, you would be hard-pressed to find a whole lot of people who have an relativistic/existential ethical system who did not feel that they were quite moral or ethical.
It's interesting that no one has yet challenged your statement here on slashdot. If someone had posted an equally accurate statement, such as "as a [Religious Jew, Practicing Christian, Card-Carrying Republican, CEO of a major corporation, I realize that many of us have stronger ethics than most others," I wonder if they would have gotten a free pass.
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Insightful)
To put this another way: CNN routinely cross-promotes Time-Warner movies as 'news', and gets routinely razzed for doing so (unless they've stopped -- I've stopped watching). So did many other publications, and these days the better ones have taken to labeling such articles with a 'note: we have the same parent' notice. Even Slashdot marks links to OSTG sites. It's basic ethics. But of course, if you see Google's search results as a haven for commercials, you'll fail to see the point -- just like execs at AltaVista and Yahoo Search once failed and gave Google their chance. They might as well put huge blinking banner ads there next.
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Do you also cry foul when a newspaper puts their name on top of the classifieds section?
Do you cry foul when a yellow pages book from your phone company advertises the phone company?
Do you cry foul when an advertising campaign also advertises the advertising stu
Re:Why shouldn't they? (Score:4, Funny)
This is the most insightful post Ive read all day. The fact some schmo agrees with some other schmo really makes you think.
Does he promote IE over Firefox? (Score:3, Insightful)
I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference? Pre Jagger sales averaged $110,000/mo less $20,000 in adwords. Post Jagger sales were $140,000/mo with nothing in adwords. Six hundred thousand dollars a year from an algorithm update.
This puts Google in the league of "Common Carriers." They're not nearly as vital as, say, the electric company--If google went dark today the other search engines would absorb the traffic--but their power doesn't come to them at no charge. They are benefiting greatly from this power, as you can see in their market cap. Google isn't a 1-company bubble, it's doing well because it has a unique amount of leverage and power in markets and technologies that almost surely will be the foundation of the global economy. In exchange for this massive power, Google has a responsibility to be a responsible corporate citizen.
And let's face it--if you called AT&T 411 for the number to your local Cable Internet company and the woman wouldn't tell you without first giving you the name and number of their own internet service, people would justify complain. This is similar. We expect our "utilities" to be fair abiters in exchange for a captive audience. The time has come that we start considering Google in the same light.
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not strictly true. The idea that "anyone" can compete with any company on "equal footing" is one of those silly libertarian, "free market cures all" delusions.
In the real world, something called a "barrier to entry" exists for each of competitors in the marketplace. If those barriers are small, competition is usually flourishing and the "free market" functions as intended. Not so if the "barriers" are measured in billions of dollars or political power.
Sometimes those barriers are regulatory and legal in nature, which causes libertarians and "anarcho captialists" to howl and whine about the evils of government.
But more often then not they are based on other factors, such as technological, geographic, geo-politicial and the like. In the case of Google, the company is at this point in time "open" to competition by any Microsoft or Haliburton out there, or any one individual with a few billion dollars to spare on a risky venture. That is because Google has achieved nearly 50% market penetration (compared to 25% of the nearest competitor) and thus wields tremendous power over the marketplace. And that is why socially unjustifiable monopolies or, in this case, oligopolies are a fundamentally bad idea, no matter if their creation is coupled "good intentions" or not.
In short, it is exceedingly foolish to allow any one company to control anything near 50% of the marketplace in any product, for market distortions of massive scale are sure to follow.
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big difference between legal barriers to entry and financial ones. There is good competition in the auto industry at the moment, an industry with much higher barriers to entry than the search engine market. Financial barriers to entry can be overcome, and lack of market share can be resolved through advertising (assuming the product is decent...well even not them sometimes). Legal barriers to entry cannot be gotten around. If you don't do what they tell you men with guns can come and take you away. Men with guns, that's the difference between a legal barrier to entry and a financial one.
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be joking. What dealership do I go to buy my electric car, for which there is considerable demand? Where do I get my bio-diesel/electric hybrid? How about an in-hub electric motor 4 wheel drive system? Stuff that has been around for decades and for which there would be a 2 year-long waiting list if it were only available from any of the major makers. Give me a break, none of the major, entrenched car makers compete on anything but marketing and manufacturing vehicles that are as cheap as possible to make and last as short a period of time as it is humanly possible while generating maximum after warranty parts demand. The term to use is "oligopoly". In a properly functioning marketplace there would be hundreds of car makers, not less then 10 globally.
Neither can be geographic. A toll road built in the only valley linking major metropolies is just as difficult to "compete" with as a legal decree. In one case there is next to impossible political power to overcome, in the other a few trillion tons of rock. A conglomerate who manages to purchase all, say, nickel deposits world-wide, is also impossible to compete with. The very simple fact that the deposits accessible to mining (at non-astronomical price) are finite. There is no room to "expand" or to compete. Etc and so on.
As I pointed out, "financial" is only one of many different types of barriers to entry, of which legal only but one. Most of them are as insurmountable as men with guns.
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
You are, of course, free to start "The Ignoramus Maximus Electric Auto Company" and produce these products yourself. Come up with a good sales pitch and find some venture capitalists, hire some good engineers and have a go. If the big bad oligopoly squishes you under its thumb I suppose you can always blog about it. Of course we all know such a brilliant business idea is guaranteed to be successful, what with such readily available technology and high demand...
Buy a Honda. If you bother to take care of the thing like you're supposed to it'll last longer than you will.
=Smidge=
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For Google to have any obligation beyond itself and its shareholders, they would have to have governmental approval to become the only search engine on the web, thus shutting down Yahoo!, MSN Search, Ask.com, and the host of other search engines that could easily be subs
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Regular 411 you pay (thru the nose) for, so that is a much different situation.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Informative)
It appears what TFA is about is incorrect. Why? Google for "share pictures." Picasa is the second ad in the blue box.
Google for "blog." Blogger shows up below the paid ads, as mostly plaintext with a blogger logo.
Google for "videos." Google Video shows up in the blue box, second ad.
Is it just me, or does it seem like they aren't favoring their own ads at all? There might be some algorithm sorting them, as when I search for some other terms Google comes up first (gmail comes up before AOL mail,) but in other cases Google's service shows up last in the paid ads.
Straight from the horses mouth: (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, they're competing with everyone else fairly. They're not favoring their own ads. And IMHO, if they did put their own ads on top, it would be fine. But then they should expect some people to choose overture for keywords that google grab for themselves.
agreed... i don't find it unreasonable at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I presently work for Google. (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, so are you a Google acountant or a security professional [slashdot.org]. Don't tell me you changed jobs yesterday.
Re:I presently work for Google. (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, so are you a Google acountant or a security professional [slashdot.org]. Don't tell me you changed jobs yesterday.
Re:I presently work for Google. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I presently work for Google. (Score:4, Insightful)
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to work for google's accounting department
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to write video game reviews
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to be a systems administrator working for a 3500-employee corporation
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to be "an active lesbian"
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to have worked "in the UK for Barklay's for 30 years"
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to "work in Washington for an Internet Security firm" (while in here [slashdot.org] he claims to be "planning on travelling to DC" to attend president Ford's funeral).
- in here [slashdot.org] he claims to have met Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and also reading "few of his papers on the immune system". Then he pastes a link to a wikipedia article which doesn't even exist.
All this was extracted from TransexualPuppy's last 25 posts. And of course, the confession right out of the wolf's mouth: Taken from here [slashdot.org] Mod him accordingly.Re:I presently work for EVERBODY (Score:3, Insightful)
His scratched itch became the Firefox browser (Score:5, Funny)
I wish I had more ambition. And less fungus.
Parakey? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That explains the reference to Firefox and Blake Ross. I guess it is kind of on topic... in a strange sort of way.
- shazow
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Got it.
Somewhere deep inside, my view of Firefox just diminished.
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Re:Parakey? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhmm... everything? Like run device drivers and manage memory allocation and multitasking
Have people forgotten that an "OS" comprises more than a shiny GUI? Well let's see how his "OS" performs when it doesn't have a real "OS" to run on top of.
Can't people call it the way it is: Web GUI, Web Desktop, Web Apps...
Business (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, I don't have a problem with this in the least.
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Seriously, that's the least of the world's problems if Google decides to actually "do evil".
Re:Business (Score:5, Interesting)
It is something that creeps up, a little at a time.
Google had promised not to do evil, and it always starts small. Remember that there was a time when MS was the underdog. Google starts with corrupting ads and results now, and of course such things as revealing the search information of someone [boingboing.net]:
Google has confirmed that it can provide search terms if given an Internet address or Web cookie, but has steadfastly refused to say how often such requests arrive. (Microsoft, on the other hand, told us that it has never received such queries for MSN Search, and AOL says it could not provide the information if asked.)
Of course, I will not even mention what happened with Google China etc.
The thing is, most people will not notice if Google was turning evil because it's not like one fine day they decide to do evil things. Remember that they are a publicly traded company, and sooner or later the desire for profit will win out over everything else.
They have already decided not to provide search results in a nation where such things as massacres by the government occured, and they have provided data to government agencies and refused to disclose how often they do this.
The thing about "evil" is not that it happens, it's that you would not know if it did. Who knows what else Google does with all that information?
That is the scary part.
Just my two cents and all that!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, if you go on Google and search for 'maps'... I think there's a pretty darned good chance you are looking for 'Google Maps', and not someone else's. There's every reason to believe that Google's apps are #1 on their search engine because peo
Re:Business (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that's the crux of the post: by taking itself out of its ad network, Google has guaranteed its own ad positioning--three weeks after reassuring advertisers that it played by the same rules they do. Did you read the post?
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't know about that. I'm using a browser that (at least here) is twice as fast as firefox, includes mail, news, IRC, and a crappy HTML editor. Accepts lots of extensions, though only a subset of Firefox's. Runs on every system that Firefox runs on. And builds out of the same codebase as Firefox just needing different configure options.
Yes I'm talking about Seamonkey. Stupid name, nice fast browser.
The right to choose. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's get real... (Score:3, Interesting)
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I have a straightforward policy regarding trust: if it comes to my house in a TCP/IP packet I don't trust it. I may find it useful, but I don't trust it. So Google can do what they want, but if they become too untrustworthy (too "evil"
Or because their results have gone to crap? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think people have
Sigh...nothing to do with Parakey (Score:4, Interesting)
I wrote about the issue because I believe it's important. You are, of course, welcome to disagree.
Re:Sigh...nothing to do with Parakey (Score:4, Informative)
"Shipping Internet Explorer with Windows" is not a moment in time. It is ongoing, and I still support it.
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Uh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
People need to stop treating really good ideas like something that we have a right to have.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
How's this from default search engine of IE7 (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, Google lost that one too, though in this case, as I understand it, there is no way to ever get the top spot from the ones Google wants their stuff at the top, whereas you could configure IE7 to use another search engine.
Those sons of bitches (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Trademark Infringement (Score:4, Interesting)
> create an ad that reads "Easier to use than Picasa."
Where is the support for this claim? Neither would be trademark infringement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Trademark Infringement (Score:5, Interesting)
My post does not claim it's trademark infringement, which you must know, since quoted it. The post says that Kodak could not create an ad containing "Picasa".
Yes.
That's exactly the point here. Google's tips are not subject to the same policies as AdWords ads, so irrespective of whether Kodak blocks ads from using its trademark, a tip could do it anyways. That wasn't the case when Google was using its own network. [blogspot.com]
Google's Opportunity Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Might as well be paranoid of everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, some stuff google does might justify a feeling of distrust. But ad placement for their in-house products? Not having ads for Outlook on Mozilla's homepage doesn't make Mozilla less trustworthy.
Re:Might as well be paranoid of everything (Score:5, Interesting)
And you believe those engines (with the exception of MSN, perhaps
> Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I criticize Google because I want to see them improve.
General Motors starts selling Fords, News at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Grow up. Google is a company. It can preach all the "do no evil" it wants to. But ultimately it will behave like a corporation. And putting your own product first is not "evil".
He just wants to keep up the image... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, he is going to be extra vocal about not playing fair.
Re:He just wants to keep up the image... (Score:4, Informative)
And that for-profit company is wholly owned and controlled by a non-profit company.
Blake grew up? (Score:4, Funny)
Vertical Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
Traditionally, vertical monopolies simply came about when companies purchased every level of manufacturing from resource acquisition to brick and mortar product retailers. Nowadays, especially in the burgeoning industry of internet-based software solutions, there is no 'resource acquisition' or 'brick and mortar product retailers.' Instead there is 'source code' and 'web advertising.'
With Picasa/Google Calendar/Google Maps, Google has absolute control and ownership over every stage of development from 'source code' to 'web advertising.'
Now the typical argument is "so what? isn't that what companies are supposed to do?" and that argument is absolutely right. Companies truly do aim for complete monopolization of an industry, either vertically or horizontally. This allows them to minimize costs, and ultimately deliver a better product to consumers.
In an idealistic world there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. If Linux was the only operating system in the world, there would be no "compatibility problems" (see Apple Computer, for an example of just such a OS->Hardware vertical monopoly). Problematically, Google is not Apple. Apple is 15% of the market. Google is nearly 80% (in its respective field).
If Google is allowed to continue it's course of action, it will be as if Microsoft decided to start selling computer hardware (like Apple). This can be very bad for consumers. Say Microsoft wants to "buy marketshare" and gives away free laptops that are fast, problem free, and run windows (yeah, yeah, yeah, oxymoron, don't belong in the same sentence, your jokes aren't that clever so suspend your disbelief for the sake of argument).
That's great... people start making accessories that only work with Microsoft laptops because they have 90% marketshare (see iPod). Soon all the other laptop companies go out of business because who can compete with a free laptop that's faster and better than yours? Now Microsoft laptops determine what new features are allowed (if iPod says no wireless connectivity, consumers don't get wireless connectivity. Thank God for big companies like Microsoft willing to step up to the plate... too bad Apple's marketing has made the iPod 'too cool' for the Zune, so consumers will have to wait for Steve Jobs to decide we're ready for wi-fi mp3 players before we can trade songs with each other on the go. Normally in a non-monopolized industry, one company would introduce wireless connectivity, and everybody else would follow to "keep up" but with iPods dominating the marketplace, smaller companies can all add wireless connectivity and Apple can simply "not care.")
1 year later, Microsoft decides to jack up the price of the laptops to $2000. No other companies exist, and consumers must deal with it because all other choices are gone.
So that's why monopolies are bad... I thought you all knew that, but from the comments I've seen so far it seems like that's not the case. Just because it's in the best interest for the company, doesn't mean it isn't ultimately bad for consumers.
If Google (with an immense market share of web advertising/search advertising) kicks out competitors in picture management software by giving away Picasa and minimizing advertising exposure of other companies, the other companies will go out of business and we will view/organize our pictures at the whim of Google.
If Google truly "does no evil" and never ever screws us over in the future, that's fine. But someday, the current CEO's/board of directors will move on, and somebody a little more greedy may take their place.
It's best not to let any company achieve that much power over any area of industry.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
No need to worry... (Score:4, Interesting)
(forgive me, but let me go on a rant...)
which is to say that the common fancy becomes so common that it's commonality becomes a point of contention and leads to the fancy's demise. We're just about there with the ubiquity of google now just like we've been there before with IBM and at&t and ford and pan am.... this is the cyclic nature of (near)natural monopolies. Their success is their importance is their weight which means every step they take is heavy and is heard. Of course they can't be trusted; their success means that they've become "the man". It's easy to look sceptically upon them. How dare they self-agrandize. How dare they try to shape the world into their vision. Aren't they being irresponsible in propogating that vision?
It's very easy to be egalitarian in the face of such things. Big bad google is the new big bad wolf... They don't care about me, they only care about their stock price, which is all their stock holders (read: owners, read: larry and sergey) care about.
(The egalitarian view is always in conflict with the view of any particular hive, otherwise you're just kissing up to the masses and appear wishy washy)
From the google IPO filing:
Kumbaya: "We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1 percent of Google's equity and profits in some form."
in present time that rings: "we have a foundation for good to offset our foundation of commerce. Hopefully it will mitigate the evil enough for your tastes"...
but now we're at the "what have you done for me lately" phase with the over arching question of "prove to me it's not just the money". They have a particular PR battle on their hands since they are so much better off with us on their side. I mean, what if we all of the sudden realized that other search products were at least as good?
but they're not. Right? The other tools aren't as familiar or as elegant or as relevant. So at the end of the day this argument is moot. You can grumble as you use google or you can nod, but nine time out of ten the big G is still your dog when it comes to playing fetch with the net.
Re:No need to worry... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you raise a very good point, but I don't think the argument is moot. Using a service and trusting a service are very different. When I trust a service, a competitor has to be significantly better to get me. When I'm neutral, the competitor has to be a little better. When I distrust a service, the competitor only has to be equal. Brand loyalty is important.
Language (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironically, Yahoo! is the search engine of choice in Japan, and doesn't discriminate against language. Also, their results are often better than Google's.
Really? No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not about telling Google what to do or not, it's about telling Google's _users_ that they are being duped when they search for particular types of software. It's Google's right to do so, and it's people's right to know.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only because Emperor Palpatine hasn't taken over at Google yet.
Re:Blake Ross, Step Down (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
2) Post logged-in denial
3) Instant karma!
4)
5) Profit
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You got me. I had qualms at first about "Blake Ross was bribed by a lobby" showing up in searches of my name for all eternity, but then I thought--wait, I can get some karma points!
To solidify the illusion, I prepared another comment [slashdot.org] and posted it simultaneously.
Re:Blake Ross, Step Down (Score:4, Funny)
I am sadly forced to rase to the bait, none of those scandalous allegations have any element of truth, and the fact this troll posts as an AC further shows this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blake Ross is an idiot. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Putting aside the fact that my blog is not the kettle to Google's pot, this isn't even true. There is one Firefox advertisement on my website—a button in the right-hand sidebar—and it is below links to Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari that have been there for a very
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know, the one that blocks money shots from being shown by default?