OT: Google Comes Clean on Microsoft

[Joshua Zeidner]

Shawn,

  Google may be after the 'market share' of Microsoft, but the two companies
count their assets quite differently.

  Microsoft's asset was their hold on the OS market and the control that
this granted them in a variety of venues.  Google, on the other hand counts
it's primary asset as its /usage information/ of its applications, and the
actual document data itself( which you sign away the rights to in your user
agreement ).  Being that all its software is net-based and hosted remotely,
Google is aware of *every single click you make*.  This gives them strategic
information of development investment/return on a scale that makes Microsoft
look like a bunch of useless wimps.  For instance, if 5 million people start
using the email feature for Google Reader, Google knows with great accuracy
that expanding this feature set is a good investment.  These kinds of
decisions were made intuitively in older development paradigms.  It seems
that there are really only a handful of apps that do not want to live on the
web, Photoshop seems like one of the lasting strongholds of desktop-based
software*.

  Google's recent acquisition of Double Click makes their surveillance even
more pervasive and complete as Double Click features ads in a great number
of web sites.  As a result of this recent acquisition, some are even calling
for Anti-Trust action [1].

  This also introduces some new business dimensions that did not exist
before.  In the world run by Google, privacy is the most valued premium.
Many do not understand how important maintaining privacy is in this new
world. [2]  Whatever your plans may be for world domination, exposing them
to Google puts every investment firm with bottomless pockets one step ahead
of whatever technical genius you may (think you) possess.  Also of great
concern is the position that companies such as Google gain over censorship
mechanisms.  I know of many web sites and blogs that have been removed from
Google on baseless grounds of 'spam' or 'hate speech' etc.  It is a great
illusion that Google is wholly impartial to the content that it indexes.

  The biggest issues by far for the near future will be our laws for privacy
and discrimination, which will be greatly emphasized by these new
progressions.  Its takes a combination of vision and technical knowledge to
fully understand the extent to which equality is compromised by these new
technologies.  Also there have been some claims that Google is working with
government agencies such as the NSA- can anyone here qualify these claims?
[3]


 -jmz



* as I have stated before, Adobe is a key company in the new IT landscape,
because apps like Flash are acting as a pivot between the new world of
online 'rich media apps' and the traditional desktop OS.

[1] http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article1687147.ece

[2] interesting tech:
http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/index.php?page=home&lang=en

[3] http://www.google-watch.org/jobad.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/12/12/DI2005121201136.html
     http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/10/8041/
     ( I do not vouch for these sources )



On 5/11/07, Shawn Badger <badger.shawn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=22241&hed=Google+Comes+Clean+on+Microsoft+
>
>
> A few excerts form the article:
>
> "Google today officially confirmed what many analysts have been saying
> for months: the Mountain View, California-based search leader is going
> after the software market in direct competition with Microsoft"
>
> "In a question and answer session with shareholders, one woman asked
> Mr. Schmidt and Google co-founder Larry Page how they would avoid
> becoming known as "the new Microsoft, and not in flattering terms."
>
>
>
> Mr. Page added, "It's natural to be concerned about it… We're not the
> same kind of company" as others out there, Mr. Page said. "Our
> engineers all run Linux. It's free. You can hack on it. It's deep in
> our DNA""
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-- 
.0000. communication.
.0001. development.
.0010. strategy.
.0100. appeal.

JOSHUA M. ZEIDNER
IT Consultant

( 602 ) 490 8006
jjzeidner at gmail.com
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