That's when google could have been called "one of the coolest companies in the world". Now they are heavily invested in building their own walled garden. Maybe it's not even anyone being "evil", and it's just an emergent behaviour. That doesn't change the fact that google is a giant surveillance machine. Argue that it's benign or that you trust them, but that's still what it is. A non-evil system of ubiquitous surveillance is an oxymoron.

I admit I'm excited by google cars and google glass, but I worry I won't end up being able to use them. Is there any chance they won't report on everything you see and do to google servers to be sold to/subpoenaed by whoever wants it?

Bing, something I laughed at just a few months ago.

Google's results are starting to waver and the Google+ requirement is a cancer eating their products from the inside.

But I agree that google is not what it used to be. They have a weird hunger for our data. But it's not just them, all web companies have become very aggressive in getting our data, it feels like we're being watched the whole time. It's exactly the opposite of what the internet was early on, it's almost like a change in the philosophy of the web. And not for the better.

It seems like issues that famous people have, that they lose privacy at the price of fame, that whatever they do is public, forever. We all lost privacy and we didn't even get fame!

http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/0...

Frankly, though, the reason that I believe Bing kept winning for me is that for these really popular core queries, the results were very similar: Bing simply selected more useful text snippets from news articles (letting me avoid clicking results) and weirdly even had better page titles, so it made what was overall the same results more pleasant to use. When I selected my own queries, though, the fact that Google continues to (and will forever) have a larger selection of the Internet available to its search engine became the deciding factor, as it would surface a few interesting things that Bing wouldn't catch.

What I thereby obtain from Bing it On! is not that I want to switch from Google, but that Google has too much power at this point: they are probably forever going to get my search queries simply because they figured out how to index the web extensively and efficiently before "how to build scalable systems" became more general knowledge (although some of that is actually due to Google, so there's this part of me that is saying "shut up and be grateful"), but now that they have this lead there's no real way to kick them down, even if someone else has managed to use the data they have more effectively.

I'll be honest I don't know for sure, but I highly doubt Google would intentionally hurt themselves by ruining their search results. Also,

>Google+ requirement is a cancer eating their products from the inside.

I do agree it's B.S. but using 4 different computers on a regular basis and being a student I find it more useful to use their products than not. Especially, the syncing options so basically my drive/chrome holds everything between all my computers. This would be impossible without having some way to link them (via email say, well they use Google+ to try and make more money like every company NEEDS to do to survive). Therefore I say I am alright with their changes because Bing and DuckDuckGo have significantly reduced capacities (to the point of usability is fair at best)

Arguably bubbling is ruining the search results. Sometimes such a thing can be advantageous but I do go to https://startpage.com/do/search sometimes to break out and it can be quite productive when trying to find a new result. The only difference is that one is tracking me and bubbling results and the other is not.

Since Google has recorded my IP, I have a hard time breaking the bubble when using Google from at home, whether I am logged in or not. I know this be cause I once decided to set my locale on Google to Spanish. Now I have cleared my cookies, etc. and I am not logged in but it assumes from -- I can only imagine -- my static IP that I want all my search results in Spanish.

I think it's more likely they have competing objectives and they can easily allow their search result quality to slip in order to have large gains in other areas because, honestly, they have a complete monopoly on search.

The days of competing on search result quality are long gone.

You either give up on having an anonymous email because they WILL FORCE YOUR real name to be attached to your email, or you give up on Google integration features because you simply CANNOT use Google features without a real name anymore.

Trying to switch between my "public Google account" for functionality and my "private Google account" for privacy is almost impossible when you consider how broadly Google integrates the features. It's simply unteneable, completely. Google wants my privacy gone, and is denying me access to their services until I agree to give it up entirely.

Very, very frustrating for users who have more than one account.

The Play Store REQUIRES a fully activated real-name Google+ Account to rate apps and leave feedback, so I've been wholly unable to communicate with the dozens and dozens of apps that request feedback.

Sorry friends. Blame Google!

It's a trade off, and real name policies don't only exclude negative posters.

(To expand: I tested someone's js project on reddit just yesterday, offering my platform, multiple browsers, a decent writeup, images/screenshots etc. But my reddit account is fully anonymous. If my real name was required, s/he never would have gotten that free help)

Do the developers give you no alternate avenues for communication? No email contact or anything?

Lets say you wrote a cool android app, but there is a little bug in it that is triggered by a phone you don't own or weren't able to test, I have that phone. I go to contact you, which of the following reports do you trust more -

From: mhurron [at] saminds.com From: Google+ Roman Fox

Now be honest, even though this exact setup probably smells off. Given receiving a email from the above or from the above Google+ account, are you going to trust one or dismiss one simply on the name of the account?

I find this quite funny with you being the anonymous guy and me being out there in the open with my identity.

Maybe you should answer your own question?

It is a centuries old cycle: once young and free spirited goes corrupt and rotten on it's way to a bigger market share.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

  > Look at the things that some of you champion; the 
  > iPhone, the iPad...anything running iOS, anything 
  > made by apple computer, the company that is pushing 
  > hardest against openness on the internet.
 

  > Oh, you want some basic browser functionality like
  > uploading files? Spend time learning objective C, 

  > submitting it to us (can't let anything edgy get
  > through! Don't use any APIs we don't like!)

  > shiny plastic.

Except for the feature that most people mainly use plugins for: audio/video-playback. Only supporting proprietary codecs can hardly be considered open web support.

>How about 60 000 apps ditched by Google?

I don't think you can compare a curated marketplace with a walled garden. There is a difference between jailbreaking and tapping a checkbox to allow third party apps.

All that said I can't agree with the first comment either. I used to be a fanboy of Google but I'm having a harder and harder time justifying it with some of their recent moves.

Isn't the open video codec problem still unresolved?

I've only been able to upload images.

And how is Apple waging war against openness? WebKit is open-source. They're pushing HTML5 against Flash (open vs proprietary). Darwin (OS X without Quartz and DPS) is open source. A few of the apps included with OS X are open-source.

Google cars? Driverless car research has been going on for years, both before and alongside Google.

Look, I'm not badmouthing their accomplishments. All I'm saying is that they're just not the company they used to be.

Lawsuits against competitors kicking their ass using open platforms? That and making their every single a move a walled garden you have to use with no other options.

I see you mention WebKit as an open alibi, but that's a poor example. It was forked from an open project and thus they were forced to leave it open. These days though it's not even being maintained in a way which suits the definition of open in any useful way.

Holding the key to the source and at the same time having a committing policy which says its "OK" to break it on all platforms not yours with others needing your permission to fix things doesn't really paint a nice picture of you as a advocate of openness.

OSX runs whatever you want it to. If you are referring to code-signing, keep in mind that Android requires you to explicitly allow unsigned apps as well.

This does not need to be an either / or proposition.

_Both_ Apple and Google are doing "evil", in their own way. Along with a bunch of cool stuff, too.

  > There is nothing Google Glass does that my smartphone already can't.

Did the iPad have features the iPhone didn't? It seems to be doing ok for being a different form factor for iOS. There may be arguments for the usefulness of Glass but I don't think this is it.

More screen real-estate, but then again, it's like glass. It doesn't do anything my smartphone can't, except give me more room for bigger apps.

Can you wear your smartphone on your face?

What, because some vendors take liberty with codec choices? HTML5, while not officially ratified as an RFC, has an agreed-upon standard version, and the implementations of it are far more standardized than HTML4 ever was. As for openness, it's a markup language, there's nothing that CANT be open about it. The only possible thing about html5 that isn't open is the popular choice of video codec, h264, in which case: whoop de doo.

Crazy, huh?

Although not exactly the same, it looks to me more or less like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

OSS is about community not just a website to release files (aka "code dump"). If you had pointed to http://www.webkit.org/ or http://www.cups.org/ ; well, that would be different.

EDIT: typos

From http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/license.html

"CUPSTM is provided under the GNU General Public License ("GPL") and GNU Library General Public License ("LGPL"), Version 2, with exceptions for Apple operating systems and the OpenSSL toolkit."

I wonder why the OpenSSL toolkit needs an exemption.

There's an article covering the topic with much more nuance at https://lwn.net/Articles/428111/

I'm going to have to do some more reading on this. I was particularly interested in the quote "the problem here is actually a former OpenSSL hacker who has no interest (and, in fact, a positive interest against) in changing the OpenSSL licensing". Sounds intriguing!

I'm not sure if I understand your comment.

"Michael Sweet, who owned Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[3] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[4] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code"

CUPS is currently chiefly developed by Apple but, unlike many other commercially "owned" open-source projects, it has a license clause that exempts them from the license that applies to you and I.

I'm sure there are many other examples of this, I was originally pointing out that the licensing terms for WebKit and CUPS are not really that similar from Apple's perspective. From our perspective, yes, both GPL (well LGPL for WebKit)

This is marketing bullshit directed at developers angry at all their surveillance, their walled gardens, their "you can't replace our OS" and so on.

This means that I can build the developer tools in, say, ubuntu, and/or that I can cross-compile to target iOS?

Good luck with that.

How could you possibly think iOS is a "complete joke".. without being a raging GooGoo fanboy, that is?

But that's when it's most important to avoid words like 'fanboy' because otherwise discussion dies. People probably thought you had a good point, but you lose that when you use words like 'googoo fanboy'. And that'll do nothing to sway the person you're replying to. If anything it'll just entrench them even more.

And considering it's possible that debating someone's strongly held points with logical counter points will only irrationally strengthen the person's original beliefs anyway, I think humor was appropriate:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/10/1...

So I think it's still "worth it" to respond in a meaningful way, even though you may not convince the original poster.

Any discussion with a raging fanboy is dead to begin with. He will reject anything that goes against his rose-tinted view of Google. Reason and logic won't reach him, and that's why it's alright to just call him a fanboy and move on, even though that's pointless too, of course.

In this case, I just wanted to point out the absurdity of calling iOS a "complete joke".

> And that'll do nothing to sway the person you're replying to. If anything it'll just entrench them even more.

That's alright. He's already plenty entrenched. He'll change his views when he has to.

iOS is only good for people that want something which works and which they don't need to spend any effort on maintaining. It is a complete joke for people that want a powerful mobile computing device.

I use an iPhone now but my next phone will be an Android. To be honest I'll probably continue to buy iPod Touches as long as they can be jailbroken, but that's the only way I can make iOS into a platform that I'm willing to use.

The last significant innovation in iOS was Notification Center. Android already had that, along with widgets, custom lock screens, custom keyboards...

I believe that already disqualifies it from being a "complete joke", and the definition of a "powerful mobile computing device" might involve something else besides "being able to install whatever software you want to".

Back when the iPhone 4 was new, my friend had some kind of HTC Android, and he would beam about how he could run a tool that would help him micromanage battery power so that he could shut off this app versus that app (which he had to do quite often). I simply never had to. As Anandtech can back up, the iPhone 4 had amazing battery life compared to its contemporaries. Though more anecdotal evidence seems to show that newer iOS devices consume more power.

Anyway, for reference, Settings > Privacy > Location Services. You can see what is actively using GPS. As part of its low-power design efforts, other than music, there really isn't much else that the OS will allow to run in the background. All other closed apps are frozen in a saved state. Also, Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services, at the bottom, Status Bar Icon.

Personally, I drive a Honda. I like it. I work on it, and I could modify it, but as I get older and busier, I'm looking forward to getting something nicer that just works.

I mean yes, if you don't enjoy the smell of coronal discharge and smoldering tank capacitors (They're both toxic smells by the way), and you just build one for show, you're not going to win anything. But if you're absolutely obsessed with modding/hacking/knitting/whatever, you don't care about winning anything, just the process of doing, as self-help-book-like that might sound.

To be clear, that's your claim, not mine. Ultimately, people do what they like to do.

>Noone outside of me will care about it

This I could agree with, but sure, there'll be like-minded folks that will be interested. However, that's different from being smug and superior about your hobby.

Yeah, but it was also sarcastic. I used to add //sarcasm tags, but they make you sound conceited.

>However, that's different from being smug and superior about your hobby.

I will be as smug and superior about my hobby as I want to //sarcasm.

But no, in all seriousness, having to act smug and superior about your hobby means you are trying to use it to garner social recognition/a feeling of superiority which you think will make you happy, which means your hobby doesn't allready intrinsically do that for you. An exception to that are hobbies intrinsically made for showing off, like golf or trophy wives.

///Last sentence is humorous and therfore not to be consumed straight out of the bottle. Dilute with 5cl literary figure appreciation for each cl, and consume within 3 days of opening.

Driverless cars and Internet fiber to the curb aren't Google inventions.

Google Fiber is certainly a big deal at 3-8x as fast as the fastest generally available consumer connection. Comcast only goes up to 150-300mbps in their fastest markets, for much more than the $70/month Google Fiber costs.

http://vislab.it/

From Parma (Italy) to Shangai(China), 15000 kilometers

report http://vislab.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/21-VisLab-VIAC-d...

Without hype and before Google.

However, by design, the internet is not destined to be like that, and it will not be. The past few years may have been an aberration.

Current phones are way more powerfull than PCs were when Napster was launched. They could easily run something like it today. As they are also powerfull enough to decide what to do with meta tags (or the more modern semantic ones) and to keep several dictionaries of data in place. They just don't do that for marketing reasons.

I also think that things CAN change, but I doubt that change is that inevitable as you say.

Because I don't like part of a company, I have to avoid using any other part of that company? Or if I don't, I can't complain about the part of the company I don't like? I don't subscribe to such black and white thinking.

Google is a corporation that wants to win. Most corporations are the same. The fact that they are looking out for their own interests, doesn't mean we shouldn't look out for our own.

Btw, looking for a new smartphone and still the best option seems to be the same SGS2 without upgrade to ICS.

Keep search clean and don't indulge in anti-competitive behaviour.