I think people are clinging to the idea that Google is greatly morally (or at least strategically) different than Apple. They're anthropomorphizing. Corporations have no personalities, they have brands. Decisions are made by designated people within them, and the mix of decisionmakers at both companies are fairly identical in temperament.

Very true, and it hasn't held them back in the slightest. I bet a lot of people have a closeted respect for that- Apple doesn't try to hide its corporate greed.

Everybody knows Apple is a shark, but Google really hustled us.

Because middle management acts as a filter on upper management's view of operations, and a filter between upper management and the people actually doing the work when it comes to directions going the other way. The effect Bruce Webster calls "thermocline of truth" [1] is one significant manifestation of this.

[1] http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...

Apple certainly does have a pretense of caring about people, society, and it's own customers... but only if they're using all Apple gear. Apple's whole 'curated garden' approach is about this. I mean, how can you say they have no pretense of caring about their own customers when they're the only hardware vendor with plenty of branded retail outlets that dispense plenty of free tech support?

>they're the only hardware vendor with plenty of branded retail outlets that dispense plenty of free tech support?

There's supposed to be nowhere else to get an iDevice serviced, so without them, who?

The problem with Google is so many of the product they put out are utterly unfit for purpose, showing a blatant disregard for and contempt of their customer's right to a reasonable product in return for their money. First near-unusable first gen Google TV, Nexus phones with fuzzy cameras, The first gen Nexus 7 tablet with not TRIM on the flash storage for a whole year leading to rapidly degrading device performance, Chromebooks sold with 2 years of free mobile service that suddenly stops after a year, encouraging the growth of a whole ecosystem around Google Reader that suddenly goes away.

I don't think Google intentionally set out to do any of those things, but equally they didn't put any significant effort into stopping them happening either. They really just don't care. Move fast, break things, iterate. That's fine for them, but it's leaving a long wide trail of broken promises and damaged users and customers in it's bull-rush into the future and it's taking that approach for entirely selfish reasons.

Google may be giving you free things, I'm a happy Gmail and Google Docs user myself, but they're not doing it because they're your friend.

I would not agree that people know about those things going in. Some techies do. Very few non-techies do. Some techies are suprised when you tell them the extent of the limitations. Some are just so used to the ecosystem that they don't even think that there might be a use case outside of it.

The problem with Google is so many of the product...

The lucky thing about Apple is that people seem so willing to forget their cavalcade of turkeys. But anyone else who makes a misstep - google, microsoft, whomever - bang! never let it be forgotten.

The first gen Nexus 7 tablet with not TRIM on the flash storage for a whole year leading to rapidly degrading device performance

And here's a case in point. Google 'has a problem' because of the design, but we happily ignore the "you're holding it wrong" event from Apple, a problem due to an astonishingly fundamental design flaw. And wow, you're listing a bunch of first-gen hardware issues, something every large-scale manufacturer has issues with.

Apple does almost all of the things you're pinging Google for in this comment, and it befuddles me that you give them a free pass for doing so. I really don't understand why Apple gets the kid-glove treatment when it comes to criticism.

I can not figure out how we are going to achieve a healthy open ecosystem of apps with significant applications without a major malware problem. I'd be interested to see how that would work.

I find this (rather pervasive) attitude quite curious. If Google had actually committed grave ethical breaches and caused gross harm to its users I would understand it. Google actually puts "don't be evil" into their code of conduct - it's part of their employment agreement with their employees and they spell out in detail what it means. That is actually a real concrete difference to these other companies. So I am curious how you think they have they "hustled" everybody? They are surely not perfect, but the way people talk like this I can't help wondering, where's the gigantic breach of faith you are talking about?

I also think Google has a moral responsibility in that the only reason they exist is that the Internet started out as an open platform that they could index and serve search results for. Not keeping the Internet open smacks of enormous ingratitude.

If they're not going to fight, who is?

Plus, there's no real way to enforce it unless they purposely slow down VPN traffic, which would make me look for a new internet company immediately.

http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest/221099-woe-is-isp-30-pe...

http://www.fcc.gov/national-broadband-plan

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/connecting-america

It was tried before in the 90s but it failed. I don't know if there is another side to this story, but it looks like the telecommunications companies (Verizon and ATT) stole the money ($200 BILLION). http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2013...

here is a direct link to a screencap of the chart:

http://i.imgur.com/xhn1YCF.png

It's nice that you have that choice.

Now that it's commercially convenient for them they have betrayed this value, and all of the people who gave them credit for it. That is why they deserve criticism.

Also, it should be pointed out that if Google works against an open internet, there will be little chance of saving it.

Apple on the other hand, has a different set of values. You can criticize them, but they haven't pretended to be something they are not.

That's a 100% FALSE statement.

In what way have they betrayed the open-internet initiative? They helped start both internal and external organizations to support the initiative.

How would it benefit Google to have a more restricted internet?

Now that the issue is mainstream maybe they've determined that the "right" outcome will prevail, they only have so many resources, at some point they have to start dedicating resources towards other initiatives and projects.

https://www.google.com/takeaction/

https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/whats-at-stake/

http://www.google.com/publicpolicy/issues/internet-access.ht...

From the link above:

"Google is a strong supporter of an open Internet."

"The Internet was built and has thrived as an open platform, where individuals and entrepreneurs can connect and interact, choose marketplace winners and losers, and create new services and content on a level playing field."

"One of Google’s top policy priorities is spurring the availability and uptake of affordable, open broadband Internet service."

"Broadband-based Internet providers should not be permitted to discriminate against, or in favor of, certain services, applications, or viewpoints on the Web."

That's not as true for their competitors, especially startups. And anything that hurts startups generally will make it much easier for them to acquire good companies at low prices.

A more restricted internet would benefit Google because they have huge capacity of their own and very deep pockets to buy priority where necessary, so they would be further protected against competition and their own products would be advantaged.

4 years ago Google modified Verizon's proposal after years of stalemate, moving forward was in the best interest of everyone involved, including consumers.

Would you not agree that it's better that Google be involved in the Verizon (or any telecommunications company) proposal rather than be absent from it? It seems like a reluctant compromise they made, maybe they regret being associated with it, but they were in no way against net-neutrality.

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-...

What's wrong with quotes from their public policy sites? What would be a better source? Here is the EFF's take on the 2010 Google/Verizon situation: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/google-verizon-netneut...

Also: https://www.eff.org/guide-to-the-fcc-net-neutrality-proposal

Yes, I would not agree?

It's no one's specific responsibility, but it's a sensible stance. And Google seemingly changed theirs from vocal advocate to indifferent observer (in this case).

Let me be expository on this for a moment, please.

Right now there are three competing visions for the future of the internet:

1. The GNU vision: the internet becomes decentralized and every individual has the tools to replicate and manage small, individual infrastructural tasks.

2. The Google/Microsoft vision, where a series of non-government economic entities create centralized and competing infrastructure while being supervised by governments in the jurisdictions they operate in.

3. The Centrist vision where the internet is essentially a public utility and operated by a quasi-governmental agency or a series of joint governmental agencies.

Currently our Internet is somewhere between 2 and 3, with a lot of talented individuals trying to write software and doing research to make #1 more feasible.

But #1 is inherently never going to work. Moore's law should tip us off, if not the current state of affairs in the world. As software and computing get better, its rate of improvement (or just change, take your pick) increases. This means that it's progressively harder to stay abreast of security, devops, and software products. With the best of intentions but a quintessentially first-world outlook, #1 simply creates a series of digital under-classes and rewards the people with the huge time investment and economic support structure implied by people who are currently good at computers.

#3 could work, but it assumes that Governments ultimately start to shape up and actually reflect the collective will of their population (as contradictory as that can be). It's possible, but I'm a sceptical.

#2 is the closest to working, providing a tension between government and corporation that resembles the tensions present in the American constitution. What's more, economic and technical concerns reward this approach. It's cheaper to centralize computer infrastructure and when done correctly it's a huge cost and materials savings. Competition between said environments also works to keep Corporations focused on the people abandoned by approach #1, keeping their products approachable and with low overhead for starting up.

But if Google is seen to constantly violate their user trust and not act as a sufficiently strong user advocate, eventually the populace will demand scenario #3 be enacted (or something with so much governmental input that it is indistinguishable from #3) and we'll be in a terrible situation.

The biggest benefit to the current system is that Google, Microsoft, and even Baidu all have so much to lose. They need to be receptive to government arguments while all competing with each other.

So yes. Google needs to be a white knight in shining armour because they benefit from user trust in a big way. The benefit in the short term with better engagement and margins. They benefit in the long term with superior positioning and longevity for their corporate rights.

They will join the heritage of Donald Knuth, Ritchie, Ken Thompson, RMS, ESR etc etc. They existed in a time when there were thousands of engineers writing very complex systems for large companies. All those systems are gone, never to be seen again. Useless. gcc, emacs, vim have their source code in thousands of git repos around the world and are used daily all the time. The next step will be possible!

I'm sorry, but the problem is not the talented individuals or their efforts. Its that fundamentally new and different ways of computing and approaching computing problems arise as technology continues to progress.

We can sit here and grouchily state that reimplementing UNIX is the problem, but even within the ebb and flow of Linux we see substantial change and reformation over the arc of 5 years. And that's ignoring the actual GUI toolkits which have been in a constant state of flux and only partial levels of functionality.

These are challenges that the community has been happy to dismiss even as they create increasingly obvious and increasingly difficult barriers to entry in the community. They do so because they do not inherently feel the problem as acutely, they're the beneficiaries of education and opportunity (or more succinctly, privilege) that they are happy to dismiss as something that anyone could have. It is not so, but try telling them that.

I think that is a part of it, for sure. But even in first world countries like America you see lots of kids with inadequate nutrition, no access to modern education, and no cultural inculcation. And of course, that sort of pretends IQs themselves don't fall along a normal distribution and that there aren't gender and racial issues discouraging a large class of people from pursuing an education in this field.

Even if these issues were addressed socially, I think economic barriers are hard to ignore.

Change (innovation) is hard to predict, and tends to happen in areas we least expect[1]. In particular, I fail to see why the people in the Free Software community would be any worse than those doing similar work in the corporate or government environment in security or other areas. In fact, there are several data points that suggest that are better in some areas.

The fallacy, I suspect, is the assumption that those supporting the "GNU vision" are a distinct group from the others, when in reality there is a lot of overlap between your three categories. A good example is IBM, who - upon remembering they are in the business of selling "solutions" and service contracts - opened up a lot their software, and participated a lot more in the FS and OSS communities.

Also, I'll mention that we should hope some version of your "GNU" future happens, at least where communications over the internet is concerned, as "proprietary" and "encryption" don't really work together if you ever want to trust it.

An alternative, vision of the future you may want to consider: most software is (and will be) fancy plumbing.

In each field, once you have the initial discoveries made (e.g. Knuth's tAoCP, the basic hydrological theories necessary to move water that we take for granted today) the rate of real discovery slows down considerably and becomes much more specialized. Innovation happens in both. New valves and fixtures are made, etc, but most of the time you just need to hire some plumber to setup your building, or you need to hire some software professional to keep your data backed up and your invoices generated properly.

To achieve this, just like how "standard parts" are far more common than proprietary parts in plumbing, having an free and open body of software to draw on makes the equivalent job in software far easier, too. I suspect this will be true with the internet and without.

None of this suggests the corporate or government players will go away - they will simply gain the benefits a free and open library as well.

[1] first paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29#Con...

While this future would be advantageous for me, I am not sure I am onboard with everyone being responsible for their own infrastructure. Not only is it quite wasteful in terms of physical resources (and very sub optimal on energy consumed), but it requires that every individual community have several experts with a high degree of skill (for reasons previously discussed of which I see no actual rebuttals)

> To achieve this, just like how "standard parts" are far more common than proprietary parts in plumbing, having an free and open body of software to draw on makes the equivalent job in software far easier, too. I suspect this will be true with the internet and without.

This is not an impossible future, but people have talked about it over and over, and every time a new language or paradigm comes out that is supposedly the "key" to unlocking truly modular and reusable software. Heck, even Brad Cox thought he was doing it with Objective-C and look at how much code is duplicated between iPhone apps.

So you'd suggest we go back to the Ma-Bell model where you couldn't plug anything into the phone network yourself? Or do you like being responsible for your own phone and modem? While it was a clever hack, the acoustic coupler should never have been necessary.

> but it requires that every individual community

No, it only requires enough communities have such experts such that a "herd immunity" is established.

> I see no actual rebuttals

Your decision to totally ignore my point about these groups having a high degree of overlap is noted.

The assumption that "expertise" only happens with "commercial" (or government) was disproved a long time ago.

> modular and reusable software

"standard parts" isn't really about modular programming - I mean stuff like: Apache, glibc, zlib, etc.

Really, I'm just sketching out what is done every day to meet the mundane needs of "business software". A typical business generally doesn't need someone to invent a new data storage technique - they just need someone to make the necessary tables in postgres/oracle/whatever and the necessary forms/report-generators.

These needs never go away, and are the kind of task that benefits greatly from having a collection of commonly-used tools to draw from.