"Users have the freedom to change, improve or customize the software. And there's a community of users that can help fix something that breaks, instead of relying and paying for companies like Apple or Microsoft to ride to the rescue."
Take that Gates? How 'bout them apples GodJobs?
Google is very seductive.
But wait ... there is a murky side to all this. What? you say ... Not Google! Not a murky side ...!?
Well here it is ...
Google believes that "everything is going to migrate to the Web," says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "So this, for them, is certainly a much longer-term play because frankly — in 2009 and 2010 — there are very few consumers who want to trust the Web."
And the kicker here is that by putting your eggs into the Web ... with open-source coding ... also places your data at some risk.
"Many corporations and educational institutions are uncomfortable because you're putting your intellectual property on somebody else's servers and Google maintains that they have rights to whatever is on their servers".
Because Google wants to own your soul. They want you ultimately to become dependant on them. And they will then make money off of your dependency by charging marketers to mine the data, profiling you in some algorithmic way and feed your thirst for information or entertainment with what they find to be suitable based on those algorithms. The ultimate Spyware, so-to-speak?
Google is very seductive. No question.
Of course, so is the Devil. And the devil, as we know ... is always in the details.
(Yikes - the plug could get pulled on this blog at any moment ... worse yet, you may be feeding the Google algorithims as we speak ... Blogger, you see, is a Google property!! Big brother is always watching ...)
1 comments:
Oh great, I'm finally catching up on my reading here at dmg's blog after an extended seminar and conference on statistical modeling (don't even ask, you wouldn't understand it, dmg) and what do I find? Another misinformed dmg rant about how the evil Google is trying to own his soul by competing with Microsoft and Apple.
Does it surprise anyone else out there that our favorite corporate fat cat executive swilling chardonnay and living off the sweat of the brows of countless underlings would be opposed to adding a little competition into the marketplace? Your true colors are starting to show, comrade dmg!
First off, you're mixing up the whole concept of open source software and hosted computing or cloud computing. Open source is out there right now, and most of us in the know are using some FOSS - that's Free Open Source Software for the rest of you - whether it's Linux instead of Windows or OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office or Gimp instead of Photoshop or whatever; just because the code's free doesn't mean someone else has your data, cause nobody's getting their mitts on my data, bub!
If you let Amazon or Microsoft - not Google! - host your computing in their clouds, all your data are belong to them, and it serves you right if anything "happens" to it. Google is offering an operating system that lets anyone who can write a web app run it straight on the Chrome OS. It's as simple as that, pal - as simple as that.
Oh, you may have noticed that Microsoft is participating in all the areas dmg has called out as evil or frightening or causing diarrhea or whatever, and I haven't heard anyone say Microsoft plays well with others or is interested in competition lately, have you? Nope, Microsoft - in spite of having some mighty fine products that they've picked up through acquisitions along the way - is mostly painted as evil around the web. Not here, though - curious, isn't it? You know it, pal.
Finally, dmg's worried about feeding Google's algorithms by doing stuff here on his site. Listen, bub, you feed the algorithms when you click and when you surf - that's what they are all about. Oh, you also feed the algorithms when you don't click and don't surf - that's what they're about too, they just collect, collate, correlate, analyze, and model your web behavior. Face it, there is no hide, there is only seek, chump.
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