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The paper (if you read it) claims that the requirement should be enforced based on the Microsoft having monopolistic power in the marketplace. Apple doesn't wield monopolistic power in the marketplace for desktop operating systems.

This is all a bit more subtle than that. The problem is; how do you define the market? When you go out and buy a computer and operating system in a shop, it's clear that Apple an Microsoft have a duopoly (which is a bit dodgy when you consider that they have cooperation on patents locking competitors out of the market; but we will leave that aside). When you come to look after your old computer that is no longer true. Microsoft will not generally provide OSs for Apple computers and Apple will certainly not willingly provide them for PCs. This means that, whilst Apple does not have a monopoly on computing in any way, they do have a monopoly on support for old Apple computers.

The correct answer would probably be that there is already competition in this market. By changing to a Linux os perating system you can maintain your 15 year old computer fully supported. Unfortunately, in many cases that's not true. Device manufacturers only provide full documentation and support to Microsoft and the Linux drivers cannot be guaranteed. This means that while your computer will work and your operating system will be supported, your actual whole system may not be.

The correct place to attack would be the device manufacturers who are effectively deliberately constructing a cartel with the active or passive cooperation of Microsoft. Any device manufacturer who has failed to provide documentation should be liable to either replace the entire computer or provide access for support until such time as either RedHat or Ubuntu declare the device fully supported.

Of course, this is all before we get into discusions of locked in proprietary data. Google's Data Liberation Front would be a good example of how a company could escape liability by ensuring their customers are not locked in. Unfortunately the original DL homepage seems to have been converted into a redirect.

Well for one thing, the Google boys like to spy on us.

To date, they have been open about it. Startlingly open, to the point that they have working groups like the Data Liberation Front and clear documents that state that you can delete your data, but they can't wash your meta and abstracted data from their summarized data, only your identity, if you delete it.

They are in a business where the SOP is not to explain what they do and push the boundaries of what they can get away with without getting caught. Google, on the other hand seem to be honest, to the point of penalizing internal divisions that have made ethical missteps using the same rules they hold outside groups accountable to.

Have no illusions: they do collect data, and are a commercially motivated company, and no amount of good behavior should result in a lax approach to watching them carefully, especially given their scope. But to date they are the best option out there, allowing and encouraging people to give informed consent (having two versions of all legalese, one legal, one plain language to communicate) and giving people the ability to opt entirely out of their constellation of services, even after having been a user in the past.

Keep on working for a company that advocates a future without privacy, capitalist faggot.

I really shouldn't respond to this, but...

I, personally, care a great deal about privacy. I was an active participant on cipherpunks when it was a going concern, ran a mixmaster remailer for years, strongly advocated (and contributed to) PGP and S/MIME email encryption tools, still run a Tor node and an open Wifi access point on a 100Mbps connection, am a strong advocate for cryptographic privacy assurance tools of all sorts -- and my day job at Google is building the encryption systems that ensure critical user data is kept properly secured, including from Googlers. My day job used to be security and privacy consulting.

I mention all of that to give you a feel for my general attitudes about security and privacy... and I'm perfectly comfortable with working for Google. I think the company takes great care to do the right things. Not that there aren't occasional screwups -- in a company this size, and especially one where decisions are almost entirely bottom-up, there will be mistakes. But that's what they are: mistakes, not evidence of a subtle conspiracy to destroy privacy. In fact, I'd argue that the fact that there have been so few mistakes and they've all been relatively harmless is strong evidence for Google's good intentions and excellent execution.

Google's stance on privacy is that it's very important. However, it's reasonable to trade personal information for access to goods and services. Google wants to make such a compelling suite of services, and to behave so responsibly with the data you provide, that you want to make that trade. Google also wants you to have the option of deciding not to make that trade.

That's why Google provides:

https://www.google.com/dashboard
https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin/
http://www.dataliberation.org/
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/

And others.

It does concern me a little bit that a future version of Google, under different leadership, could begin to abuse the data access it has. It also concerns me a little that government can leverage Google (and Facebook, etc.) to obtain way too much insight into private information. No matter how careful Google is to secure and properly manage user information, government can always compel its release. But that's primarily an issue to be addressed through public policy.

I'm a staunch privacy/security advocate (and no, those things are not at all the same, though there are intimate relationships between them), and I'm quite comfortable working for Google -- and quite comfortable calling attention internally to any privacy missteps I think the company is making. Google actually makes it very easy for employees to speak up on such issues in a way that can't be swept under the rug, at the weekly TGIF meetings. If I see a serious issue I can -- and will -- stand up in front of the whole company and take Larry Page to task. But I suspect if I felt the need to do that, I'd have to get in line. There are a lot of hardcore geeks at Google who care a great deal about privacy.

Of course, you'll just dismiss this whole comment, because you'll assume I'm bought and paid for. Fine. Whatever. But do you really think a Google engineer can't easily get a job elsewhere? Hell, isn't actively recruited on a regular basis? I speak my mind, and I wouldn't say any of this just because my employer wanted me to. In fact, if this post comes to HR's attention, they'll likely gently suggest that I should shut up (gently, though... Google is a company of nerds and understands that nerds have strong opinions and object strongly to being silenced without very good reason).

IHBT and shall have a nice day.

One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.

I don't think the code signing is directly screwing Microsoft, but it's part of an element of 'customer hatred' that really shows the way they are going. We all know how development works. You choose to do one feature or another. Code signing the way Microsoft chose it, has almost no customer benefits and plenty of long term customer negatives in terms of reducing competition and your own freedom to fix your system when needed (even fixing the bottom layer of Windows is blocked). Almost certainly one of the key features which makes Android better was dropped to do this. For example maybe Gesture Typing - a bit like the Swype Nokia used to have on the N9 before it was cancelled.

Compare that to Google's "Data Liberation Front" features designed to let you export your data when you want to. This has very little direct benefit for Google, but the customer benefit is massive and comes at the point when you least expect it. Short term this looks stupid, but long term it means that users come to "trust" Google which is to Google's long term advantage as well.

Microsoft has a long history of choosing features like Active-X and directly executable email content which allow them to deliver proprietary control of your machine to themselves at the cost of problems (in those case security problems) for customers later. Customers may not know that they are being screwed now, but they remember that they were screwed before and are beginning to expect that. The Microsoft ban on GPL software in Windows Market place is an example. They don't like the software so they make the choice for you. The choice to have a fixed user interface around hubs, not allowing Apps to change things is another example - at the beginning it makes things more consistent; it makes it easier for them to sell you more similar devices; but later on it means you can never achieve the full power of a customized mobile device and is part of a whole attitude problem leading to continual app disappointment.

Simply put, code signing is a symptom of Microsoft's hatred of their own customers (just one of the first links to pop up searching for Mirosoft customer hatred. They look at their "ecosystem partners" as a bunch of suckers ready to be screwed when the chance comes up. That used to work in the old days when every tech company had to come round Redmond to get permission before doing a big new launch. Now it's just getting users and partners annoyed.

Its also famous for making sure you can get your data and get out.
http://www.dataliberation.org/

Any company can drop products. Google has consistently managed to not be a jerk about it.

You only resort to that low level because you can't disprove my point, pathetic.

He's already given an absolutely clear justification which you have not addressed properly at all. If you have a proprietary program which processes data in any way then it is possible for it to do secret transformations on it or store parts of that data in undocumented formats which cannot be used elsewhere. Any FOSS program comes with the source code which fully documents those transformations and which can be adapted. This means that any proprietary software is a potential threat and should not be trusted without reason.

He takes this a little far. There are certain specific proprietary software groups which make promises such as Google's data liberation front. These companies specifically promise that they will stick to standards and/or allow you to export your data to those standards. As a counter example, try asking Microsoft to provide a support contract including Linux clients for their Exchange servers. This is something that they almost go out of their way to break in some new subtle way with each new release. Google will do this without a problem (their commercial contract guarantee is that whatever works now will work in future versions). However, with the specific exception of companies committed to true open standards (and that doesn't include RAND or ISO standards) the general point stands.

He's even justified clearly why, by using proprietary software you are imposing problems on everyone else. Please look up the "network effect"

Also see http://www.dataliberation.org/ for how to exit.

I'm pretty okay with Google at the start of 2013. Always watch for changing behavior, but that's true for everybody, including yourself.

This will surely deter the far better free market solution from being developed.

Whatever it might be. My Capitalist gods haven't told me yet.

In this case? Not using Google (does that make me a capitalist god?). Try DuckDuckGo, or Bing (if you want to cut out the middle-man and get some extra tracking in). Mapquest still exists, Vimeo for videos... yeah, if you think there aren't plenty of alternatives for Google, you're pretty ignorant. Google even lets you export your data to use with them.

Now, whether you want to actually use those alternatives, well, that is entirely for you to decide.

Which part?

You should try harder, these are in top 5 links for google search for "export your data from your google account".

If you do not care about customers of your service, be it free or paid, they will wander away.

The reverse is also true:
- if you still have a big number of users continuing to use your service, that means that you already care enough about them.
(even if some loud netizens complain about not being listened to).

That still requires a few pre-conditions. Like absence of vendor lock-ins, or existence of compelling alternatives (i would have linked Bing as an example, if I didn't personally think it's worthless).

But nobody is forcing you to use Google services if you don't like them (and you indeed don't). That's why diversity is still good, no matter what supporter of the "paradox of choice" whine about.

Yet another reason to switch to Google+. Google's data liberation efforts are second to none - they have an entire team dedicated solely to allowing you to export your data: http://www.dataliberation.org/

This seems like a good place to link to the Data Liberation Front. As long as they're around, I'm pretty comfortable with Google.

no, really, all you need to migrate off GMail is IMAP and it's right there. if Hotmail doesn't let you import via IMAP, it's their problem.
if they really want to go after GMail's users, they should implement it and write instructions on how to do it, including how to enable it in GMail - which takes exactly 4 clicks (Settings -> Forwarding, POP and IMAP -> IMAP = Enabled -> Save Changes).
IMAP makes it possible to migrate messages *and* folder structure.
what else do you expect Google to do? write a document on how to migrate off GMail? don't be silly!.. well, in fact, there is such a page. http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail

have a look at http://www.dataliberation.org/ in general. Google goes above and beyond anyone else in the industry with respect to providing ways to export data from its services.

no, really, all you need to migrate off GMail is IMAP and it's right there. if Hotmail doesn't let you import via IMAP, it's their problem.
if they really want to go after GMail's users, they should implement it and write instructions on how to do it, including how to enable it in GMail - which takes exactly 4 clicks (Settings -> Forwarding, POP and IMAP -> IMAP = Enabled -> Save Changes).
IMAP makes it possible to migrate messages *and* folder structure.
what else do you expect Google to do? write a document on how to migrate off GMail? don't be silly!.. well, in fact, there is such a page. http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail

have a look at http://www.dataliberation.org/ in general. Google goes above and beyond anyone else in the industry with respect to providing ways to export data from its services.

You've obviously never heard of google's Data Liberation Front.

Although the number of iPhone apps is amazing, the limited number of apps is the least of Windows phone's problems. With both my Androids and N900 I got most of what I needed and I've always been able to show off to iPhone people if needed. It's worth reading between the lines of Andrew Orlowski's Lumia 700 review. Remember that he's a total Microsoft Fanboi but even so, he often makes pretty perceptive comments such as the ones about fonts. The key thing is to realise that Windows Phone is designed to look good in the shop, but hasn't actually been designed to work. The terrible battery life and design make a phone you can't actually use properly. Think of tiles for example; about 8-10 fit on a screen where normally you would have 20-25 icons. This is great for display and selling where almost no apps have been installed and you are just learning which are which. Five months down the line, when you have 150-200 apps, it suddenly doesn't seem like a good trade off.

This general trade off of actual functionality for things which sell Microsoft products goes on through the design and brings us straight back to the topic; security. For example: your contacts in a Windows Phone are entirely stored on your online service, almost certainly Facebook unless you change it yourself. By design, there's no private place to store contacts you don't want shared. The first question with security is not "is this implementation done right". The real question is "who is this working for". This same user hostile attitude continues through the DRM implemenaton

When Microsoft sets up something equivalent to the Data Liberation Front, then we will be able to talk about Windows Phone as a secure operating system. Not a day before.

Hey Tharsman, try: https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=100 where you can replace "num=100" with "num=100000" or whatever... didn't test for upper limit, but I will later :D (info from http://www.dataliberation.org.../ if this is a dictatorship, it could be worse)

Really? Given google's track record (see http://www.dataliberation.org/ ) you will probably be able to export it as a comma-delimited file or some other standard format. Of course, IE probably won't have a way to import that, but that's hardly google's problem.

Many things about google are scary, but lock-in? The world has enough real problems, no need to make up fake ones!

And Google is trying to make sure that's possible.

Anyone else could have made Firefox an offer. They didn't.

Oh yeah, and it's only making Google the default - it's really damn easy to change, unlike, for example, the incredibly difficulty of extracting IE from a Windows system.

Microsoft uses their large market share to keep market share, with aggressive vendor lock-in practices.

Google, on the other hand, actively fights against vendor lock-in whenever they can. Gmail can export contacts as CSV, etc.

http://www.dataliberation.org/ - this is about as far from a monopolistic practice as you can get.

Everybody's on Facebook already.

No. Everybody isn't. I'm not; my family is not; Many of my co-workers are not. Facebook's TOS are no better than Google's (in fact, in some ways they are more restrictive); if you doubt this, go read them both and see.

Until (if ever) someone comes up with a social platform that actually respects the user's wishes for privacy, "everyone" won't be on Facebook or anywhere else, for that matter.

Don't forget that Google makes all of your user data easily exportable in a ZIP download. Way cool. Conversely, Zuckerberg owns your data, so far as he is concerned, and he's doing everything he can to prevent users from migrating to other services. That evinces a total lack of respect for the user, and is just an asshole way to do business, but it's what I've come to expect from Zuckerberg's brainchild. It's one of many reason why I won't have anything to do with it.

You can do this today, using Google's privacy dashboard which lists most of the information they've collected.

If you want to download anything, head on over to dataliberation.org where:

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

But if they want to be the only channel you can use, then they have to accept that they are at least a de facto common carrier

Whoa, who said Google wants to be the only option you can use?

Google's stated philosophy has always been about promoting a competitive marketplace

When it comes to search, competition is always just a click away. We innovate rapidly to make sure people keep choosing Google, and in the end that's great for consumers.

Whether you believe them or not is up to you, but they certainly at least try to make it easy to swtich to a competitor.

that includes allowing people to identify themselves using their chosen expressions of identity...it's consistent with how humans understand communication...And the trend in civil liberties is to place fewer restrictions on expressions of identity, not greater ones

which is why everyone is able to rent a car, fly on a plane, book a hotel, or open a bank account using a fake ID? Don't get me wrong, I don't personally agree with the G+ "Real Names" policy. But there are lots of situations where people (rightly or wrongly) accept identity verification as a cost of doing business.

Damn right. Single vendor lockin is never a good idea if avoidable.

It IS avoidable. You can export all your Google stored stuff (pictures, emails, whatever). It's called Google take out.

http://www.dataliberation.org/

Of course most people are lazy and won't do it, then complain if something is lost.

Perhaps the minds of the masses haven't been made yet, but I am always cautious when it comes to marketers and advertisers and Google is definitely one of those.

Agreed.

I think this tying together of services is a way of locking in and firmly identifying its users.

Then you'll be happy to know that Google themselves discourages lockin.

Their push against pseudonymity/anonymity has me and many others worried.

I as well, but one of the amazing things about Google is that most of the time, when someone calls them on something or complains, Google listens. How many times has Apple or Microsoft changed policy because of user complaints? Google could be better, and if you talk them, they probably will be.

You've never heard of this?

http://dataliberation.org/

You get up tomorrow and log into GMail. You can't get in. Your account is locked. Your mail, calendar, documents — all gone. What do you do now?

Remember that Google has no customer service, even for paying customers. If your account is locked for any reason, spurious or not, you're utterly fucked.

I keep a regular backup of my GMail. The official interface is IMAP, but GMail's IMAP implementation is really flaky (e.g. Thunderbird or mail.app won't suck everything down). The way to do this that actually works is with OfflineIMAP. It's command-line and geeky, but by crikey it works.

Using it on Ubuntu or Debian is absurdly simple:

• sudo apt-get install offlineimap
• Set up a ~/.offlineimaprc file cut'n'pasted from this one, with your own username and password.
• offlineimap

This will create a folder with all your mail in it, in mbox format (readable plain text). You will have duplicate messages in different folders. I'm just doing this to get an archive, so zipped the result.

GMail's IMAP interface is subtly broken, to the point where it can crash offlineimap. Just start it running again, repeat as often as necessary. (If you like, get a more current version.)

GMail is still the best email interface I've ever used, and I wish Thunderbird would just get the hint and clone it to the last detail. But this way I also have all my stuff myself, just because I can.

I haven't tried this on a Mac or Windows. Could someone do this and write up instructions?

For other Google services, you can get your data from Google Takeout. While your account's not locked.

Takeout is only an example. The Data Liberation Front page has information for almost(?) all Google services.

Uh, what? You can download data from almost(?) any Google service, including Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Blogger in standard formats.

Have you seen the list at http://www.dataliberation.org/? What exactly is missing?

The Data Liberation Front (DLF), a left-wing guerrilla group of Googlers...

From the FAQ:

Why do you call yourselves "The Data Liberation Front"?

We started as an internal engineering team back in 2007 and couldn't agree on the name, so we came up with this name as an homage to The Judean People's Front, the splinter group in Monty Python's Life of Brian that spends most of its time bickering. In addition, we do see ourselves as being somewhat subversive, not so much within Google, but insofar as it's unusual for a big company to work to make it easier for their customers to leave them.

Try https://www.google.com/dashboard/. It has everything associated with your Google account, and you can manage most of the information. See also http://www.dataliberation.org/, and, in the future, https://www.google.com/takeout/

Also try http://google.com/takeout

Try https://www.google.com/dashboard/. It has everything associated with your Google account, and you can manage most of the information. See also http://www.dataliberation.org/, and, in the future, https://www.google.com/takeout/

The Cloud is closed.

Which is why some people at Google have created the Data Liberation Front. You should not feel safe using a cloud-based service unless you are able to download all of your data from the service whenever you like.

There is one big difference: one locks you up on proprietary, patent riddled, "standards", to a level where one version of the application can't reliably open a different version's documents, while the other one entices you to use their products by being good, and to stay by staying good, having always a reliable way of leaving. I'll leave you to decide which one is which.

Yes. See http://www.dataliberation.org/

Ok, so maybe gmail may pay for itself by now (this definitely has not been the case when they started), youtube certainly is operating at a loss.

YouTube has been operating at a loss since before Google bought them, and they're in the process of slowly turning that around. This is the normal way industries work -- you have to make an initial investment to create the infrastructure necessary to enter the market and the returns don't come until some time down the road.

If you're still not convinced, let's assume that you are the owner of a game development studio. Suddenly, microsoft comes along, and with the money they earned on OSes and office software, they can afford to give away games on a large scale. And suddenly you are out of business. Under normal circumstances, when a corporation pushes another corporation out of business, this can be viewed as ''evolutionary forces at work''. But here this is definitely not the case, because these divisions of microsoft are clearly unrelated. It is an anomaly in the system, and this is exactly what governments should protect against.

The logic doesn't really work for digital goods. The idea with dumping is that you sell for less than the reproduction cost. With digital goods the reproduction cost is effectively zero. It's not like Google is paying people to use its products (unlike, say, Microsoft).

If you want to call every act of giving away software dumping then you're going to have to condemn the entire industry. Microsoft is destroying the market for Windows security updates by distributing them for free. Canonical is wrongfully giving away Ubuntu. How dare Apple contribute back its improvements to Webkit and allow just anyone to run Darwin? And those guys at the FSF, it's practically a criminal enterprise! Not to mention the people at Berkeley and the NSF -- both the states and the feds are in on it. And the shareware people on top of it all.

Calling it dumping makes no sense. Especially when it's open source, because the whole problem with dumping is that when all the competitors go out of business then the last man standing has a monopoly. But if the software is open source then there is no "monopoly" -- anybody who doesn't like what you're doing can fork it and do something else and the original developer has no opportunity to charge monopoly prices because anyone can redistribute the software for free.

The harm only comes if the software is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech and once it becomes dominant the controlling developer does the sort of things Microsoft did with Internet Explorer, like discontinuing all the editions other than those that run on Windows and making it incompatible with industry standards so that people would have to use Windows to visit most websites as was the case in the early 2000s. Can you point to anything Google does along these lines? If anything they're doing the opposite, with efforts like this.

If Facebook somehow ended up as part of Google, then it would be problem solved, because Google's policy is to give users full access to their data.

No, I think this is a tailor made argument for using cloud services with excellent data export abilities. Since you mention 'do no evil' I assume you are referring to Google, so it is worth noting that most Google services do satisfy this criteria:
http://www.dataliberation.org/

In the end, whatever type of software or service you are using, it comes down to lock-in. If the company providing the software or services doesn't provide a really good export facility then they effectively own your data.

YouTube export: http://www.dataliberation.org/google/youtube-1

You can download videos one at a time, and there's an issue you can vote up for bulk download. Of course, youtube videos are usually lower quality than the original you uploaded.

Comments cannot be exported, but I think that is a feature to aid in the preservation of human culture.

Hi,

As somebody who just lost a bunch of data due to faulty backup disks, I for one welcome this.

I've yet to lose data stored on Google's cloud *touch wood*...lol.

Having data in the cloud, as well as cached/accessible locally seems like the best option. And to those talking about going underground on a train, I'm fairly sure Google's accounted for that - either through Gears, HTML5 Local Storage, or another local caching mechanism. I have a Google Nexus One, when I'm underground, I can still access all my email (that's been synced), my contacts, my calendar etc.

And having all my contacts synced online, along with all my Google Talk logs, is *awesome*. I'm a bit anal-retentive when it comes to storing things, so knowing that it's all stored, and available, and won't get lost due to filesystem corruption or something equally idiotic is good news to me. And look, worst come to worst, I lose my phone (hopefully not...lol) I'll get another, login to my Google Account, and voila, everything is synced again.

And people seem to over-value their privacy, at least to corporations. Seriously, most of you are pathetically mundane. I for one am not so insecure that I can't admit I am too. I mean, jeez, trawling through my personal emails you get...err...a bunch of emails between me and mates talking about work, me arranging lunch with my parents, and me buying stuff on eBay. Big whoop de doo. I'm happy to admit I'm a fairly boring individual, and I'm sure statistically I just fade into the background. If I was the Pope, or Jason Bourne, or I was trying to overthrow the Australian government, I suppose I might think differently. But as it is, I'm just another random guy. I doubt anybody at Google really cares, except to display targeted advertising.

The government spying on me, yeah, I have issues on that. Serious issues. A teacher at uni. Absolutely. A colleague, sure. People I know IRL, yeah. Heck, if this was Sony even, I'd have issues, seeing as they're a bunch of immoral corporates, who have no qualms about installing malware on consumer's PCs (I bought into MiniDisc ok...lol, I have a right to be bitter). But some analytical algorithm, trying to figure out which ads I'll click on? Pftt, who cares.

Google has tried to hide what they do - they display targeted ads. It's not like they've every tried to cover that fact up, nor have they been really been caught out on a privacy breach. (I'm going to discount the technical incompetent idiots who don't understand what unencrypted wireless communication is, or who can't be bothered to read what they're clicking on before they click it, a la Buzz).

They also freely list all the data they store on you:

https://www.google.com/dashboard

And they also don't try to lock you in to their system - they provide open exports from most of their systems.

http://www.dataliberation.org/

I find that really awesome, and a refreshing change from every other corporation that tries to lock you in, hand over foot. It also speaks volumes about their confience - they're confident enough in the technical superiority of their solutison, that they dont' ened to resort to lock-in to try to desperately cling onto their customers.

Cheers,
Victor

You want to opt-out of being tracked by Google? Simple:
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
You change your mind about using Google and want to export all your data? Simple:
http://www.dataliberation.org/

The website/organization behind this ad doesn't even mention those links.

You think MS gives you options like this? Facebook?

I'm a big supporter of legit consumer organizations, like the BBB, but this one is clearly bogus. By supporting and giving attention to an organization like this we undermine the legit ones.

There can't be any harm in requiring Google to adhere to some clear rules (like letting you browse all the data they have from you, giving you full control over deletions, offer complete export options with common data formats and so on).

Most of the data Google has on you that is indexed by your account is already available on the Google dashboard:
    https://www.google.com/dashboard/
Some products are not yet supported (listed at the bottom). The Google Data Liberation Front is working toward making it complete:
    http://www.dataliberation.org/
They are also working on safe methods of deletion (note that making this too easy allows account hijackers to hold data for ransom).

Note that there are also google ad preferences which allow you to see and edit what the Google ad system thinks about you:
    http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

The user mindset is also different; instead of asking, "Why can't Facebook interoperate with Myspace?" they instead think, "I have friends who are not Facebook users, I will encourage them to join."

Yup, that's the worst part of the whole "Net 2.0 revolution" : Most of the revolutionary things are proprietary and not intercommunicating.

By chance, that's not the situations everywhere :

- for all the privacy problems for which it has been criticized, Google has still the advantage of being openly in favour of intercommunication, even actively encouraging it by using open standards when possible and opening their APIs.

- Jimmy Whales might have a lot of short-comings, but the ecosystem of wikis is still distributed : wikipedia acts as a central hub. But you go to memory-alpha or wookiepedia depending on if you're a Star Trek or Star Wars fan. And seek lulz on unencyclopedia and encyclopedia dramatica.

I wouldn't quite go that far:

http://www.dataliberation.org/

But Wave is a particular issue because it's not supported for data export right now.

What loss of control with Google services? If you want to store your stuff somewhere else it's usually fairly easy to do.

Yes, it is a valid point that data can potentially be locked into Google's universe. However, Google have set up a website, http://www.dataliberation.org/ to help move data in and out of its products. Not perfect, perhaps, but certainly not Microsoft.

I'm pretty sure the poster was talking about data portability, not ownership. He wants to be able to export his data when he leaves (a la Google's Data Liberation Front). There's no automated way to get your photos, blog posts, connection information, and the like out of FB.

Great, more JavaShit-ridden bloatware

So, JavaScript makes it bloatware? Last time I checked, Google Docs was faster loading by large factor than OpenOffice, MS Office or any of the other WP/Spreadsheet apps out there. How do you define "bloated," here?

that stores all your stuff on someone else's server

You make it sound as if that comes with no advantages. There are dozens ... here are a few.

• Google's reliable storage which is backed up for you
• documents and be shared or collaborated on with other users
• the options for publishing to and interacting with the Web from docs is, frankly, a game-ender for locally hosted Office suites.
• The ability to continue to access your documents even if your new computer is a different OS or hardware vendor with no purchased software.

One demo of the idea of publishing data to the Web that blew me away was in Google's Official Blog about their public data sources, where they plotted a time-series of world fertility data. There's lots of decent examples on the Google Docs official blog as well.

There's also the fact that all Google applications allow you to export your data to local apps, if you wish. The Open Office format export is quite nice in Google Docs (import is OK, but at least for the spreadsheet it has a ways to go).

while feeding you a steady AJAX-based stream of ads.

Only if you don't want to pay for it. Google Docs via a premium Google Apps domain does not have ads.

The only reason this stuff is so popular now is because people won't pay $99.99 for a MS Office license anymore so instead MS/Google are writing server-side adware to try and get the $99 from advertisers over a couple of years.

Ah... no. That's the reason that they're doing it, not the reason that it's popular. The reason that it's popular is that it's useful and free (again, if you don't want to pay for the ad-free version).

Stuff your anti-spyware scanner would automatically delete for you if it was being run locally.

Most anti-spyware scanners don't give a rat's petard about applications that show ads or applications that store files remotely. Typically, the goal is to ferret out software that does either without the user's knowledge or ability to prevent. In both cases, Google Docs is 100% opt-in and entirely friendly to those who wish to opt out later on.

Web application == Remotely accessed spyware

If your definition of spyware is any Web site that records your activity on the site or saves documents that you create for later use, then you need to include every ecommerce site on the planet. I don't think that's a definition the majority of the technical community would agree with.

I was recently worried they'd both wither on the vine trying to compete against Android and filling almost exactly the same space.

I've been especially excited about the fact that the n900 runs what roughly amounts to Debian inside. Google's neutering of key parts of the Linux kernel and subsystems really put a damper on people hacking on those internals of Android or porting existing software to the mobile OS.

Especially if they stay with the mainline kernel, which Google isn't interested in doing

It was quite disheartening for Google to make that choice. Google's decision was probably based on some kind of cheapest-bang-for-the-buck calculation, but the funny thing is that Google often goes the extra mile, such as their Data Liberation Front team that helps people migrate data out of Google services. By segregating the Android OS from mainline kernel development Google has shot themselves in the foot. Maybe hardware vendors will see this as well and choose another OS, such as MeeGo, for their future phones.

This bit is very encouraging:

MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.

As a final parting shot, I have the most experience with Debian and Ubuntu system, so I would have preferred that they choose apt and .debs over yum and .rpms, but certainly more important than the package manager is the hope that they'll continue to maintain a free and open system.

If anybody else needs help moving there stuff off of google, be sure to read through the Data Liberation Front. It's an attempt to document methods for moving your data out of (and into) various Google products.