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Firefox Creator No Longer Trusts Google
watashi writes "Blake Ross the man whose scratched itch became the Firefox browser explains on his blog why he has a problem with Google's policy of promoting their own products over competitors' in search results. His main gripe is that the tips (e.g. "Want to share pictures? Try Google Picasa") result in an inability for other products (perhaps even Parakey?) to compete for the top slot on Google."
It's no longer cool to be whining about Microsoft. That's why everyone is starting to whine about Google.
Some people seem to find it incomprehensible that a person might genuinely put others' interests above his own. This has nothing to do with Parakey, which won't even exist for some time. You would think this statement from the post would defuse conspiracy theorists: "I believe, for instance, that shipping Internet Explorer with Windows was a good move." Hmm, doesn't that hurt Firefox?
I wrote about the issue because I believe it's important. You are, of course, welcome to disagree.
> Google can make a Picasa ad say "Easier to use than Kodak," but Kodak cannot
> create an ad that reads "Easier to use than Picasa."
Where is the support for this claim? Neither would be trademark infringement.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.
Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.
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Great post. I was going to post something similar, but I'll add to it.
It's like owning a hockey team. For many many years, the Molson beer company (a Canadian beer company which merged with the American beer company Coors a few years ago) was the majority (or complete?) owner of the Montreal Canadians. Because of this, the only beer you could buy at the forum was Molson beer. Even more, it was the only beer you could see advertised or sold during Montreal Canadian hockey games or Montreal Canadian related events. Molson had a monopoly over beer consuption during the hockey games. It truly was a monopoly since no other beer company could advertise there. Who in their right mind would allow advertising from a competitor in their own distribution or promotional channel?
I see Google's situation the same. They own the space and the distribution channel. They have the right to advertise anything they want in there.
(On an unrelated note, now that Molson sold the hockey team to George Gillet, an american interrest, they are still the only beer company associated with the team. Why? They offered the best advertising dollars to the team and became one of the biggest sponsor)
> I didn't see Yahoo, MSN, or Ask pushing Firefox the way Google did.
:) wouldn't similarly support Firefox if *they* were the default? We made Google the default in Firefox long before Firefox was popular because we believed Google provided the best service to our users. Perhaps that's why I'm upset with the company now. It was only once Firefox started getting big and driving significant traffic to Google that a deal was cut.
And you believe those engines (with the exception of MSN, perhaps
> Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I criticize Google because I want to see them improve.
It's understandable. Firefox was a rallying cry against Microsoft, the monopoly, the company that only cared about making money, not following standards and playing friendly. But now Firefox is controlled by a for-profit company (the Mozilla Corporation), it is heavily backed by Google, a ginormous for-profit company, and he is starting to get nervous that Firefox is becoming the very thing that people were fighting against when they so openly accepted it.
So, he is going to be extra vocal about not playing fair.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
"Doing evil" as you put it isn't something that is going to magically happen one fine day.
/tinfoil hat
:)
It is something that creeps up, a little at a time.
Google had promised not to do evil, and it always starts small. Remember that there was a time when MS was the underdog. Google starts with corrupting ads and results now, and of course such things as revealing the search information of someone:
Google has confirmed that it can provide search terms if given an Internet address or Web cookie, but has steadfastly refused to say how often such requests arrive. (Microsoft, on the other hand, told us that it has never received such queries for MSN Search, and AOL says it could not provide the information if asked.)
Of course, I will not even mention what happened with Google China etc.
The thing is, most people will not notice if Google was turning evil because it's not like one fine day they decide to do evil things. Remember that they are a publicly traded company, and sooner or later the desire for profit will win out over everything else.
They have already decided not to provide search results in a nation where such things as massacres by the government occured, and they have provided data to government agencies and refused to disclose how often they do this.
The thing about "evil" is not that it happens, it's that you would not know if it did. Who knows what else Google does with all that information?
That is the scary part.
Just my two cents and all that!
Given that every post he makes is fake, I think you may be on to something there.
...as long as their ad results are clearly distinguishable from the real results. I don't have a problem with the ads of a different background color at the top or side... it's the ad results injected into the middle of the real results with only a faint horizontal line to separate them, that I find objectionable. What's worse is Google doesn't do it all the time, so they tend to catch people off guard.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
You make some valid points. Its just like Microsoft pushing IE and including it in Windows to kill Navigator. I think people forget that Netscape practically had a monopoly on browsing for a time. Yahoo was once in google's position and they did exactly the same thing. Its called marketing.
There are several things that google has done I'm not happy about. This is very small on my list. As a geek, I realize that many of us have stronger ethics than most others. The public will continue to use google just as they love their Windows install. The difference is that its much easier to unseat a search engine.
Now if the developers at Mozilla wish to look down on google, they could stop making it default in Firefox as a search engine. Frankly I find it interesting after Microsoft started giving them help with Vista compatibility that we hear this negative google talk. I can say things about others just as easy as the Firefox guy.
I think its time some of you realized that google is not this amazing company that is totally different. Its similar to the argument I have with my mother over Yahoo. She views them as the best thing the internet has ever seen. She chooses them over google daily. For a long time I tried to talk her into using another search tool and game site. She stuck with Yahoo because of her personal experiences. I stay away from Yahoo because of my personal experience*. If you don't like google, just don't use any of their products and chose something else. The same goes for IE, Windows, etc. Modern computing is about choice.
* If you are curious about my hatred of Yahoo, its simply a flaw in their early childrens search feature. Their advertising code displayed a porno ad to a 7 year old I was watching and nearly lost me my job. His search was totally unrelated and quite clean.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I believe if you read the comments on the post you'll find that I reconsidered many of my opinions based on the opposite views presented there. But thanks for the kind words :)
pop will eat itself
(forgive me, but let me go on a rant...)
which is to say that the common fancy becomes so common that it's commonality becomes a point of contention and leads to the fancy's demise. We're just about there with the ubiquity of google now just like we've been there before with IBM and at&t and ford and pan am.... this is the cyclic nature of (near)natural monopolies. Their success is their importance is their weight which means every step they take is heavy and is heard. Of course they can't be trusted; their success means that they've become "the man". It's easy to look sceptically upon them. How dare they self-agrandize. How dare they try to shape the world into their vision. Aren't they being irresponsible in propogating that vision?
It's very easy to be egalitarian in the face of such things. Big bad google is the new big bad wolf... They don't care about me, they only care about their stock price, which is all their stock holders (read: owners, read: larry and sergey) care about.
(The egalitarian view is always in conflict with the view of any particular hive, otherwise you're just kissing up to the masses and appear wishy washy)
From the google IPO filing:
Kumbaya: "We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1 percent of Google's equity and profits in some form."
in present time that rings: "we have a foundation for good to offset our foundation of commerce. Hopefully it will mitigate the evil enough for your tastes"...
but now we're at the "what have you done for me lately" phase with the over arching question of "prove to me it's not just the money". They have a particular PR battle on their hands since they are so much better off with us on their side. I mean, what if we all of the sudden realized that other search products were at least as good?
but they're not. Right? The other tools aren't as familiar or as elegant or as relevant. So at the end of the day this argument is moot. You can grumble as you use google or you can nod, but nine time out of ten the big G is still your dog when it comes to playing fetch with the net.
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