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Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers
theodp writes "Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'"
I spent my childhood living in Naples, Italy. The city and community was filled with competition. My dad owned his own pizza place next to his cousins pizza place. They were angry at each other, many times going to the street in their white cooking clothes and yelling at each other. Other one took off customers from the another. They could had sold many more delicious pizzas, but couldn't because there just wasn't enough customers. What I learned from it was that you need a clean playing field, so I moved to New York and started my pizza place on the fifth avenue. But competition came there too. Then I decided to become a pizza consultant and just make pizzas for the fun of it. I've never been happier.
What I'm saying here is that in the end customers won't get hit by competition. It will be bad for the pizza place owners, but there will always be pizzas for everyone. And they will be even more delicious, because the pizza place owners have to fight harder.
Normally the reaction to someone saying this kind of pinko commie crap is to laugh and tell them to go fuck themselves back to Russia.
But Lyons has a point. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers. Why so, you may ask. It is because of the lopsidedness of the market that makes this situation so precarious.
From the end of WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two sides to every geopolitical debate. The side of good, right, and the American Way and the side of the Soviet Union. Countries aligned themselves along these very clear geopolitical boundaries. Though it was easy enough to declare allegiance to one side or the other, many countries found their own geopolitical aspirations dashed to smithereens on either the broad wings of the American eagle or the hard, solid face of the Iron Curtain.
However, with the end of the Cold War, vassal states are now finding their own voice. Countries that were previously shackled now find that the lack of a superpower competition has resulted in more opportunities for growth. Take two countries that America fought wars in as examples. Korea and Vietnam are now booming with economic and technological growth.
These opportunities don't come because they are subservient states to a particular superpower, but because they no longer need to pledge allegiance and are able to make their own way.
So when two superpowers like Microsoft and Google start duking it out, the fallout is going to hit partner companies AND consumers alike.
...and he loses her privacy to an advertisement company
I was particularly moved by how the despair of realizing that Google isn't a hippy friend drove the basement nerd to suddenly get a sex change.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
s/climatologically/cryptologically/'
Sorry about that ...
Why should Google-haters have to go to the trouble of reading instructions, doing things, etc to get to their sacred data?? Google should just transmit the data over the air into their brains. This is an outrage! When will Google just do the simplest of things?!? Google is evil, I say, eeeeeeee-vil!