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Creator of Opera Says Google Deliberately Undermined His New Vivaldi Web Browser (wired.co.uk)
The latest allegation against Google? Jon von Tetzchner, creator of the web browser Opera, says the search giant deliberately undermined his new browser, Vivaldi. Rowland Manthorpe, writing for Wired: In a blogpost titled, "My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil," von Tetzchner accuses the US firm of blocking Vivaldi's access to Google AdWords, the advertisements that run alongside search results, without warning or proper explanation. According to Von Tetzchner, the problem started in late May. Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticised big tech companies' attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?" He concludes: "Timing spoke volumes." Von Tetzchner got in touch with Google to try and resolve the issue. The result? What he calls "a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions." The particular issue was the end-user license agreement (EULA), the legal contract between a software manufacturer and a user. Google wanted Vivaldi to add one to its website. So it did. But Google had further complaints. According to emails shown to WIRED, Google wanted Vivaldi to add an EULA "within the frame of every download button." The addition was small -- a link below the button directing people to "terms" -- but on the web, where every pixel matters, this was a potential competitive disadvantage. Most gallingly, Chrome, Google's own web browser, didn't display a EULA on its landing pages. Google also asked Vivaldi to add detailed information to help people uninstall it, with another link, also under the button.
Google has NEVER not been evil. They were evil from day one, but pretended not to be to lure all you gullible geeks in. It's amazing that most of you still haven't figure out how things are, considering how smart you often are in purely technological terms.
Also, it's pathetic to see the old Opera guy allowing himself to be bullied by them while trying to use their services, not to mention the fact that "Vivaldi" is just another Chromium skin. This really is a broken world where nobody wants to do anything on their own anymore. Just take the easy path and make a skin for some existing technology -- that should do it!
Yes he fucking did, you lying piece of shit. "Schmidt had recused himself of portions of Apple's board meetings when conflicts of interest or anything Google-related arose. But Jobs said Schmidt would have to leave much larger portions of the meetings after Google announced last month that it would enter the operating system sphere." http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/0...