Apple did compete on price - they competed by demanding that every publisher raise the price of all ebooks by 50%.
I'm 100% positive that that's absolutely not what happened. Funny sense of re-writing reality you have there. I've heard a term for that before, I'm sure you bandied it about before...
Publishers were happy to oblige.
They were timid, afraid to take on Amazon alone. What happened wasn't that Apple asked them to raise their prices across the board by some set amount, what they asked them to do was quit letting Amazon set their prices for them. *That's* what they were happy to do, they just never had the backbone before iBooks.
Amazon wasn't hurt - they still dominate the market.
90% to 60%, and no longer able to bully the publishers around to the same extent as before. I don't know how you can think that doesn't count as being "hurt". Perhaps if that three-letter term I referenced above would come to me, what is it?...
The only people who lost were consumers (like you!). People like you lost big time.
You mean how I now have more plentiful options for eBooks? Wow, I'm soooooo hurt!
Go cheer for the people who beat the shit out of you some more. It amuses them.
No one laid a finger on me. They've offered products which I've willingly paid for. I know that's a strange concept for a large contingent around here.
I find it silly that the DoJ has brought this case. But they have, and I'm trying to understand their justification for doing so. The collusion angle is the only one I can come up with that holds any water.
My personal opinion is that this case is either misguided good intentions, or possibly just someone's ambitions playing out. I'd apply a variation on Hanlon's razor, and not attribute it to malicious ambition without some evidence.
No problem. I've just grown tired of fanboy accusations and how that ruins otherwise intelligent discussions.
I am as well, which is why I've taken up using it against those that tend to throw it out, which I mistook you for. There's a strong streak of crazy here on Slashdot, and maybe I'm foolish to try, but I'd like to think exposing their hypocrisy might do some good.
Yeah, I know, you can't reason with religious ferver...
Putting pressure on your suppliers is not predatory or illegal.
It's not illegal, but it can be predatory.
Every successful business pressures it's suppliers. Sometimes the pressure is cost, sometimes delivery, sometimes quality, etc. You may as well complain that the consumers are the real predators here, because they are the ones who want the low prices from Amazon, Walmart, etc.
I'd call both Amazon and Walmart predators. Not simply for exerting pressure, but for the overbearing and inequal manner in which they do it. But I'm fine with us not agreeing on that. The main thing we need to see eye to eye on this is simply that I'm not saying Amazon is doing anything illegal simply for negotiating from a strong position (nor Walmart, for that matter).
I do think there is at least a bit of anti-trust concern with their "if you don't deal with us on eBooks, we won't carry your paper books" tactics, but I'm basically ambivalent, and would err on the side of not pulling out the anti-trust guns if pushed to make a choice.
If they are over-charging, people won't buy them and they will have to lower their prices. Paper books still exist.
I don't think you understand how supply and demand works. There's no "set price" for a book unit. The price in the market is reflective of demand, not of the physical cost of the books.
It's funny that you think I'm on someone's "side". I'm just describing how things are.
I think if Apple had not required publishers to sell in other stores at or above the iBookstore prices, this wouldn't be an issue that the DoJ would pursue.
That's not illegal. And this whole thing is absurd because it levels the playing field. Amazon can no longer force publishers into shitty deals, which is what was happening before Apple entered the picture.
Amazon would tell publishers "you will sell to us at this (absurdly low) price, or we won't carry your print book". They are the real predator here.
Other than anti-Apple fanboys
Ah, the fanboy chestnut.
It's only a "chestnut" because people use it to mean "someone who likes something I don't like", which, quite ironically, is almost universally more fanboyish than the person being called a fanboy.
I personally think "fanboy" is a good term (to be a fan of something), but the OSS/Linux/Android crowd perverted it to mean the above.
I make my living writing iOS and Mac OS software. I'm commenting from a Mac Pro with an embarrassing number of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches connected to it. If anything, I can be accused of being an Apple fanboy.
That's impossible. The publishers have to collude together. Apple "colluding" with them individually (which is exactly what they did), is called standard business. A contract between two companies is not collusion (unless they are on the same side of the supply or distribution aspect and represent a monopoly on a product or commodity).
Fucking rabid fanboi...
If but that you mean the idiots who hate Apple (or MS, or Google) for no reason other then they prefer the products from another company, you have me confused with the Slashdot peanut gallery. It's a common mistake for the members of said gallery to see anyone who defends "Evil Company X" as a "fucking rabid fanboi".
The very first sentence of the Wikipedia link (emphasis mine):
Price fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand.
Setting a minimum price for a product is not price fixing. Publishers are free to set a minimum price for their books. What they aren't allowed to do is collude together to set a fixed price (minimum or otherwise). Also, the book sellers (like Apple, Amazon, B&N, etc.) aren't allowed to collude to set fixed prices either.
But the seller of a product can set a minimum sales price.
Are you really that stupid? Price fixing is when a MINIMUM price to the public for A PARTICULAR ITEM has been set.
Apparently so, since that's not price fixing. Price fixing is setting a fixed price. Not a "MINIMUM" (does all caps make it true or something?). Also, it requires collusion between either the suppliers or the distributors (in order to manipulate either the supply or the demand to enforce the fixed price), neither of which happened.
Book publishers are well within their rights to set a minimum price for their products.
So the real question is, how is this price-fixing?
Apple used their dominance in the mobile app market to fix their price as the lowest price, if you want to sell in the iBookstore you must give Apple the lowest price and nobody is allowed to sell it for a lower price than Apple.
That's not a fixed price.
As far as using "their dominance in the mobile market", there's so much wrong there I'll just make a list:
1. Apple does not have an app monopoly (required for this to be illegal) 2. App "dominance", even monopoly, has no bearing on book sellers (how is Apple supposed to leverage this against them?). 3. Even assuming they have a monopoly (they don't, but just for argument's sake), in what way did they exploit this? 4. It's funny how supposedly "Android is winning", but somehow Apple is a monopoly. 5. Publishers could have easily not gone with Apple's offer. Amazon was eBook monopoly at the time (which is exactly why they went with that deal, to leverage against Amazon!), and are still the dominant eBook seller (60% market share). 6. There are still books exclusive to Amazon, so clearly this deal isn't as hard core as you make it sound.
This was just a shrewd business deal which gave power back to the publishers and busted the Amazon monopoly (which they were actually abusing against other book sellers, and even the publishers themselves!).
The collusion and price fixing was not between the publishers.
That's one of only two places where it has to be. Either the publishers get together and agree on a fixed price, or the distributers all get together and agree on a fixed price. Without one or the other, you can't really have collusion or price fixing. Also, laughably, you actually need a fixed price for price fixing (it's right there in the term!).
Not across the board, and that's not illegal anyway.
Please tell me how this is good for consumers?
More choices, breaking of a monopoly that was strangling the publishing industry.
Apple colluded with publishers to remove their books from Amazon if Amazon would not agree to sell at a higher price.
That's not collusion. Amazon has exclusive book deals as well. Does that mean they "colluded to remove their books from iBooks"?
How is that not price-fixing?
Price-fixing is setting a fixed price (that should be obvious), and that is done by manipulating supply and demand (like what DeBeers does with diamonds, but there needs to be an arrangement between many suppliers of diamonds for this to be illegal).
So the real question is, how is this price-fixing? The prices are variable from book to book and publisher to publisher, and the same book across different services can be sold at various prices. And, finally, there's no collusion between publishers.
A cartel would be an agreement between the publishers. Do they have an agreement amongst themselves? No. They all have separate, independent agreements with Apple, which is completely legal. Not just completely legal, but that's exactly how business works. You open a store and make deals with suppliers to provide goods for your store. How do you think it's supposed to work?
Its not amusing at all. Amazon dominate by competing on old fashioned things like price, Not being corrupt. I find it sick that your defending a mega corporation (again), when the illegal corrupt actions affect everyone.
It's quite... fascinating, how you can defend a monopoly and demonize the company that broke the monopoly, doing the very thing you just defended the monopoly for doing in the first place!
Apple entered the book market and competed against Amazon doing the very thing you laud Amazon for doing: they competed on price!
That's some highly potent fanboy fanaticism in action!
The DoJ's case alleges that the agency pricing model had a clause where the publisher wouldn't sell their books in other stores for less than they were charging in the iBookstore. If true, this is Collusion, and falls under anti-trust laws. http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/collusion/
The definition isn't that long. Here it is:
Collusion occurs when two persons or representatives of an entity or organization make an agreement to deceive or mislead another. Such agreements are usually secretive, and involve fraud or gaining an unfair advantage over a third party, competitors, consumers or others with whom they are negotiating. The collusion, therefore, makes the bargaining process inherently unfair. Collusion can involve price or wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship betweeen the colluding parties.
For example, in a divorce action, the husband and wife may agree to fabricate a story or suppress evidence to provide evidence of lawful grounds for a divorce. As another example, collusion may involve cooperation between competing sellers, in the form of an agreement, express or tacit, limiting competition, or a merger or other means to raise the market price above the competitive level.
Where's the collusion? The first sentence: Collusion occurs when two persons or representatives of an entity or organization make an agreement to deceive or mislead another.
Who is being mislead? Other than anti-Apple fanboys who think Apple did something wrong here.
Yes you are, don't lie. Their behaviour is disgusting. They should be banned for their anti-capitalist, anticonsumer (again) behaviour. Cook should go to Jail.
What behavior? You're damn near the only person arguing strongly against Apple in this story, and you haven't said once what they did that you think is wrong!
Tim Cook should go to jail? For selling books? For letting the publishers pick the prices they sell them at? You're a fucking idiot. But worse, you're a fanboy who thinks proper business practices are "evil" for simply being done by the wrong company.
Aside from being Apple, which you hate irrationally, what exactly is your complaint? What do you think Apple did that was wrong? They used an existing model, which is legal. They broke a monopoly, which is not only legal, but generally considered beneficial. They brought eBooks to more people.
And in the end, Amazon is still the top eBook seller, so Apple didn't even take a controlling share of the market. So what did they do wrong?
Sounds like Amazon's monopoly was broken. What's the problem with that again?
Amazon gained its market share by competing on price, Apple got forming a cartel with publishers using price-fixing.
Amazon had a monopoly which they used to abuse the publishers. Apple made separate deals with each publisher (which is not collusion or price-fixing) which broke Amazon's monopoly.
This is exactly how the market is supposed to work. Where once there was one eBook provider, there are now four major providers. Apple is not even the biggest one! How can that be a monopoly or even a trust?
The bottom line is non-apple customers are being hurt by this, including children.
Seriously, how can you say something like this with a straight face? That's straight-up trolling.
Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads. And there's no way to opt out of this invasion of your privacy. Outlook.com is different—we don't go through your email to sell ads.
Emphasis theirs. I don't see how it can be more clear than that! It's the most prominent text on their page about Gmail.
There *may* be some moral difference between reading your messages for your protection versus reading your messages to target ads, but I doubt that Microsoft bothered to make that distinction when they were complaining about Google's practices.
Um, that is the exact distinction they made in their Scroogled campaign. It's the entirety of their whole argument against Gmail!
I figured I'd follow up on your post than on mine. I've found an article that obliquely mentions targeted ads for Outlook.com: nbcnews.com
It's not very meaty in terms of evidence or details, but definitely concerning. Before I made my first reply to you, I checked my Outlook.com inbox to see if the ads were contextual, and they most certainly weren't, but I almost never use that address, so it's hard to be sure.
However, if that article is correct about targeted ads, then you're quite correct in your first sentence. I'm still interested in reading about MS "selling *data* to outside interests".
Spam filters and malware scanning is different from scanning your email for keywords, storing them in your user profile, and showing you ads.
One serves the end user, the other serves the company. That is a huge difference. Of the two, in terms of privacy, MS is much more sincere and honest about it. Too bad the company itself has a long history of otherwise inappropriate behavior and (generally speaking) inferior products and services (outside of the corporate world).
Microsoft targets ads based on your content as well.
Bullshit. MS does not show ads based on the contents of your email.
I saw another think here where MS had actually been caught selling *data* to outside interests, not just targeting ads.
Lol. People can *say* they've seen anything, doesn't make it true.
Provide a link so that those of us that have to read your assertions can make up our own minds instead of just taking your word for it.
If you're trusting MS over Yahoo, Google, or pretty much anyone else, you're not very familiar with their historical behaviour.
MS has done a lot of horrible things, but protecting user privacy has been better than average. And the reasoning behind this is pretty simple: MS makes their money by selling (and now, subscriptions to) software. That's their bread and butter, and where they are going to focus.
I don't like the company much, and don't generally prefer their products, but let's not be fanboys and make up shit just because we don't like the company, ok?
A d-pad and button overlay on a game, especially on a small screen is not very appealing.
Then connect a regular game controller to your phone or tablet through Bluetooth. Or buy a device with built-in game buttons, such as a Sony Xperia Play or an Archos GamePad or a JXD S5110.
Lol, when it's iOS or Macs under discussion, you always ask what poor people are supposed to do, or how can you do this while riding on a bus.
But when it's Android, just buy some extra bulky stuff!
For years I've been hearing about how tablets and phones are going to eat the Nintendo's handhelds for lunch. ... It's great that Google has a "Google Play Games" service coming out but what's the point when the games themselves aren't worth playing?
There's no polite way to put this, but it's not "tablets and phones" that are dominating the handheld gaming market, it's iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. Android gaming lags iOS gaming by a wide margin at the moment.
That's not to say there aren't some great games on Android, just that if you want to see the best representation of mobile (tablet/phone) gaming, you'll need to look at the other OS.
There's still quite a bit of value in dedicated gaming hardware, like the 3DS. Primarily, the physical buttons. But the convenience of having one device instead of multiple devices is more important to most people. Additionally, gaming on iOS has increasingly come to fit well with a touch screen, as opposed to merely trying to adapt traditional games with little more than a virtual d-pad and button overlay.
We'll know more in two days, but this, and other indications that Google has been working on the lag issues on Android, shows a lot of promise.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple did compete on price - they competed by demanding that every publisher raise the price of all ebooks by 50%.
I'm 100% positive that that's absolutely not what happened. Funny sense of re-writing reality you have there. I've heard a term for that before, I'm sure you bandied it about before...
Publishers were happy to oblige.
They were timid, afraid to take on Amazon alone. What happened wasn't that Apple asked them to raise their prices across the board by some set amount, what they asked them to do was quit letting Amazon set their prices for them. *That's* what they were happy to do, they just never had the backbone before iBooks.
Amazon wasn't hurt - they still dominate the market.
90% to 60%, and no longer able to bully the publishers around to the same extent as before. I don't know how you can think that doesn't count as being "hurt". Perhaps if that three-letter term I referenced above would come to me, what is it?...
The only people who lost were consumers (like you!). People like you lost big time.
You mean how I now have more plentiful options for eBooks? Wow, I'm soooooo hurt!
Go cheer for the people who beat the shit out of you some more. It amuses them.
No one laid a finger on me. They've offered products which I've willingly paid for. I know that's a strange concept for a large contingent around here.
Glad we cleared that up!
I find it silly that the DoJ has brought this case. But they have, and I'm trying to understand their justification for doing so. The collusion angle is the only one I can come up with that holds any water.
My personal opinion is that this case is either misguided good intentions, or possibly just someone's ambitions playing out. I'd apply a variation on Hanlon's razor, and not attribute it to malicious ambition without some evidence.
No problem. I've just grown tired of fanboy accusations and how that ruins otherwise intelligent discussions.
I am as well, which is why I've taken up using it against those that tend to throw it out, which I mistook you for. There's a strong streak of crazy here on Slashdot, and maybe I'm foolish to try, but I'd like to think exposing their hypocrisy might do some good.
Yeah, I know, you can't reason with religious ferver...
Putting pressure on your suppliers is not predatory or illegal.
It's not illegal, but it can be predatory.
Every successful business pressures it's suppliers. Sometimes the pressure is cost, sometimes delivery, sometimes quality, etc. You may as well complain that the consumers are the real predators here, because they are the ones who want the low prices from Amazon, Walmart, etc.
I'd call both Amazon and Walmart predators. Not simply for exerting pressure, but for the overbearing and inequal manner in which they do it. But I'm fine with us not agreeing on that. The main thing we need to see eye to eye on this is simply that I'm not saying Amazon is doing anything illegal simply for negotiating from a strong position (nor Walmart, for that matter).
I do think there is at least a bit of anti-trust concern with their "if you don't deal with us on eBooks, we won't carry your paper books" tactics, but I'm basically ambivalent, and would err on the side of not pulling out the anti-trust guns if pushed to make a choice.
If they are over-charging, people won't buy them and they will have to lower their prices. Paper books still exist.
I don't think you understand how supply and demand works. There's no "set price" for a book unit. The price in the market is reflective of demand, not of the physical cost of the books.
It's funny that you think I'm on someone's "side". I'm just describing how things are.
I think if Apple had not required publishers to sell in other stores at or above the iBookstore prices, this wouldn't be an issue that the DoJ would pursue.
That's not illegal. And this whole thing is absurd because it levels the playing field. Amazon can no longer force publishers into shitty deals, which is what was happening before Apple entered the picture.
Amazon would tell publishers "you will sell to us at this (absurdly low) price, or we won't carry your print book". They are the real predator here.
Other than anti-Apple fanboys
Ah, the fanboy chestnut.
It's only a "chestnut" because people use it to mean "someone who likes something I don't like", which, quite ironically, is almost universally more fanboyish than the person being called a fanboy.
I personally think "fanboy" is a good term (to be a fan of something), but the OSS/Linux/Android crowd perverted it to mean the above.
I make my living writing iOS and Mac OS software. I'm commenting from a Mac Pro with an embarrassing number of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches connected to it. If anything, I can be accused of being an Apple fanboy.
My apologies, I jumped the gun.
Apple colluded with the publishers
That's impossible. The publishers have to collude together. Apple "colluding" with them individually (which is exactly what they did), is called standard business. A contract between two companies is not collusion (unless they are on the same side of the supply or distribution aspect and represent a monopoly on a product or commodity).
Fucking rabid fanboi...
If but that you mean the idiots who hate Apple (or MS, or Google) for no reason other then they prefer the products from another company, you have me confused with the Slashdot peanut gallery. It's a common mistake for the members of said gallery to see anyone who defends "Evil Company X" as a "fucking rabid fanboi".
Lol.
The very first sentence of the Wikipedia link (emphasis mine):
Setting a minimum price for a product is not price fixing. Publishers are free to set a minimum price for their books. What they aren't allowed to do is collude together to set a fixed price (minimum or otherwise). Also, the book sellers (like Apple, Amazon, B&N, etc.) aren't allowed to collude to set fixed prices either.
But the seller of a product can set a minimum sales price.
Are you really that stupid? Price fixing is when a MINIMUM price to the public for A PARTICULAR ITEM has been set.
Apparently so, since that's not price fixing. Price fixing is setting a fixed price. Not a "MINIMUM" (does all caps make it true or something?). Also, it requires collusion between either the suppliers or the distributors (in order to manipulate either the supply or the demand to enforce the fixed price), neither of which happened.
Book publishers are well within their rights to set a minimum price for their products.
Please, try again.
So the real question is, how is this price-fixing?
Apple used their dominance in the mobile app market to fix their price as the lowest price, if you want to sell in the iBookstore you must give Apple the lowest price and nobody is allowed to sell it for a lower price than Apple.
That's not a fixed price.
As far as using "their dominance in the mobile market", there's so much wrong there I'll just make a list:
1. Apple does not have an app monopoly (required for this to be illegal)
2. App "dominance", even monopoly, has no bearing on book sellers (how is Apple supposed to leverage this against them?).
3. Even assuming they have a monopoly (they don't, but just for argument's sake), in what way did they exploit this?
4. It's funny how supposedly "Android is winning", but somehow Apple is a monopoly.
5. Publishers could have easily not gone with Apple's offer. Amazon was eBook monopoly at the time (which is exactly why they went with that deal, to leverage against Amazon!), and are still the dominant eBook seller (60% market share).
6. There are still books exclusive to Amazon, so clearly this deal isn't as hard core as you make it sound.
This was just a shrewd business deal which gave power back to the publishers and busted the Amazon monopoly (which they were actually abusing against other book sellers, and even the publishers themselves!).
The collusion and price fixing was not between the publishers.
That's one of only two places where it has to be. Either the publishers get together and agree on a fixed price, or the distributers all get together and agree on a fixed price. Without one or the other, you can't really have collusion or price fixing. Also, laughably, you actually need a fixed price for price fixing (it's right there in the term!).
Please, try again.
Prices went up.
Not across the board, and that's not illegal anyway.
Please tell me how this is good for consumers?
More choices, breaking of a monopoly that was strangling the publishing industry.
Apple colluded with publishers to remove their books from Amazon if Amazon would not agree to sell at a higher price.
That's not collusion. Amazon has exclusive book deals as well. Does that mean they "colluded to remove their books from iBooks"?
How is that not price-fixing?
Price-fixing is setting a fixed price (that should be obvious), and that is done by manipulating supply and demand (like what DeBeers does with diamonds, but there needs to be an arrangement between many suppliers of diamonds for this to be illegal).
So the real question is, how is this price-fixing? The prices are variable from book to book and publisher to publisher, and the same book across different services can be sold at various prices. And, finally, there's no collusion between publishers.
A cartel would be an agreement between the publishers. Do they have an agreement amongst themselves? No. They all have separate, independent agreements with Apple, which is completely legal. Not just completely legal, but that's exactly how business works. You open a store and make deals with suppliers to provide goods for your store. How do you think it's supposed to work?
Try again, fanboy.
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/299875-doj-accuses-steve-jobs-of-being-ringmaster-in-price-fixing-scheme "Under the old model, Amazon controlled about 90 percent of the market, but after the publishers instituted the new pricing scheme, Amazon's share fell to 60 percent."
Its not amusing at all. Amazon dominate by competing on old fashioned things like price, Not being corrupt. I find it sick that your defending a mega corporation (again), when the illegal corrupt actions affect everyone.
It's quite... fascinating, how you can defend a monopoly and demonize the company that broke the monopoly, doing the very thing you just defended the monopoly for doing in the first place!
Apple entered the book market and competed against Amazon doing the very thing you laud Amazon for doing: they competed on price!
That's some highly potent fanboy fanaticism in action!
The DoJ's case alleges that the agency pricing model had a clause where the publisher wouldn't sell their books in other stores for less than they were charging in the iBookstore. If true, this is Collusion, and falls under anti-trust laws. http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/collusion/
The definition isn't that long. Here it is:
Where's the collusion? The first sentence: Collusion occurs when two persons or representatives of an entity or organization make an agreement to deceive or mislead another.
Who is being mislead? Other than anti-Apple fanboys who think Apple did something wrong here.
Not defending Apple's pricing
Yes you are, don't lie. Their behaviour is disgusting. They should be banned for their anti-capitalist, anticonsumer (again) behaviour. Cook should go to Jail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
What behavior? You're damn near the only person arguing strongly against Apple in this story, and you haven't said once what they did that you think is wrong!
Tim Cook should go to jail? For selling books? For letting the publishers pick the prices they sell them at? You're a fucking idiot. But worse, you're a fanboy who thinks proper business practices are "evil" for simply being done by the wrong company.
Aside from being Apple, which you hate irrationally, what exactly is your complaint? What do you think Apple did that was wrong? They used an existing model, which is legal. They broke a monopoly, which is not only legal, but generally considered beneficial. They brought eBooks to more people.
And in the end, Amazon is still the top eBook seller, so Apple didn't even take a controlling share of the market. So what did they do wrong?
Sounds like Amazon's monopoly was broken. What's the problem with that again?
Amazon gained its market share by competing on price, Apple got forming a cartel with publishers using price-fixing.
Amazon had a monopoly which they used to abuse the publishers. Apple made separate deals with each publisher (which is not collusion or price-fixing) which broke Amazon's monopoly.
This is exactly how the market is supposed to work. Where once there was one eBook provider, there are now four major providers. Apple is not even the biggest one! How can that be a monopoly or even a trust?
The bottom line is non-apple customers are being hurt by this, including children.
Seriously, how can you say something like this with a straight face? That's straight-up trolling.
Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads. And there's no way to opt out of this invasion of your privacy. Outlook.com is different—we don't go through your email to sell ads.
Emphasis theirs. I don't see how it can be more clear than that! It's the most prominent text on their page about Gmail.
There *may* be some moral difference between reading your messages for your protection versus reading your messages to target ads, but I doubt that Microsoft bothered to make that distinction when they were complaining about Google's practices.
Um, that is the exact distinction they made in their Scroogled campaign. It's the entirety of their whole argument against Gmail!
I figured I'd follow up on your post than on mine. I've found an article that obliquely mentions targeted ads for Outlook.com: nbcnews.com
It's not very meaty in terms of evidence or details, but definitely concerning. Before I made my first reply to you, I checked my Outlook.com inbox to see if the ads were contextual, and they most certainly weren't, but I almost never use that address, so it's hard to be sure.
However, if that article is correct about targeted ads, then you're quite correct in your first sentence. I'm still interested in reading about MS "selling *data* to outside interests".
Knew they were lying.
Spam filters and malware scanning is different from scanning your email for keywords, storing them in your user profile, and showing you ads.
One serves the end user, the other serves the company. That is a huge difference. Of the two, in terms of privacy, MS is much more sincere and honest about it. Too bad the company itself has a long history of otherwise inappropriate behavior and (generally speaking) inferior products and services (outside of the corporate world).
Microsoft targets ads based on your content as well.
Bullshit. MS does not show ads based on the contents of your email.
I saw another think here where MS had actually been caught selling *data* to outside interests, not just targeting ads.
Lol. People can *say* they've seen anything, doesn't make it true.
Provide a link so that those of us that have to read your assertions can make up our own minds instead of just taking your word for it.
If you're trusting MS over Yahoo, Google, or pretty much anyone else, you're not very familiar with their historical behaviour.
MS has done a lot of horrible things, but protecting user privacy has been better than average. And the reasoning behind this is pretty simple: MS makes their money by selling (and now, subscriptions to) software. That's their bread and butter, and where they are going to focus.
I don't like the company much, and don't generally prefer their products, but let's not be fanboys and make up shit just because we don't like the company, ok?
A d-pad and button overlay on a game, especially on a small screen is not very appealing.
Then connect a regular game controller to your phone or tablet through Bluetooth. Or buy a device with built-in game buttons, such as a Sony Xperia Play or an Archos GamePad or a JXD S5110.
Lol, when it's iOS or Macs under discussion, you always ask what poor people are supposed to do, or how can you do this while riding on a bus.
But when it's Android, just buy some extra bulky stuff!
For years I've been hearing about how tablets and phones are going to eat the Nintendo's handhelds for lunch.
...
It's great that Google has a "Google Play Games" service coming out but what's the point when the games themselves aren't worth playing?
There's no polite way to put this, but it's not "tablets and phones" that are dominating the handheld gaming market, it's iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. Android gaming lags iOS gaming by a wide margin at the moment.
That's not to say there aren't some great games on Android, just that if you want to see the best representation of mobile (tablet/phone) gaming, you'll need to look at the other OS.
There's still quite a bit of value in dedicated gaming hardware, like the 3DS. Primarily, the physical buttons. But the convenience of having one device instead of multiple devices is more important to most people. Additionally, gaming on iOS has increasingly come to fit well with a touch screen, as opposed to merely trying to adapt traditional games with little more than a virtual d-pad and button overlay.
We'll know more in two days, but this, and other indications that Google has been working on the lag issues on Android, shows a lot of promise.