That would practically need that EVERY software on the planet need to be rewritten and made to use client-server structure. That isn't feasible, and is never going to happen. On top of that it would just slow down programs, too.
Oh seriously, are we now going the route of "but someone hijacked Google's ip!". There is other evidence in the article, too, and there is absolutely no reason to believe it wasn't really Google doing it. Apart from someone having personal disbelief in Google doing evil things.
Please no, programs can actually be quite complicated. They aren't like web servers which you configure and leave running. Making them GUI-less will just complicate things and make it much harder to use. There's a reason we use GUI's now a days - it's better for some stuff.
Branch offices have their own budgets and discretionary spending. Maybe it was Eric Schmidt himself who told them to do this. But we really have no way of knowing, and it's a simpler explanation that one or a few employees were engaged in taking shortcuts than that Google corporate issues orders to branch offices which involve instructions to illegally misrepresent a business relationship.
So Google can do whatever they wish and it's not evil as long as it's not directly coming from Eric Schmidt? In many countries it's also common practice to bribe officials and government for better business deals and to get away from trouble. Would it be ok for Google branch to do that? Would it be evil? What about if the common practice in the country was to have slaves and those not wanting to work were shot. Since it's common practice, that doesn't make it evil for Google?
Yes, it's easy to install X11 on a Linux server - but it's also generally a stupid thing to do, security-wise, if your server is internet-facing.
And why is that? Your home linux desktop is internet-facing too. Just because it's housing in datacenter doesn't mean it's suddenly much more insecure. Servers aren't used just for hosting Apache, you know.
Care to elaborate or are you just trolling? I have many Windows-based servers that only run GUI programs. I have a quite bad connection so I can't run those at home, and I also like to close my laptop when I'm not working. I also know hundreds of people with the same kind of setup.
Also, you haven't needed to use GUI for everything. PowerShell is really powerful shell for Windows, even more powerful than you have on Linux, as it passes objects between commands and programs, not just text.
Have you even read the article? It was a huge operation and on some days they manually scraped and called over 2500 businesses. No single employee can do that. And there was also other Google branches involved, like Google India.
Often Windows servers are also used to run actual programs with GUI's, like you do on your home computer. Having them on server means you have access to much better bandwidth and your programs can run 24/7, and you can easily deploy more servers if you need to. If GUI's are completely removed then you would need to run desktop version of Windows on a server, which is far from ideal. Servers aren't just used for web servers and things like that, they are also used for supporting programs or having a remote location. Windows server with RDP works really well for that. Even Linux servers can have GUI, as it's easy to install X11 and some desktop environment.
This has been pointed out several times in the discussion. Read the article, there's other branches of Google involved too, like Google's Indian call centers. There is also lots of proof and ip addresses that lead back to Google HQ.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- theyÃ(TM)d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
If you go by that logic then it's probably ok for you that Google bribes polices and officials where it's more common (hello, Russia and USA) and there is nothing wrong with that? If it was socially tolerated to have slaves and killing other human beings was lawful in the country, there would be nothing evil about Google branch doing so too?
Oh please, you really want to defend Google's fraud on small companies? Google as a whole is responsible for what the company does. This was outright fraud by Google and they need to be called upon it and not defend that it was just Google Kenya + Google India doing it.
Yes, because later there is Google Indian call centers calling and visits from Google's net ranges.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- theyâ(TM)d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
So if Google creates single department that does all their evil stuff, they're still not evil company? How far will you go to defend Google and not see through their bullshit?
Actually no, Google's Indian call centers are involved too, so this is obviously coming outside Google's Kenya's offices. On top of that, Google as the company is fully responsible for all their offices practices. You can't just point out that some other department did it.
Yes it is illegal in the US, and FTC should really look into Google's practices. Thankfully that is in the works, as privacy watchdog EPIC has complained to FTC and asked them to look into all of misbehaviors of Google.
This wasn't just misbehaving. What Google did was outright illegal. Not only did they falsely claim that they have business partnership with Mocality, they also claimed that Mocality is engaging in bait-and-switch practices to try and charge businesses up to $200 for their listing. Mocality said they have never charged businesses and never will.
Such blatant lies aren't just misbehavior, they are pure fraud. Google is trying to destroy their competitor in any way possible and in turn profit from lies. This is not a new practice to Google - they haven't been able to gain market share in social space because Facebook and Twitter got there first (of who did it well), and it's seriously injuring their currently. They are desperately trying to change that with Google+ but they know they're unable to do so because they weren't there at the right time. Google is also facing serious competition in Russia, China, South Korea and a few other countries where local search engines have the largest market share and Google is unable to compete as again, they weren't there at the right time.
Google has a long history of scraping other websites and then dropping them lower in search in favor of their own sites. They have been doing this for ages with hotels, restaurants and similar information. They're also trying to do it with flights information. All of these practices will net Google enemies and most likely antitrust issues. But Google doesn't care - they know how important timing is and they will abuse their position whenever they can to get there. It's a long term goal and Google has managed to get the position where no one can really touch them even if they misbehave. Seriously, they were also found out polluting search engines with paid links. After that they blame someone else and try to seem like a good guy. The most hilarious thing is that most geeks believe them just because they use open source (while ironically their products are all proprietary).
And note that this isn't just Google's Kenyan office misbehaving. They also received calls from Google's Indian call centers engaging in similar practices, so this is a practice accepted from Google's HQ.
On top of that, EPIC has said they will try to get antitrust investigation into Google's introduction of Google+ into search results. People are finally starting to wake up to see how bad Google is and how it abuses other companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever you read a story like this, the first question you have to ask is whether it looks like a part of a smear campaign by Microsoft
Yes. Whenever you hear someone doing bad things, of course the most logical thing to do is to question if it's a smear campaign by Microsoft!
It is illegal and defined as fraud in both Kenya and USA.
That would practically need that EVERY software on the planet need to be rewritten and made to use client-server structure. That isn't feasible, and is never going to happen. On top of that it would just slow down programs, too.
NAT isn't a security solution, it just enables multiple devices to share one public ip.
Oh seriously, are we now going the route of "but someone hijacked Google's ip!". There is other evidence in the article, too, and there is absolutely no reason to believe it wasn't really Google doing it. Apart from someone having personal disbelief in Google doing evil things.
Google does sell domains and hosting. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/domain.html
Please no, programs can actually be quite complicated. They aren't like web servers which you configure and leave running. Making them GUI-less will just complicate things and make it much harder to use. There's a reason we use GUI's now a days - it's better for some stuff.
Branch offices have their own budgets and discretionary spending. Maybe it was Eric Schmidt himself who told them to do this. But we really have no way of knowing, and it's a simpler explanation that one or a few employees were engaged in taking shortcuts than that Google corporate issues orders to branch offices which involve instructions to illegally misrepresent a business relationship.
So Google can do whatever they wish and it's not evil as long as it's not directly coming from Eric Schmidt? In many countries it's also common practice to bribe officials and government for better business deals and to get away from trouble. Would it be ok for Google branch to do that? Would it be evil? What about if the common practice in the country was to have slaves and those not wanting to work were shot. Since it's common practice, that doesn't make it evil for Google?
Yes, it's easy to install X11 on a Linux server - but it's also generally a stupid thing to do, security-wise, if your server is internet-facing.
And why is that? Your home linux desktop is internet-facing too. Just because it's housing in datacenter doesn't mean it's suddenly much more insecure. Servers aren't used just for hosting Apache, you know.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Care to elaborate or are you just trolling? I have many Windows-based servers that only run GUI programs. I have a quite bad connection so I can't run those at home, and I also like to close my laptop when I'm not working. I also know hundreds of people with the same kind of setup.
Also, you haven't needed to use GUI for everything. PowerShell is really powerful shell for Windows, even more powerful than you have on Linux, as it passes objects between commands and programs, not just text.
Have you even read the article? It was a huge operation and on some days they manually scraped and called over 2500 businesses. No single employee can do that. And there was also other Google branches involved, like Google India.
Often Windows servers are also used to run actual programs with GUI's, like you do on your home computer. Having them on server means you have access to much better bandwidth and your programs can run 24/7, and you can easily deploy more servers if you need to. If GUI's are completely removed then you would need to run desktop version of Windows on a server, which is far from ideal. Servers aren't just used for web servers and things like that, they are also used for supporting programs or having a remote location. Windows server with RDP works really well for that. Even Linux servers can have GUI, as it's easy to install X11 and some desktop environment.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- theyÃ(TM)d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
If you go by that logic then it's probably ok for you that Google bribes polices and officials where it's more common (hello, Russia and USA) and there is nothing wrong with that? If it was socially tolerated to have slaves and killing other human beings was lawful in the country, there would be nothing evil about Google branch doing so too?
Oh please, you really want to defend Google's fraud on small companies? Google as a whole is responsible for what the company does. This was outright fraud by Google and they need to be called upon it and not defend that it was just Google Kenya + Google India doing it.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- theyâ(TM)d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
So if Google creates single department that does all their evil stuff, they're still not evil company? How far will you go to defend Google and not see through their bullshit?
Actually no, Google's Indian call centers are involved too, so this is obviously coming outside Google's Kenya's offices. On top of that, Google as the company is fully responsible for all their offices practices. You can't just point out that some other department did it.
It's not just some random blog, it's the company blog. But if you want to read it from some other source, here is TechCrunch.
Yes it is illegal in the US, and FTC should really look into Google's practices. Thankfully that is in the works, as privacy watchdog EPIC has complained to FTC and asked them to look into all of misbehaviors of Google.
This wasn't just misbehaving. What Google did was outright illegal. Not only did they falsely claim that they have business partnership with Mocality, they also claimed that Mocality is engaging in bait-and-switch practices to try and charge businesses up to $200 for their listing. Mocality said they have never charged businesses and never will.
Such blatant lies aren't just misbehavior, they are pure fraud. Google is trying to destroy their competitor in any way possible and in turn profit from lies. This is not a new practice to Google - they haven't been able to gain market share in social space because Facebook and Twitter got there first (of who did it well), and it's seriously injuring their currently. They are desperately trying to change that with Google+ but they know they're unable to do so because they weren't there at the right time. Google is also facing serious competition in Russia, China, South Korea and a few other countries where local search engines have the largest market share and Google is unable to compete as again, they weren't there at the right time.
Google has a long history of scraping other websites and then dropping them lower in search in favor of their own sites. They have been doing this for ages with hotels, restaurants and similar information. They're also trying to do it with flights information. All of these practices will net Google enemies and most likely antitrust issues. But Google doesn't care - they know how important timing is and they will abuse their position whenever they can to get there. It's a long term goal and Google has managed to get the position where no one can really touch them even if they misbehave. Seriously, they were also found out polluting search engines with paid links. After that they blame someone else and try to seem like a good guy. The most hilarious thing is that most geeks believe them just because they use open source (while ironically their products are all proprietary).
And note that this isn't just Google's Kenyan office misbehaving. They also received calls from Google's Indian call centers engaging in similar practices, so this is a practice accepted from Google's HQ.
On top of that, EPIC has said they will try to get antitrust investigation into Google's introduction of Google+ into search results. People are finally starting to wake up to see how bad Google is and how it abuses other companies.