Even further, people are really taking that particular paragraph too literally.
That particular paragraph, when it applies to their services, doesn't mean that you are giving them permission to take your stuff and put it up for the world to see and use. The reality is more complex, and has to do with computer technology and lawsuits. They're just protecting themselves, not trying to take ownership over the world.
Think of it this way... if you use Gmail and someone sends you an attachment and their virus checkers detect a virus in it and remove the attachment... essentially what they just did was they modified your property. You could sue them. Unless, of course, the EULA you agreed to gave them the right to adapt, modify, etc...
Furthermore, if you use Google Notebook, for instance... and you decide to publish one of your notebooks, you might then turn around and say it was an accident and sue them for making your private information available to the world.
So, they have two options... prompt you with legaleze with every button click, checkbox change, link click... OR, create an all-encompassing, all-powerful EULA that says, by using their services, you give them permission to do all of these things and to tweak the data around, manipulate it, publish it, etc... so that the service is convenient to use. That's why, at the end, it says:
"This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services..." It isn't for purposes of them owning the content and profiting from it, it's to give them the legal right to make these services available which might house and manipulate your data in ways that you prompt with your mouse and keyboard.
In any case, as most have pointed out, this EULA is for Google's services, not for the browser software.
Oh, I see. So if by "responding" you would also be satisfied with a "no, we're not going there"... then that's cool. I thought you meant "respond" by implementing something similar, but in a different way. Because, after all, if Google just kept implementing similar features to Yahoo, but in a different way... this would make Yahoo the leader and Google the follower... just in a different way.
What Google just needs to keep doing is what they have been doing. Let them make Yahoo think about copying them, but in a different way.
Gmail is for communications... from one person to the next... I don't need "events" scrolling at me. That's what a calendar is for. Now, if Google were to integrate Gmail and Calendar more, that would be great... but that's already in their plan. So, asking them to "respond" to Yahoo would either mean that Google's existing plan is already a response, not yet implemented... or that Google needs to change its plan to respond. Again, I think they should just keep doing what they are doing.
Why would we want Google to make Gmail's interface more like Yahoo's? Isn't the point of having competing companies to have a variety for us to all choose from? If they all just copy each other, we won't really have much of a choice but brand-name alone, and that's for middle-schoolers.
Actually, when they did the calculations as to how much several private jets would pollute the air versus a single 767 that could hold a lot more passengers at once, it was determined that the 767 was more efficient, less pollutant, etc... It's like taking a bus instead of several cars. Essentially, they are carpooling on a grand scale.
On a side note, the 767 has nothing to do with Google, per se... and more to do with the owners. If you are going to nitpick about the owners' personal lives to declare Google as being evil, you might as well just say all organizations (including non-profit organizations) are evil because all people, in general, are evil.
I think a lot of the "good arguments" that have been voiced are just recycled arguments that could also be used to suggest that using computers in general is a bad idea. We should go back to pen and paper and horse drawn carriages. Simpler times back then.
To be honest, the only valid argument I could make (that I haven't seen mentioned before) is that a hosted app has multiple points of failure in terms of network availability. If Google's servers go down, the service is unavailable. If any of the three or four Internet backbones between you and Google's servers has an issue, the service is down. If your own Internet access goes down, the service is down.
So, there are more things to possibly go wrong in that respect. However, all of these same arguments could also be said if you were trying to reach your company email from home.
The thing that keeps getting overlooked are the reasons WHY people are switching to Google Apps. They aren't switching because they just want to use some other system. They aren't switching because the price is so low (or free.) They aren't switching just because you can store a lot of data and search lightning fast. They are switching because there are collaboration and revision services. They aren't switching because it is accessible from all over the world with the same ease as accessing it from at work. They aren't switching because of the excellent spam filters. They're switching because of ALL of these.
It's a cost/benefit thing. Telling a Ferrari owner that a Hyundai is much more reliable is missing the point that the person probably doesn't own the Ferrari only for its reliability.
When Google Apps (as a service) is running well (which is the majority of the time,) it isn't just an alternative to software solutions. It is leaps and bounds beyond it. Gone are the days where people are emailing attachments to a group, trying to collaborate through a spreadsheet or specification in a Word Doc. Gone are the days where one must connect through a VPN first, then remote desktop to a machine, just to access certain files remotely. Gone are the days when admins have to stand over people's cubicle walls and say, "Do you know that you're using 10 gigs in your email? Can you please start clearing some stuff out, or we'll have to clear it for you."
When things aren't running so smoothly, and Google Apps is inaccessible, then you end up with a pretty good (but not amazing) set of software (thanks to Gears.) Thankfully, this is very rare.
But again, if you're ok with the software you're currently using and the price you are currently paying, there is absolutely no reason to switch. This shouldn't be a case about Hyundai owners trying to get Ferrari owners to switch to Hyundais and Ferrari owners trying to get Hyundai owners to switch to Ferraris. Everyone should use the software and services they are comfortable with.
I just don't understand that instead of someone saying "it's just not for us at this time" they instead talk about the impending doom that is just around the corner. In reality, there is simply a technology shift taking place... but it's still happening. For a time, it's still ok for VHS owners to keep hanging onto their VHS collection while DVDs start flooding the market. For a time, it is still ok for those with black and white televisions to hang onto them a while longer even though color televisions have been out for a while. They're nothing wrong with diversity, taste, and opinion.
The time has not come yet where those who are still using local software are out-of-touch. We're still a long way from that. But there is a certain personality type known as the innovators. The early adopters who are willing to take the risks needed to gain the bigger rewards. Sure there are some learning curves to deal with and the growing pains. But in the end, the innovators consider these as worthwhile costs to justify the end result. Eventually the time will come where the late adopters will be paying money to the early adopters to help them make the switch. To make their VCR stop flashing "12:00" so-to-speak.
So your systems were also accessible from the outside, could return searches across gigs of data in a fraction of a second, and allowed simultaneous collaboration between authenticated users?
That's awesome. Why don't you just start competing with Google, then? Seems like it would be much more profitable and more beneficial to society then just talking about it online.
Well, that's like saying that when there was an issue of food poisoning with jalapenos from Mexico, you ate a raw one and had no problems, then tell everyone that they're just being silly.
Just because YOU haven't experienced this problem doesn't mean OTHERS haven't.
Likewise, when this Google Apps problem occurred, I never noticed it. I guess that during the down-times, I didn't need to check my email at that moment. Just because I didn't notice it, I'm not going to suggest that the countless others who have posted about it were not affected.
Like-wise, maybe you haven't had any bad luck with the setups you have experienced. That's great. Keep doing what you're doing. In the meantime, the countless others who are reporting about their experiences are just stating the facts as THEY experience them.
Our company has built an in-house facility with gas-powered generators for power backup, lots of redundancy, battery backups, etc, etc... Everything was running fine. There were occasional hiccups, though. Sometimes it was a piece of hardware that was going bad. Sometimes it was an admin making a goof in a config. Each time a problem would happen, the management would consider putting it all in a colocation facility.
There just happened to be one down the street from us, so we started moving everything into the co-lo. One day, there was a problem at the co-lo facility. We headed over there to find out what the issue was. There was an eviction notice on the door, and the door was unlocked. Needless to say, we got our stuff out of there and never looked back.
Could we have gone with a much more expensive co-lo facility to ensure that it was a company that would stick around forever? Sure. But then our equipment would have been a 3 hour drive away.
Sometimes, the unexpected happens. The power goes out and THAT is when you find out there is a problem with one of the many UPS battery backups. The diesel generator kicks on, but it's too late, and part of a rack has already lost power. It turns out this rack has a main router on it, preventing anything from working correctly. Once you restore power, you find out that the router just didn't come up all the way. Is there a problem with the config? Did something fry it? Admins are scrambling around trying to figure it out. In the meantime, the only alternative solution is to purchase a $30k replacement which can't be bought at your local Office Depot. At best, you could have one overnight. Then, it turns out, there isn't enough money left in the budget for it. Does this make sense? No. But sometimes corporate politics never make sense.
In a nutshell, stuff happens. Sometimes, some people never have to experience this type of stuff. That's great. In the meantime, to all of those who repeatedly deal with this stuff, Google Apps is a great alternative. It's a matter of "set it and forget it" and on the occasion when it DOES go down, while you may feel a little lost sometimes, you can know that Google's engineers are hard at work resolving the issue. Maybe they are trying to find a $30k router in the middle of the night at Office Depot.
I don't think you are missing the huge economic advantages. Instead, I think you are missing the technological advancements that have been made. I use Google Apps and many other hosted services/apps.
When my network goes down, or I am completely disconnected from the Internet, I am still able to use these hosted apps just fine. Applications such as Gears (previously known as Google Gears) make this possible. Every bit of functionality of the app... the hosted code... the data (including all of my hosted files) are stored locally in a local store and local database on all of my machines that I work from. When I lose connection on any given machine (or all of them,) I can continue to do my work. All of my changes are stored locally and then when my network access is restored, the changes are synched in "the cloud"... and these changes are further synced back to all of the other machines I work from.
Using DropBox, I am also able to do this with files. I can drop a file in my DropBox at work... and later, when I am at home, I can access this same file, even if I am not connected to the Internet... without needing to use a USB memory stick or email files to myself.
The picture you are painting is how things were a year or two ago. It's time to catch up to now.
I'd be interested in reading the statement from Google that said "what they have is good enough," or was that just an assumption or opinion on your part?
Anything I have read that came from Google said that they don't think this is acceptable and are taking steps to be sure that this problem gets resolved for the long-term.
That makes little to no sense. It sounds to me that, in general, you are just second-guessing using technology at all.
Think about it.
Imagine there was some sort of known flaw in Outlook, Exchange, or some other email-based application. Then, imagine this flaw came at a terrible time for you, right when you were dealing with an important client.
Would your response be, "It's a stupid problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. This one niggling little incident is making me rethink software."?
Again, it isn't the fact that it is a "hosted app" that has caused this problem. It's a bug or a design flaw, that ANY piece of software could be prone to, and isn't just limited to the idea of hosted apps.
The only types of flaws that one could attribute specifically to "hosted apps" are service-level down-times. However, these could always be compared to service-level down-times when running servers on an internal network. Google Apps have had fewer network problems in its entire lifetime than our internal network has suffered for the past two weeks.
The part that is being misunderstood is simply this. Instead of just complaining about Google Apps... compare it to the alternatives.
How many companies rely on Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Exchange Server? When you offer an application or suite to the whole nation or WORLD, and campaign for its use - then YES, you do need to keep a very near-0 downtime to be really successful.
Except, Microsoft Exchange (while often reliable) does have its moments. Sometimes, just from getting clogged by tons of spam, it can come to a crawl. The server can become unavailable to do network issues. Microsoft Outlook has a tendency to run slowly on some machines, or crash regularly. Expecting ANYTHING that uses computers to work 100% perfectly all of the time, although desirable, is completely unrealistic.
I don't think the people here are saying "expect downtime and just deal with it." What is really being said is, "when MS Exchange goes down... or there are internal network hiccups... or when Outlook locks up on your machine... complain loudly on the Internet instead of to your local admin... that way, the world can get a real comparison between Google Apps and the alternative."
The only reason Google Apps seems like the "bad one" here is because people go posting on blogs and news sites about it. Why? Because it's news... it's rare... it's not what people expect of Google. When Exchange server craps out, Outlook locks up, your computer gets a blue-screen-of-death, a hard drive goes bad, a router needs restarting, power goes out to the building, a UPS battery goes bad, etc, etc, etc... nobody bothers posting this on blogs or news sites because, well, it's an every-day occurrence... it's not exactly news.
Then, when you compare systems that are "always up and available 24/7, can be easily accessed from outside of the company without a complicated VPN, have admins that don't gripe if they are taking up dozens of gigs of storage, with the capability of searching through millions of emails in a fraction of a second" to Google Apps... you'll likely notice that these other systems (with you take into account the cost of the servers, routers, admin hours, electricity, software, etc) cost much much more than $50/year per user.
What's happening here is people are comparing Apples to Orangutans and are creating unrealistic expectations. If these companies really have that much cash to just waste on something they have been brainwashed into thinking is perfect, then they're next likely step in these economic times is to lay off some of their admins because, after all, why do you need admins if the systems are perfect?
Maybe I'd want to think about this one longer (days, weeks, months) before formulating a solid opinion, but my knee-jerk reaction regarding the Blizzard issue is... that's ok. Let this cost the consumer more for bandwidth... BUT, let the consumer know WHAT is causing the extra bandwidth.
Imagine, for instance, I pay monthly for phone service. Then, I see a 900 number I can call. I will know that the 900 number will cost me extra... so I make my decision whether or not to call that number based on whether or not I want to pay extra.
If people see that Blizzard's techniques start using more and more of their bandwidth, costing them more and more money, either people will accept it... or they will leave in droves, forcing Blizzard to re-think their strategy.
So, I feel that ISPs SHOULD be able to charge people for what they USE... but SHOULD be transparent in this usage and what is causing it, so that consumers can make educated decisions.
Back in the dial-up days, when AOL used to charge per-minute, they ultimately switched to a monthly rate. This was done for two reasons. One was simplicity. If I am going to be worried about how many minutes I might use and what it might cost me, I might be less inclined to use the service... resulting in less money for AOL. The second reason was to play the game of statistics. If 80% of the users only used AOL for an hour per month, then they could over-charge these users... in order to offset those who used AOL 150 hours per month.
Of course, AOL would always run into the statistical anomaly problems where more and more people may start using their service more and more... but sometimes playing the games of statistics works out ok, as long as you use a proper model for forecasting and prediction.
Applying this to ISPs today... I don't believe we necessarily need to move to a model where we are all paying for our exact usage. But maybe there could be various cap amounts. I can pay more per month to allow my maximum capacity to be bumped up. In a way, this is how it is now... so why would the ISPs need to change anything?
It seems to me that ISPs are claiming there is a problem where a problem doesn't actually exist. Perhaps they used a poor prediction or forecasting model. I don't see how that is a consumer problem, but is an ISP problem. If they are then saying that their current rates are making them go bankrupt, then maybe they need to figure out how to do things more cheaply than the just keep using the same old non-innovative methods and charge its users a rate to make up for their archaic network.
The last mile is the problem. Cable companies already build the cables to people's homes years ago. Phone companies already built the wires to people's homes years ago. So, everything they are doing wrong is in the back-end. If someone could inexpensively solve the last mile problem (without having to compete with the cable and phone company cables and wires,) we'd have a whole lot more competition. And then the world would finally see just how cheaply broadband Internet access CAN be.
Maybe you missed the point of the tool. It isn't just about Google giving us a tool to see if our bandwidth is limited or unlimited. It's about whether the ISP is choosing which traffic to throttle differently than other traffic.
For instance, since YouTube is more popular than Google Video, imagine if videos streamed through YouTube were throttled to stream more slowly than videos throttled through Google Video. This would help the ISPs out immensely, but would also make it appear as though Google Video is the better place to host and view videos than through YouTube.
This would be unfair to the two services, as it would make one service appear better than another... and the control would be entirely in the hands of the ISP.
Taking this further, ISPs could then start charging money to website providers. The higher payers would get less (or no) throttling.
Ultimately, if you were a Joe Schmoe trying to create a new startup website and didn't have the money to shovel out to ISPs for this... you could put a lot of money into the infrastructure of your site, but could never guarantee that your site would be as responsive as other sites through any given ISP. This could mean that your project never gets widely adopted... by no fault of your own.
This is the heart of the Net Neutrality debate. Not whether or not ISPs are allowed to charge for bandwidth, or allowed to cap bandwidth based on price paid.
Using the BitTorrent example, which is a true case of this happening. If they had only been throttling the bandwidth of their customers across the board, there wouldn't have been such an issue. Instead, they were specifically targeting BitTorrent traffic. Suddenly, it would seem that BitTorrent software is a whole lot less useful... and people would seek out alternatives, hurting the BitTorrent project and making way for a competing service or product.
Now, since there isn't exactly an entity that profits off of BitTorrent, this doesn't seem like an issue... but once it starts affecting for-profit organizations, it's a huge problem.
It would be no different than if your local cable company decided to insert some static and graininess to the NBC and CBS channels, but send the ABC channel through crystal clear. If this happened, there would be a huge uproar... but it also wouldn't exactly compare... because television wasn't designed so that any Joe Schmoe could become a broadcaster of his own television station. The Internet was. So, to keep the spirit of that alive, the Internet must remain neutral. The Joe Schmoes of the world need to be given the same treatment as the Googles of the world in terms of unfettered access to their sites.
I think it's because some people consider shrewd business deals to be "evil"... What defines "evil" and "not evil" could be a long debate, and often results in blood-shed.
Google's definition of "evil" and "not evil" is based on "is this good for the customer or bad for the customer"? So, for instance, Google could make a move to squash their competition... and this business move might be seen as "evil"... but in the end, if this was done by providing something both useful and free to customers, they consider it to be "not evil."
The real reason Google is pro Net Neutrality goes much further than just YouTube. If you imagine YouTube BEFORE Google bought it... it was once a "start-up"... the environment in which it was built was necessary. If there are huge barriers to entering a market which might require lots of bandwidth, fewer and fewer start-ups will enter this market. Google is primarily a search engine. The bigger the Internet is, the bigger their index is, and the more useful (and necessary) their service becomes. Also, the more start-ups with marketing budgets, the more Google will earn by providing ads.
So first and foremost, Google wants the Internet to grow and grow and grow... at the rate of innovation... while their reasons may be self-serving, their desire for an open Internet is aligned with the common person.
So, while some may think Google is "evil" simply because they are in the business of competing with other businesses, they can also be seen as "not evil" because they want what is best for everyone... regardless of their reasoning.
There's a difference. If Microsoft bought Yahoo!, it would be monopolistic. If Microsoft made an exclusive deal with Yahoo!, it would be monopolistic. If Microsoft made a NON-EXCLUSIVE deal with Yahoo!, it wouldn't be monopolistic.
In this case, Yahoo! made a NON-EXCLUSIVE deal with Google. This isn't monopolistic. Google also has a number of different deals with AOL. Google and Yahoo once had various deals with each other. Google also has a deal with Mozilla. Businesses do deals all the time, but yet they compete strongly.
Look at Google and eBay. There is a lot of competition going on there, when it comes to PayPal and Google Checkout. Yet, eBay continues to shovel tons of money towards Google. Why? Because it is beneficial to them. They need advertising, Google provides advertising.
Do a search on Google for the word "search"... chances are you will see an advertisement for live.com. So, Microsoft is also shoveling tons of money towards Google.
This isn't Yahoo! buying Google and this isn't Google buying Yahoo!. Google and Yahoo! are merely striking a deal. Yahoo! will feature Google ads in their search. Yahoo!'s search engine will still be powered by their own algorithms. They won't lose (or gain) search share as a result. They'll just make more money in advertising.
Google and Yahoo! will also be working to get their IM clients to work together. This can only benefit the web community at large.
It is also a non-exclusive deal, which basically means Yahoo! can strike similar agreements with whomever they choose, even Microsoft.
It DOES make Yahoo! less attractive as a BUYOUT option for Microsoft, because this would mean that Microsoft would be buying something which benefits Google, which probably wouldn't sit well with the way Microsoft does business. However, it does nothing to dilute Yahoo!'s role in the market, nor Google's role in the market. It simply gives Yahoo! more money to compete with.
And then there is the problem of perception. Everyone can talk about trusting Google, but that trust only needs to go so far. Google doesn't provide the information, they only make the information easier to find.
So, I think the underlying question should be "Is The Internet Making Us Stupid?" Just because Google is the more popular way to search the Internet doesn't make Google THE Internet.
I think everyone is stuck on the "Gmail" part and thinking "gmail.com" or "googlemail.com". What Dreamhost is suggesting ISN'T for people to use those domains, but to use their own domains. Only, instead of pointing the MX records of their domains at Dreamhosts email servers, to point them at Google's email servers.
With this being said, who do you expect to screw up more often? Dreamhost? Your webhost? Or Google? If you trust your own webhost or Dreamhost more than Google, by all means stick with what you trust. But so far, Google has had a pretty good track record for uptime, reliability and general service level.
You say that "[you] are stuck if Google or Yahoo screw up". How so? Would you not also be "stuck" if your webhost screws up? If Google screws up, then just point your domain elsewhere. In this sense, it just makes Google like any other webhost (when it comes to an email system.) The difference is, Google shows ads in the webmail interface and, as a result, their service is free. Others don't show ads and charge monthly. Others insert ads into your emails, which is absolutely terrible in my opinion. This is why I will stick with Google for my email and IMAP for my method of retrieving and reading my email.
Again, it still seems this is being misunderstood. The ads are labels as ads, so the only "implicit" mixing of advertising/content it causes is for those who don't understand what the word "advertisement" means. Secondly, in most cases, the ad banner is not in the way of anything in the video. I have seen it in action a number of times, and if two people are talking in the video... or there is some Diet Coke being sprayed high in the air... etc... it is still completely visible and, at worst, the people's feet are covered by the ad. And if THIS is the case, and the ad IS in the way, it has a close button. You don't need to "fast forward" and miss actual video... you just click the close button on the ad, and it goes away.
It sounds to me that people will complain no matter what. Everyone thinks everything should be exactly as THEY would like things to be, and yet nobody is willing to do anything about it. If you think there is a better way to do it... then start your own media company and implement ads the way you think they should be, and change the world. Just complaining about the world the way it is, but not lifting a finger to make positive changes in the world yourself, it just bitter.
As for the prior art... this is often already the case. In this particular patent, there is a lot of prior art here and there... but all of it taken as a whole is new. That is why patents often refer to other patents. Patents don't need to be 100% new... they just need to be new enough to be unique. If you just refer to the patent as "a banner at the bottom of a view" then certainly you missed all of the other words and diagrams.
Didn't anyone read the patent? The ad doesn't fill the entire screen space. The ad is a thin banner along the bottom of the screen. The video will continue to play uninterrupted. If the banner is in the way of anything, you can click a close button to make it go away. If you are interested in the ad, and click the banner, the video will be paused and you will see the full version of the ad. Once you stop interacting with the ad, you will be returned to the video which will continue to play where you left off. This isn't a whole lot different than those banner ads that already appear across the bottom of the screen on NBC or MTV, etc... except for the fact that you can make them go away, can close them, and are given a fair warning when one is going to appear.
I hear you. It is definitely not a good personality trait. I also think it is not a very good personality trait for someone to look down on me because I happen to drive a pickup truck, while they scoot around in their Prius "saving the world." Regardless of this, whether they look down on me... or I look down on them... it's all a waste of negative energy and a non-productive attitude in general.
You see, I think the reason people don't do many selfless things as a primary reason for doing something, and why they prance around saying "look at me" when they do anything that could remotely be connected with something beneficial for the masses, is because there is so much negativity in the world against our fellow neighbors that truly good acts go mostly unnoticed.
I have been around people who are truly selfless... who truly perform acts that have no side-benefits for themselves... and I have noticed that, in time, they begin to become as pompous as the extremely wealthy. What I have found is that they learn absolutely nothing from negative words... in fact, it only encourages them to defend themselves more by doing even more chest thumping. What they do learn from, however, are positive words... or positive examples. If they see someone else give to charity, for instance, but keep quiet about it, they learn from this example. Unfortunately, this type of humble silence gets drowned out by the "me too"s.
So, the truth of the matter is, the truly helpful are rarely seen. The pompous, by design, are virtually the only ones heard. But in the end, whether good intentioned or not, a lot of good is still being done. If we remove our own emotions from the equations, and use only pure logic and wisdom, we would see that a lot of good is being done, period. The fact that people boast about it, or not... or the fact that some do more good than others... would all be irrelevant, because the only useful fact is that good is being done.
If we lift each other up for the good work we ARE doing, then maybe we would all be encouraged to continue doing good work... and maybe, just maybe, there will be less of a need for chest-thumping because the good acts won't go unnoticed.
While I was much more wordy about it, I believe we both agree that being humble about our good deeds, or not lying about our primary intentions, is a good example to follow. But I think if we focus less on the personality flaws of individuals or the design flaws of organizations, and pay more attention to the beneficial outcome of those individuals or organizations, the world as a whole would be in a much better place.
If you say that no actions made by the US (or any government for that matter) are selfless or benevolent, then it goes without saying, right? In other words, why should there be a need to put a disclaimer that groups of people have a natural tendency towards evil if this is already common sense? Shouldn't the actual results be more important than the intent? Like, for instance, let's say if someone donates money they get a tax break. One might say that the real intent by the person is to get a tax break, not because they are being selfless. However, should the intent really matter? The end result is that the person donated money when they otherwise may not have. Sure, it would be a nice fairy tale notion that people could collectively be a lot more selfless, but if it is already common knowledge that this isn't the case, why is there a need to point this out with every statement? Let's not focus so much on the intent or primary purposes... and focus more on the positive benefits... unless, of course, the primary purposes are so bad that it makes the positive benefit not worth it.
I don't know why you think Google Gears is abandoned. It's new and it's a tool for developers to use (or not.) Many people have been using Google Gears to take their applications offline, but most of these are virtually unheard of experiments. In the meantime, Google is working to take their applications offline using Google Gears... the only reason it's taking a long time is because they actually spend 70% of their time on search, which leaves less room for their other ventures.
Not sure why you think Google Video just stole some technology from YouTube. In reality, both of these were distinct in their own ways before Google bought YouTube. Then, Google did something different with Google Video. You can go to YouTube and upload videos... or, you can go to Google Video and search for videos from multiple places. Just as Google News aggregates new from all over the web, Google Video aggregates video from all over the web (YouTube included.)
I still use Google Talk every day and have abandoned all other IM clients for it. Its strength is that it does not have bloat. I used to use Trillian, but it became much to bloated. Then, I tried GAIM. One after another, I kept getting frustrated with the bloat and instability of these applications. It serves its purpose. If you want more and more features to be constantly released, then perhaps you are looking for bloat... which I would recommend Trillian (I hear they've got a new version that is renamed to something else.)
Google Pack, I will admit, feels stalled, so I agree with you. New applications haven't been added to it in a while. Some might argue that this is intentional... again, it's another application that is avoiding "bloat." Personally, I think it is ALREADY bloated. So, why not just keep going? Also, when there are new released for an application, it seems to take a while for Google Pack to catch up.
Google Accelerator also seems quite abandoned. To be honest with you, I'm not sure what else they could do to "enhance it" without bloating something that is supposed to go unnoticed (except for making things faster.) In any case, I have a problem with it from time to time and must disable it. After a while of doing this, I have disabled it permanently. It's probably just something that nobody needs. It was meant to speed up broadband... but if you already have broadband, you probably won't notice small increases of speed. These days, it seems it is the computers that are the bottlenecks.
Google found that most product-related searches were performed on Google, rather than users specifically visiting a shopping comparison site. So, Google Universal Search took care of this. Google Product Search still exists... but not as an initial destination, but as an enhancement to the standard Google Search. Search for something product related, and it will find products for you. I will admit, it would be nice if they went further with wish lists and the like, rather than letting the existing system remain stagnant.
Orkut is changing almost weekly, and it is being used quite a bit. It just happens to be more popular in certain regions more than others. Why does something have to be super popular in the U.S. or the U.K. for it to be taken seriously? There is a much larger world outside.
Picasa is also getting regular updates, has photo sharing online, and gets plenty of regular use by the community. Google doesn't need to completely dethrone the other photo hosting sites to maintain a hold in this market. There is usually enough room for several players.
Blogger had a massive change, then seemed to slow down. However, it is regularly used... not sure why you consider it to be abandoned. Sometimes the lack of change is a good thing. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
SketchUp is used by plenty of people, but this is more of an offline thing. You would have no idea how many people were (or weren't) using it unless you were a fly on the wall. In the meantime, they have been making regular
So, if someone invented a pill. And this pill, when taken, would cure any ailment or disease with a 100% success rate. And then, upon trying to sell this pill to the people in China, the Chinese government insisted that they would only allow the pill into the country if it were reformulated in a specific manner. However, upon reformulating the pill to abide by the Chinese government's rules, the pill only has a success rate of 80%. Should that person, in protest, decide not to introduce the pill into the Chinese market? Would it be considered "evil" to introduce a potentially life-saving pill with a 80% success rate, but "good" to keep that pill out of the hands of the Chinese people?
Furthermore, imagine you now had the original pill and the reformulated one. Then, you introduced BOTH of these pills into the Chinese market. The reformulated one was the official one. The original one, with the 100% success rate, you made available to anyone in China who dared try to seek out this "black market" pill. Does this not eliminate some, if not all, of the supposed "evil-ness"?
It boggles my mind that everyone is quick to point out that Google released a Chinese-branded website in China (Google.cn) that automatically removes links that are being blocked by the governmental firewall (in other words, it simply eliminates otherwise broken links)... and they call this "evil"... but they fail to remind anyone that Google.com is still UNCENSORED in China. I fail to see that the way Google needed to be "good" was to only maintain a broken and difficult to use search engine in China, but that by providing BOTH... the broken and difficult to use (but uncensored) search engine... AND the completely working (but censored) search engine... that this somehow places them an evil scale by which Yahoo and Microsoft are barely even mentioned.
As for the health-care issue... it's just marketing. Is it evil to try to sell a service, or evil to try to make money? Perhaps the real issue is that "evil" is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes.
At the same time, claiming the French aren't incompetent or cowardly based on the achievements of one man 200 years ago is missing the point. Maybe 200 years ago Americans would praise the military prowess of the French, but certainly not today.
I think the attitude of Americans towards the French has more to do with cultural differences. To most Americans, the behavior of the French (either when someone from France is visiting America, or someone from America is visiting France) is often rude and crude. Certainly, by taking the time to get to know someone who is French, you will see a decent person, even if the mannerisms and cultural views are very different. But, on the surface, when you don't know the person underneath, the perceived person that shows on the outside is often someone who is seen as lacking tact or decency.
Going back to complaints about military stature, I think it also has to do with the fact that Americans like to find humor in any weakness. I don't think this is a feature that is specific to America, but is shared throughout the world. When America gets a bad President, suddenly the world is looking down on the American Citizens, even though its own citizens aren't happy about the President either. When there are stereotypes that common Americans make fun of (within their own borders,) these become the stereotypes that the rest of the world paint as being "all Americans"... like the redneck stereotype... the John Wayne/Old-West stereotype... the surfer dude stereotype... or Keanu Reeves.
Again, America is so much of a melting pot of different cultures that it is very easy to poke fun at a collection of them and call it poking fun at "America"... so, I think this manifests itself in Americans finding something equally wrong with other cultures outside of its borders, and focusing on that. Whether it is the military of the French, the weird game shows of Japan, or the citizens of Mexico fleeing their country to enter America, it's all in good fun. Americans take a lot of crap and also dish out a lot to even the field.
Slashdot Mirror
Even further, people are really taking that particular paragraph too literally.
That particular paragraph, when it applies to their services, doesn't mean that you are giving them permission to take your stuff and put it up for the world to see and use. The reality is more complex, and has to do with computer technology and lawsuits. They're just protecting themselves, not trying to take ownership over the world.
Think of it this way... if you use Gmail and someone sends you an attachment and their virus checkers detect a virus in it and remove the attachment... essentially what they just did was they modified your property. You could sue them. Unless, of course, the EULA you agreed to gave them the right to adapt, modify, etc...
Furthermore, if you use Google Notebook, for instance... and you decide to publish one of your notebooks, you might then turn around and say it was an accident and sue them for making your private information available to the world.
So, they have two options... prompt you with legaleze with every button click, checkbox change, link click... OR, create an all-encompassing, all-powerful EULA that says, by using their services, you give them permission to do all of these things and to tweak the data around, manipulate it, publish it, etc... so that the service is convenient to use. That's why, at the end, it says:
"This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services..." It isn't for purposes of them owning the content and profiting from it, it's to give them the legal right to make these services available which might house and manipulate your data in ways that you prompt with your mouse and keyboard.
In any case, as most have pointed out, this EULA is for Google's services, not for the browser software.
Oh, I see. So if by "responding" you would also be satisfied with a "no, we're not going there"... then that's cool. I thought you meant "respond" by implementing something similar, but in a different way. Because, after all, if Google just kept implementing similar features to Yahoo, but in a different way... this would make Yahoo the leader and Google the follower... just in a different way.
What Google just needs to keep doing is what they have been doing. Let them make Yahoo think about copying them, but in a different way.
Gmail is for communications... from one person to the next... I don't need "events" scrolling at me. That's what a calendar is for. Now, if Google were to integrate Gmail and Calendar more, that would be great... but that's already in their plan. So, asking them to "respond" to Yahoo would either mean that Google's existing plan is already a response, not yet implemented... or that Google needs to change its plan to respond. Again, I think they should just keep doing what they are doing.
Why would we want Google to make Gmail's interface more like Yahoo's? Isn't the point of having competing companies to have a variety for us to all choose from? If they all just copy each other, we won't really have much of a choice but brand-name alone, and that's for middle-schoolers.
Actually, when they did the calculations as to how much several private jets would pollute the air versus a single 767 that could hold a lot more passengers at once, it was determined that the 767 was more efficient, less pollutant, etc... It's like taking a bus instead of several cars. Essentially, they are carpooling on a grand scale.
On a side note, the 767 has nothing to do with Google, per se... and more to do with the owners. If you are going to nitpick about the owners' personal lives to declare Google as being evil, you might as well just say all organizations (including non-profit organizations) are evil because all people, in general, are evil.
I think a lot of the "good arguments" that have been voiced are just recycled arguments that could also be used to suggest that using computers in general is a bad idea. We should go back to pen and paper and horse drawn carriages. Simpler times back then.
To be honest, the only valid argument I could make (that I haven't seen mentioned before) is that a hosted app has multiple points of failure in terms of network availability. If Google's servers go down, the service is unavailable. If any of the three or four Internet backbones between you and Google's servers has an issue, the service is down. If your own Internet access goes down, the service is down.
So, there are more things to possibly go wrong in that respect. However, all of these same arguments could also be said if you were trying to reach your company email from home.
The thing that keeps getting overlooked are the reasons WHY people are switching to Google Apps. They aren't switching because they just want to use some other system. They aren't switching because the price is so low (or free.) They aren't switching just because you can store a lot of data and search lightning fast. They are switching because there are collaboration and revision services. They aren't switching because it is accessible from all over the world with the same ease as accessing it from at work. They aren't switching because of the excellent spam filters. They're switching because of ALL of these.
It's a cost/benefit thing. Telling a Ferrari owner that a Hyundai is much more reliable is missing the point that the person probably doesn't own the Ferrari only for its reliability.
When Google Apps (as a service) is running well (which is the majority of the time,) it isn't just an alternative to software solutions. It is leaps and bounds beyond it. Gone are the days where people are emailing attachments to a group, trying to collaborate through a spreadsheet or specification in a Word Doc. Gone are the days where one must connect through a VPN first, then remote desktop to a machine, just to access certain files remotely. Gone are the days when admins have to stand over people's cubicle walls and say, "Do you know that you're using 10 gigs in your email? Can you please start clearing some stuff out, or we'll have to clear it for you."
When things aren't running so smoothly, and Google Apps is inaccessible, then you end up with a pretty good (but not amazing) set of software (thanks to Gears.) Thankfully, this is very rare.
But again, if you're ok with the software you're currently using and the price you are currently paying, there is absolutely no reason to switch. This shouldn't be a case about Hyundai owners trying to get Ferrari owners to switch to Hyundais and Ferrari owners trying to get Hyundai owners to switch to Ferraris. Everyone should use the software and services they are comfortable with.
I just don't understand that instead of someone saying "it's just not for us at this time" they instead talk about the impending doom that is just around the corner. In reality, there is simply a technology shift taking place... but it's still happening. For a time, it's still ok for VHS owners to keep hanging onto their VHS collection while DVDs start flooding the market. For a time, it is still ok for those with black and white televisions to hang onto them a while longer even though color televisions have been out for a while. They're nothing wrong with diversity, taste, and opinion.
The time has not come yet where those who are still using local software are out-of-touch. We're still a long way from that. But there is a certain personality type known as the innovators. The early adopters who are willing to take the risks needed to gain the bigger rewards. Sure there are some learning curves to deal with and the growing pains. But in the end, the innovators consider these as worthwhile costs to justify the end result. Eventually the time will come where the late adopters will be paying money to the early adopters to help them make the switch. To make their VCR stop flashing "12:00" so-to-speak.
So your systems were also accessible from the outside, could return searches across gigs of data in a fraction of a second, and allowed simultaneous collaboration between authenticated users?
That's awesome. Why don't you just start competing with Google, then? Seems like it would be much more profitable and more beneficial to society then just talking about it online.
Well, that's like saying that when there was an issue of food poisoning with jalapenos from Mexico, you ate a raw one and had no problems, then tell everyone that they're just being silly.
Just because YOU haven't experienced this problem doesn't mean OTHERS haven't.
Likewise, when this Google Apps problem occurred, I never noticed it. I guess that during the down-times, I didn't need to check my email at that moment. Just because I didn't notice it, I'm not going to suggest that the countless others who have posted about it were not affected.
Like-wise, maybe you haven't had any bad luck with the setups you have experienced. That's great. Keep doing what you're doing. In the meantime, the countless others who are reporting about their experiences are just stating the facts as THEY experience them.
Our company has built an in-house facility with gas-powered generators for power backup, lots of redundancy, battery backups, etc, etc... Everything was running fine. There were occasional hiccups, though. Sometimes it was a piece of hardware that was going bad. Sometimes it was an admin making a goof in a config. Each time a problem would happen, the management would consider putting it all in a colocation facility.
There just happened to be one down the street from us, so we started moving everything into the co-lo. One day, there was a problem at the co-lo facility. We headed over there to find out what the issue was. There was an eviction notice on the door, and the door was unlocked. Needless to say, we got our stuff out of there and never looked back.
Could we have gone with a much more expensive co-lo facility to ensure that it was a company that would stick around forever? Sure. But then our equipment would have been a 3 hour drive away.
Sometimes, the unexpected happens. The power goes out and THAT is when you find out there is a problem with one of the many UPS battery backups. The diesel generator kicks on, but it's too late, and part of a rack has already lost power. It turns out this rack has a main router on it, preventing anything from working correctly. Once you restore power, you find out that the router just didn't come up all the way. Is there a problem with the config? Did something fry it? Admins are scrambling around trying to figure it out. In the meantime, the only alternative solution is to purchase a $30k replacement which can't be bought at your local Office Depot. At best, you could have one overnight. Then, it turns out, there isn't enough money left in the budget for it. Does this make sense? No. But sometimes corporate politics never make sense.
In a nutshell, stuff happens. Sometimes, some people never have to experience this type of stuff. That's great. In the meantime, to all of those who repeatedly deal with this stuff, Google Apps is a great alternative. It's a matter of "set it and forget it" and on the occasion when it DOES go down, while you may feel a little lost sometimes, you can know that Google's engineers are hard at work resolving the issue. Maybe they are trying to find a $30k router in the middle of the night at Office Depot.
I don't think you are missing the huge economic advantages. Instead, I think you are missing the technological advancements that have been made. I use Google Apps and many other hosted services/apps.
When my network goes down, or I am completely disconnected from the Internet, I am still able to use these hosted apps just fine. Applications such as Gears (previously known as Google Gears) make this possible. Every bit of functionality of the app... the hosted code... the data (including all of my hosted files) are stored locally in a local store and local database on all of my machines that I work from. When I lose connection on any given machine (or all of them,) I can continue to do my work. All of my changes are stored locally and then when my network access is restored, the changes are synched in "the cloud"... and these changes are further synced back to all of the other machines I work from.
Using DropBox, I am also able to do this with files. I can drop a file in my DropBox at work... and later, when I am at home, I can access this same file, even if I am not connected to the Internet... without needing to use a USB memory stick or email files to myself.
The picture you are painting is how things were a year or two ago. It's time to catch up to now.
I'd be interested in reading the statement from Google that said "what they have is good enough," or was that just an assumption or opinion on your part?
Anything I have read that came from Google said that they don't think this is acceptable and are taking steps to be sure that this problem gets resolved for the long-term.
That makes little to no sense. It sounds to me that, in general, you are just second-guessing using technology at all.
Think about it.
Imagine there was some sort of known flaw in Outlook, Exchange, or some other email-based application. Then, imagine this flaw came at a terrible time for you, right when you were dealing with an important client.
Would your response be, "It's a stupid problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. This one niggling little incident is making me rethink software."?
Again, it isn't the fact that it is a "hosted app" that has caused this problem. It's a bug or a design flaw, that ANY piece of software could be prone to, and isn't just limited to the idea of hosted apps.
The only types of flaws that one could attribute specifically to "hosted apps" are service-level down-times. However, these could always be compared to service-level down-times when running servers on an internal network. Google Apps have had fewer network problems in its entire lifetime than our internal network has suffered for the past two weeks.
The part that is being misunderstood is simply this. Instead of just complaining about Google Apps... compare it to the alternatives.
How many companies rely on Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Exchange Server? When you offer an application or suite to the whole nation or WORLD, and campaign for its use - then YES, you do need to keep a very near-0 downtime to be really successful.
Except, Microsoft Exchange (while often reliable) does have its moments. Sometimes, just from getting clogged by tons of spam, it can come to a crawl. The server can become unavailable to do network issues. Microsoft Outlook has a tendency to run slowly on some machines, or crash regularly. Expecting ANYTHING that uses computers to work 100% perfectly all of the time, although desirable, is completely unrealistic.
I don't think the people here are saying "expect downtime and just deal with it." What is really being said is, "when MS Exchange goes down... or there are internal network hiccups... or when Outlook locks up on your machine... complain loudly on the Internet instead of to your local admin... that way, the world can get a real comparison between Google Apps and the alternative."
The only reason Google Apps seems like the "bad one" here is because people go posting on blogs and news sites about it. Why? Because it's news... it's rare... it's not what people expect of Google. When Exchange server craps out, Outlook locks up, your computer gets a blue-screen-of-death, a hard drive goes bad, a router needs restarting, power goes out to the building, a UPS battery goes bad, etc, etc, etc... nobody bothers posting this on blogs or news sites because, well, it's an every-day occurrence... it's not exactly news.
Then, when you compare systems that are "always up and available 24/7, can be easily accessed from outside of the company without a complicated VPN, have admins that don't gripe if they are taking up dozens of gigs of storage, with the capability of searching through millions of emails in a fraction of a second" to Google Apps... you'll likely notice that these other systems (with you take into account the cost of the servers, routers, admin hours, electricity, software, etc) cost much much more than $50/year per user.
What's happening here is people are comparing Apples to Orangutans and are creating unrealistic expectations. If these companies really have that much cash to just waste on something they have been brainwashed into thinking is perfect, then they're next likely step in these economic times is to lay off some of their admins because, after all, why do you need admins if the systems are perfect?
Maybe I'd want to think about this one longer (days, weeks, months) before formulating a solid opinion, but my knee-jerk reaction regarding the Blizzard issue is... that's ok. Let this cost the consumer more for bandwidth... BUT, let the consumer know WHAT is causing the extra bandwidth.
Imagine, for instance, I pay monthly for phone service. Then, I see a 900 number I can call. I will know that the 900 number will cost me extra... so I make my decision whether or not to call that number based on whether or not I want to pay extra.
If people see that Blizzard's techniques start using more and more of their bandwidth, costing them more and more money, either people will accept it... or they will leave in droves, forcing Blizzard to re-think their strategy.
So, I feel that ISPs SHOULD be able to charge people for what they USE... but SHOULD be transparent in this usage and what is causing it, so that consumers can make educated decisions.
Back in the dial-up days, when AOL used to charge per-minute, they ultimately switched to a monthly rate. This was done for two reasons. One was simplicity. If I am going to be worried about how many minutes I might use and what it might cost me, I might be less inclined to use the service... resulting in less money for AOL. The second reason was to play the game of statistics. If 80% of the users only used AOL for an hour per month, then they could over-charge these users... in order to offset those who used AOL 150 hours per month.
Of course, AOL would always run into the statistical anomaly problems where more and more people may start using their service more and more... but sometimes playing the games of statistics works out ok, as long as you use a proper model for forecasting and prediction.
Applying this to ISPs today... I don't believe we necessarily need to move to a model where we are all paying for our exact usage. But maybe there could be various cap amounts. I can pay more per month to allow my maximum capacity to be bumped up. In a way, this is how it is now... so why would the ISPs need to change anything?
It seems to me that ISPs are claiming there is a problem where a problem doesn't actually exist. Perhaps they used a poor prediction or forecasting model. I don't see how that is a consumer problem, but is an ISP problem. If they are then saying that their current rates are making them go bankrupt, then maybe they need to figure out how to do things more cheaply than the just keep using the same old non-innovative methods and charge its users a rate to make up for their archaic network.
The last mile is the problem. Cable companies already build the cables to people's homes years ago. Phone companies already built the wires to people's homes years ago. So, everything they are doing wrong is in the back-end. If someone could inexpensively solve the last mile problem (without having to compete with the cable and phone company cables and wires,) we'd have a whole lot more competition. And then the world would finally see just how cheaply broadband Internet access CAN be.
Maybe you missed the point of the tool. It isn't just about Google giving us a tool to see if our bandwidth is limited or unlimited. It's about whether the ISP is choosing which traffic to throttle differently than other traffic.
For instance, since YouTube is more popular than Google Video, imagine if videos streamed through YouTube were throttled to stream more slowly than videos throttled through Google Video. This would help the ISPs out immensely, but would also make it appear as though Google Video is the better place to host and view videos than through YouTube.
This would be unfair to the two services, as it would make one service appear better than another... and the control would be entirely in the hands of the ISP.
Taking this further, ISPs could then start charging money to website providers. The higher payers would get less (or no) throttling.
Ultimately, if you were a Joe Schmoe trying to create a new startup website and didn't have the money to shovel out to ISPs for this... you could put a lot of money into the infrastructure of your site, but could never guarantee that your site would be as responsive as other sites through any given ISP. This could mean that your project never gets widely adopted... by no fault of your own.
This is the heart of the Net Neutrality debate. Not whether or not ISPs are allowed to charge for bandwidth, or allowed to cap bandwidth based on price paid.
Using the BitTorrent example, which is a true case of this happening. If they had only been throttling the bandwidth of their customers across the board, there wouldn't have been such an issue. Instead, they were specifically targeting BitTorrent traffic. Suddenly, it would seem that BitTorrent software is a whole lot less useful... and people would seek out alternatives, hurting the BitTorrent project and making way for a competing service or product.
Now, since there isn't exactly an entity that profits off of BitTorrent, this doesn't seem like an issue... but once it starts affecting for-profit organizations, it's a huge problem.
It would be no different than if your local cable company decided to insert some static and graininess to the NBC and CBS channels, but send the ABC channel through crystal clear. If this happened, there would be a huge uproar... but it also wouldn't exactly compare... because television wasn't designed so that any Joe Schmoe could become a broadcaster of his own television station. The Internet was. So, to keep the spirit of that alive, the Internet must remain neutral. The Joe Schmoes of the world need to be given the same treatment as the Googles of the world in terms of unfettered access to their sites.
I think it's because some people consider shrewd business deals to be "evil"... What defines "evil" and "not evil" could be a long debate, and often results in blood-shed.
Google's definition of "evil" and "not evil" is based on "is this good for the customer or bad for the customer"? So, for instance, Google could make a move to squash their competition... and this business move might be seen as "evil"... but in the end, if this was done by providing something both useful and free to customers, they consider it to be "not evil."
The real reason Google is pro Net Neutrality goes much further than just YouTube. If you imagine YouTube BEFORE Google bought it... it was once a "start-up"... the environment in which it was built was necessary. If there are huge barriers to entering a market which might require lots of bandwidth, fewer and fewer start-ups will enter this market. Google is primarily a search engine. The bigger the Internet is, the bigger their index is, and the more useful (and necessary) their service becomes. Also, the more start-ups with marketing budgets, the more Google will earn by providing ads.
So first and foremost, Google wants the Internet to grow and grow and grow... at the rate of innovation... while their reasons may be self-serving, their desire for an open Internet is aligned with the common person.
So, while some may think Google is "evil" simply because they are in the business of competing with other businesses, they can also be seen as "not evil" because they want what is best for everyone... regardless of their reasoning.
Yeah, it's that whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" deal.
There's a difference. If Microsoft bought Yahoo!, it would be monopolistic. If Microsoft made an exclusive deal with Yahoo!, it would be monopolistic. If Microsoft made a NON-EXCLUSIVE deal with Yahoo!, it wouldn't be monopolistic.
In this case, Yahoo! made a NON-EXCLUSIVE deal with Google. This isn't monopolistic. Google also has a number of different deals with AOL. Google and Yahoo once had various deals with each other. Google also has a deal with Mozilla. Businesses do deals all the time, but yet they compete strongly.
Look at Google and eBay. There is a lot of competition going on there, when it comes to PayPal and Google Checkout. Yet, eBay continues to shovel tons of money towards Google. Why? Because it is beneficial to them. They need advertising, Google provides advertising.
Do a search on Google for the word "search"... chances are you will see an advertisement for live.com. So, Microsoft is also shoveling tons of money towards Google.
This isn't Yahoo! buying Google and this isn't Google buying Yahoo!. Google and Yahoo! are merely striking a deal. Yahoo! will feature Google ads in their search. Yahoo!'s search engine will still be powered by their own algorithms. They won't lose (or gain) search share as a result. They'll just make more money in advertising.
Google and Yahoo! will also be working to get their IM clients to work together. This can only benefit the web community at large.
It is also a non-exclusive deal, which basically means Yahoo! can strike similar agreements with whomever they choose, even Microsoft.
It DOES make Yahoo! less attractive as a BUYOUT option for Microsoft, because this would mean that Microsoft would be buying something which benefits Google, which probably wouldn't sit well with the way Microsoft does business. However, it does nothing to dilute Yahoo!'s role in the market, nor Google's role in the market. It simply gives Yahoo! more money to compete with.
And then there is the problem of perception. Everyone can talk about trusting Google, but that trust only needs to go so far. Google doesn't provide the information, they only make the information easier to find. So, I think the underlying question should be "Is The Internet Making Us Stupid?" Just because Google is the more popular way to search the Internet doesn't make Google THE Internet.
I think everyone is stuck on the "Gmail" part and thinking "gmail.com" or "googlemail.com". What Dreamhost is suggesting ISN'T for people to use those domains, but to use their own domains. Only, instead of pointing the MX records of their domains at Dreamhosts email servers, to point them at Google's email servers. With this being said, who do you expect to screw up more often? Dreamhost? Your webhost? Or Google? If you trust your own webhost or Dreamhost more than Google, by all means stick with what you trust. But so far, Google has had a pretty good track record for uptime, reliability and general service level. You say that "[you] are stuck if Google or Yahoo screw up". How so? Would you not also be "stuck" if your webhost screws up? If Google screws up, then just point your domain elsewhere. In this sense, it just makes Google like any other webhost (when it comes to an email system.) The difference is, Google shows ads in the webmail interface and, as a result, their service is free. Others don't show ads and charge monthly. Others insert ads into your emails, which is absolutely terrible in my opinion. This is why I will stick with Google for my email and IMAP for my method of retrieving and reading my email.
Again, it still seems this is being misunderstood. The ads are labels as ads, so the only "implicit" mixing of advertising/content it causes is for those who don't understand what the word "advertisement" means. Secondly, in most cases, the ad banner is not in the way of anything in the video. I have seen it in action a number of times, and if two people are talking in the video... or there is some Diet Coke being sprayed high in the air... etc... it is still completely visible and, at worst, the people's feet are covered by the ad. And if THIS is the case, and the ad IS in the way, it has a close button. You don't need to "fast forward" and miss actual video... you just click the close button on the ad, and it goes away. It sounds to me that people will complain no matter what. Everyone thinks everything should be exactly as THEY would like things to be, and yet nobody is willing to do anything about it. If you think there is a better way to do it... then start your own media company and implement ads the way you think they should be, and change the world. Just complaining about the world the way it is, but not lifting a finger to make positive changes in the world yourself, it just bitter. As for the prior art... this is often already the case. In this particular patent, there is a lot of prior art here and there... but all of it taken as a whole is new. That is why patents often refer to other patents. Patents don't need to be 100% new... they just need to be new enough to be unique. If you just refer to the patent as "a banner at the bottom of a view" then certainly you missed all of the other words and diagrams.
Didn't anyone read the patent? The ad doesn't fill the entire screen space. The ad is a thin banner along the bottom of the screen. The video will continue to play uninterrupted. If the banner is in the way of anything, you can click a close button to make it go away. If you are interested in the ad, and click the banner, the video will be paused and you will see the full version of the ad. Once you stop interacting with the ad, you will be returned to the video which will continue to play where you left off. This isn't a whole lot different than those banner ads that already appear across the bottom of the screen on NBC or MTV, etc... except for the fact that you can make them go away, can close them, and are given a fair warning when one is going to appear.
I hear you. It is definitely not a good personality trait. I also think it is not a very good personality trait for someone to look down on me because I happen to drive a pickup truck, while they scoot around in their Prius "saving the world." Regardless of this, whether they look down on me... or I look down on them... it's all a waste of negative energy and a non-productive attitude in general.
You see, I think the reason people don't do many selfless things as a primary reason for doing something, and why they prance around saying "look at me" when they do anything that could remotely be connected with something beneficial for the masses, is because there is so much negativity in the world against our fellow neighbors that truly good acts go mostly unnoticed.
I have been around people who are truly selfless... who truly perform acts that have no side-benefits for themselves... and I have noticed that, in time, they begin to become as pompous as the extremely wealthy. What I have found is that they learn absolutely nothing from negative words... in fact, it only encourages them to defend themselves more by doing even more chest thumping. What they do learn from, however, are positive words... or positive examples. If they see someone else give to charity, for instance, but keep quiet about it, they learn from this example. Unfortunately, this type of humble silence gets drowned out by the "me too"s.
So, the truth of the matter is, the truly helpful are rarely seen. The pompous, by design, are virtually the only ones heard. But in the end, whether good intentioned or not, a lot of good is still being done. If we remove our own emotions from the equations, and use only pure logic and wisdom, we would see that a lot of good is being done, period. The fact that people boast about it, or not... or the fact that some do more good than others... would all be irrelevant, because the only useful fact is that good is being done.
If we lift each other up for the good work we ARE doing, then maybe we would all be encouraged to continue doing good work... and maybe, just maybe, there will be less of a need for chest-thumping because the good acts won't go unnoticed.
While I was much more wordy about it, I believe we both agree that being humble about our good deeds, or not lying about our primary intentions, is a good example to follow. But I think if we focus less on the personality flaws of individuals or the design flaws of organizations, and pay more attention to the beneficial outcome of those individuals or organizations, the world as a whole would be in a much better place.
If you say that no actions made by the US (or any government for that matter) are selfless or benevolent, then it goes without saying, right? In other words, why should there be a need to put a disclaimer that groups of people have a natural tendency towards evil if this is already common sense? Shouldn't the actual results be more important than the intent? Like, for instance, let's say if someone donates money they get a tax break. One might say that the real intent by the person is to get a tax break, not because they are being selfless. However, should the intent really matter? The end result is that the person donated money when they otherwise may not have. Sure, it would be a nice fairy tale notion that people could collectively be a lot more selfless, but if it is already common knowledge that this isn't the case, why is there a need to point this out with every statement? Let's not focus so much on the intent or primary purposes... and focus more on the positive benefits... unless, of course, the primary purposes are so bad that it makes the positive benefit not worth it.
I don't know why you think Google Gears is abandoned. It's new and it's a tool for developers to use (or not.) Many people have been using Google Gears to take their applications offline, but most of these are virtually unheard of experiments. In the meantime, Google is working to take their applications offline using Google Gears... the only reason it's taking a long time is because they actually spend 70% of their time on search, which leaves less room for their other ventures.
Not sure why you think Google Video just stole some technology from YouTube. In reality, both of these were distinct in their own ways before Google bought YouTube. Then, Google did something different with Google Video. You can go to YouTube and upload videos... or, you can go to Google Video and search for videos from multiple places. Just as Google News aggregates new from all over the web, Google Video aggregates video from all over the web (YouTube included.)
I still use Google Talk every day and have abandoned all other IM clients for it. Its strength is that it does not have bloat. I used to use Trillian, but it became much to bloated. Then, I tried GAIM. One after another, I kept getting frustrated with the bloat and instability of these applications. It serves its purpose. If you want more and more features to be constantly released, then perhaps you are looking for bloat... which I would recommend Trillian (I hear they've got a new version that is renamed to something else.)
Google Pack, I will admit, feels stalled, so I agree with you. New applications haven't been added to it in a while. Some might argue that this is intentional... again, it's another application that is avoiding "bloat." Personally, I think it is ALREADY bloated. So, why not just keep going? Also, when there are new released for an application, it seems to take a while for Google Pack to catch up.
Google Accelerator also seems quite abandoned. To be honest with you, I'm not sure what else they could do to "enhance it" without bloating something that is supposed to go unnoticed (except for making things faster.) In any case, I have a problem with it from time to time and must disable it. After a while of doing this, I have disabled it permanently. It's probably just something that nobody needs. It was meant to speed up broadband... but if you already have broadband, you probably won't notice small increases of speed. These days, it seems it is the computers that are the bottlenecks.
Google found that most product-related searches were performed on Google, rather than users specifically visiting a shopping comparison site. So, Google Universal Search took care of this. Google Product Search still exists... but not as an initial destination, but as an enhancement to the standard Google Search. Search for something product related, and it will find products for you. I will admit, it would be nice if they went further with wish lists and the like, rather than letting the existing system remain stagnant.
Orkut is changing almost weekly, and it is being used quite a bit. It just happens to be more popular in certain regions more than others. Why does something have to be super popular in the U.S. or the U.K. for it to be taken seriously? There is a much larger world outside.
Picasa is also getting regular updates, has photo sharing online, and gets plenty of regular use by the community. Google doesn't need to completely dethrone the other photo hosting sites to maintain a hold in this market. There is usually enough room for several players.
Blogger had a massive change, then seemed to slow down. However, it is regularly used... not sure why you consider it to be abandoned. Sometimes the lack of change is a good thing. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
SketchUp is used by plenty of people, but this is more of an offline thing. You would have no idea how many people were (or weren't) using it unless you were a fly on the wall. In the meantime, they have been making regular
So, if someone invented a pill. And this pill, when taken, would cure any ailment or disease with a 100% success rate. And then, upon trying to sell this pill to the people in China, the Chinese government insisted that they would only allow the pill into the country if it were reformulated in a specific manner. However, upon reformulating the pill to abide by the Chinese government's rules, the pill only has a success rate of 80%. Should that person, in protest, decide not to introduce the pill into the Chinese market? Would it be considered "evil" to introduce a potentially life-saving pill with a 80% success rate, but "good" to keep that pill out of the hands of the Chinese people? Furthermore, imagine you now had the original pill and the reformulated one. Then, you introduced BOTH of these pills into the Chinese market. The reformulated one was the official one. The original one, with the 100% success rate, you made available to anyone in China who dared try to seek out this "black market" pill. Does this not eliminate some, if not all, of the supposed "evil-ness"? It boggles my mind that everyone is quick to point out that Google released a Chinese-branded website in China (Google.cn) that automatically removes links that are being blocked by the governmental firewall (in other words, it simply eliminates otherwise broken links)... and they call this "evil"... but they fail to remind anyone that Google.com is still UNCENSORED in China. I fail to see that the way Google needed to be "good" was to only maintain a broken and difficult to use search engine in China, but that by providing BOTH... the broken and difficult to use (but uncensored) search engine... AND the completely working (but censored) search engine... that this somehow places them an evil scale by which Yahoo and Microsoft are barely even mentioned. As for the health-care issue... it's just marketing. Is it evil to try to sell a service, or evil to try to make money? Perhaps the real issue is that "evil" is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes.
At the same time, claiming the French aren't incompetent or cowardly based on the achievements of one man 200 years ago is missing the point. Maybe 200 years ago Americans would praise the military prowess of the French, but certainly not today.
I think the attitude of Americans towards the French has more to do with cultural differences. To most Americans, the behavior of the French (either when someone from France is visiting America, or someone from America is visiting France) is often rude and crude. Certainly, by taking the time to get to know someone who is French, you will see a decent person, even if the mannerisms and cultural views are very different. But, on the surface, when you don't know the person underneath, the perceived person that shows on the outside is often someone who is seen as lacking tact or decency.
Going back to complaints about military stature, I think it also has to do with the fact that Americans like to find humor in any weakness. I don't think this is a feature that is specific to America, but is shared throughout the world. When America gets a bad President, suddenly the world is looking down on the American Citizens, even though its own citizens aren't happy about the President either. When there are stereotypes that common Americans make fun of (within their own borders,) these become the stereotypes that the rest of the world paint as being "all Americans"... like the redneck stereotype... the John Wayne/Old-West stereotype... the surfer dude stereotype... or Keanu Reeves.
Again, America is so much of a melting pot of different cultures that it is very easy to poke fun at a collection of them and call it poking fun at "America"... so, I think this manifests itself in Americans finding something equally wrong with other cultures outside of its borders, and focusing on that. Whether it is the military of the French, the weird game shows of Japan, or the citizens of Mexico fleeing their country to enter America, it's all in good fun. Americans take a lot of crap and also dish out a lot to even the field.