Google's a threat to you, not Microsoft

[Divine Discontent]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43156/141/

snip ---

While bloggers who wouldn't recognise an operating system if it bit them in the ass are frothing at the mouth and screaming that the sky over Redmond is about to fall, more experienced industry observers are pointing out that Chrome is a browser and that bolting on a bunch of device drivers doesn't magically turn it into an OS. You can put as much lipstick as you want on Sarah Palin, but…

My first reaction to the ChromeOS news was to wonder exactly what was in it for Google to produce yet another variant of Linux. I wondered about this for about two seconds. What Google wants is you. It wants your searches; your ad revenue; your data; your heart and soul.

Nearly every time you click on a website, regardless of whether you use IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or even Opera - which has two users, both called Colin, who live in Baltimore - you are diverted through machines owned and run by Google. Google knows who you are and where you live. It knows what you're interested in so it can target ads at you more accurately. Practically every transaction on the web involves Google in some way.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Newsflash: Google is a business!!!

:rofl:

[notesdev]

8. A particularly vile one

and it's scary how many people voluntarily submit to being tracked by them.

[elocs]

2. I already assume that somebody knows, or thinks they know everything about me,

but I certainly do not view Microsoft with any benevolence. To be honest, I don't pay attention to any ads, even the ones here at DU, so good luck with targeting ads toward me.

[moggie]

3. Hard to take this article seriously

It's funny when an article which aligns itself with "more experienced industry observers" reads like it was written by a kid not yet out of college. The gratuitous digs at anyone who uses software he doesn't like (Opera, Mac OS, Linux), the sophomoric insults at anyone who thinks differently from him ("you probably suffer from learning difficulties", you have "a crystal meth habit", you're a "fanboy"), the poor understanding of where Linux is at, the fact that the only hardware and OS experience he quotes is about his personal machines... son, let us know when your balls have dropped, we might take you more seriously then. Or, if you really are an "experienced industry observer", try to write like one.

Here's what he has to say about Linux:

Linux fans should be very worried indeed. For years, Linux has been a hobbyists OS with an infinite variety of things to tweak and play around with to avoid doing any real work. Google has the marketing nous and clout to make Linux succeed, even if it's only as the platform on which the Chrome browser sits. What this will mean is there will soon be only one version of Linux and it will carry a Google logo. Linux fanboys will have to take up trainspotting or butterfly collecting to fill their leisure hours.

Now, I'm not a fanboy about any software: I'm far too old for that. Linux, Mac OS, Windows: they're just tools, each with its strengths and weaknesses, and not worth making part of your personal identity. But a large part of my job is (co)administering a growing number of Linux servers (currently approaching 100), so his characterisation of Linux as a "hobbyist" platform for "playing around" with, still awaiting something to help it "succeed", is laughable. I assume he's played around with it on the desktop himself, found it wanting, and completely ignored the server space, where its been a considerable success for years already. The above paragraph is the sort of thing you saw a lot of in the 1990s, but the world has moved on.

It's not that everything he writes is wrong. I'm skeptical about netbooks, browser-based applications, and the benevolence of Google, but once you eliminate the misplaced snark from the article, there's really not much left.

[geckosfeet]

4. My heart and soul? Hardly. My online clicks? Probably. I don't have a problem with that.

[ixion]

5. a laugable premise

to be sure. :rofl:

[AndyA]

6. There are a couple of things you can do to protect your privacy a bit.

Every web site that features Google ads is required to provide an opt-out link in that site's privacy statement. Clicking it takes you to Google's ad company, where you can opt-out of interest-based advertising. Google will still serve ads on the sites you visit if that site has an agreement with Google, but those ads will be based on the topic of those sites, not on other sites you've visited in the past.

From time to time, you can also go in and delete all your cookies. This means you'll have to log in again to places like DU, but I think it's good to start off clean from time to time.

You will have to opt-out of Google interest-based ads again if you delete cookies, as it's a cookie on your computer that tells Google you do not want to have ads shown to you based on the sites you've visited in the past.

I think Google may be heading for trouble. Some of its searches don't seem to be as good as they once were, and I think they may be getting too big for their britches. Other search engines like Bing are showing better results in many cases. This is their core business, and it isn't what it once was.

[caraher]

12. And there's also this

Scroogle scraper

[whyverne]

7. I want Google to make so much money

that they can put up their own satellites to beam broadband down on everybody. Free Internet for the world. Go Google!

[bemildred]

9. Being wrong that many times in such a short piece must have required considerable effort. nt

[zalinda]

10. No, he's probably working for Microsoft n/t

[madmusic]

11. https://us.ixquick.com