Google....friend or foe?

[schwim]

the funny thing is that I am on the same page for privacy but I can say for sure that I have some libertarian friends that are probably the most law abiding citizens that I've ever met but they hold privacy at an almost God level. For them, it's simply, their right. Regardless of what they are doing or not doing, they have a right to privacy, pure and simple. Several of my friends have read and compared privacy statements of email providers, chat clients, etc....just to pick the one that they felt at least told them that their privacy was valuable.

Regardless of if this is something that everyone agrees to, I think we can all agree that everyone is entitled to their own opinion & not jump to conclusions that the only people that value privacy are those that have something to hide. I may just tell my dar friend to read this and see what he says....he's most definitely the most law abiding, "straight arrow" that I know and he's one of those that if he heard "I don't care about my privacy" come from anyone, he'd do as much as possible to provide evidence of why you should care.

I see someone finally voted foe

You're absolutely right that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. What can't be argued though is that the erosion of our right to privacy can be directly linked to the thought process I poked fun at.

As more of us decide that our privacy is overrated, the gov't is there to happily take up the slack. As long as people don't care, then everything is working as intended. There is no "stripping of rights". We're handing it over.

[meton_magis]

I voted neutral. Google is a company, and I don't trust them to my private details anymore then I trust the bag boy at the local grocery store. However, I don't believe that they have ever tried to do anything to stop the growth and progress of open source software (in fact they promote it more than most.)

I will say this though. Libertarians (which include myself) do not scream privacy because it is their right, they scream it because it is not the right of the government to invade our privacy. The mainstream libertarian is not fighting for his or her own rights, but for restraint of the government. I have nothing to hide, but you can guarentee I will fight for restraining the government from searching my home to find out.

When it comes to google and privacy, they are a company, they would do whatever it takes to stay in the black, even if that means handing over whatever to government inqueries, or selling anything they legaly can to turn a quick buck. Don't give them a temptation to sell your information, and you have nothing to worry about.

[clickalot]

with respect to open source: the google people would be very happy with microsoft out of the way
so lets hope projects like chrome and android do well
(although i personally don't like web apps, but that's another story...)

with respect to money and profit: Big is Bad. Always.

[daark.child]

Google has just released an opensource programming language called Go. More info here.

So does anyones opinions change because of this?

[ToMegaTherion]

I don't know, I am very cautious at this stage. If they were a true friend, they would get behind a distro like ubuntu, rather than bastardising it and calling it GOS. I'm really cautious, they are sometimes good and then they seem to hop into bed with microsoft at the flip of a coin. I don't trust them, and I don't like their new GOS. Good old fashioned ubuntu is vastly superior.

[bigtomrodney]

I don't know, I am very cautious at this stage. If they were a true friend, they would get behind a distro like ubuntu, rather than bastardising it and calling it GOS.

Actually gOS is not affiliated with Google, it is an independent distro just focussing on a web desktop which integrates things like Google apps. It's said that gOS stands for "Good OS" though I'm sure they were playing up on the confusion.

Now with all of that said, Google's new ChromiumOS is on the way. The announcements and demonstrations were made in the last 24 hours....and Canonical, the corporate end behind Ubuntu were involved with that.

[enyocnosaj]

It took me awhile but I finally warmed up to Google with Google Docs. Docs really made my job -and document retrieval- easier.

I still prefer Yahoo! for search, and only use my Gmail account for website registrations.

But if you believe the hype, I guess the Chrome OS is supposed to show up and change our lives.

[jmadero]

as for Yahoo, I don't respect that company at all, they were basically the first to break all sense of privacy rules when they gave up the name of the Chinese dissident journalist (who is currently still in jail because Yahoo release names). Yes Google blocks net access on request of the Chinese government, but as far as I know they have flat refused to do anything more.

Google docs is okay, not functional for most of the things that I do, especially because it never seems to keep formatting right (no matter if it's a odt,ods,doc,docx..doesn't matter formatting goes awry).

And lastly, the OS, I'm unimpressed with their press release last week. Central storage for basically everything makes NO SENSE. Most computers (even netbooks these days) are 2gigs or more of RAM and at least 100 gigs of hard drive space....why can't we store our documents on our own computer, storing them on some central server is dangerous and inefficient. Lastly, the necessity of internet connection to that extreme seems ridiculous, I mean yeah most of us have net but if I'm at the airport...what I'm going to have to pay the $20 for the 2 hours of net in order to get work done on a document that is stored on Google's servers?

[janrocks]

I'm unsure. I don't trust big business. They always put their own interests and agendas above everything else, relying on the fact they have more money than god and can ignore the law with impunity.

I also worry about the sense in the new google os .. everything stored on central servers/ .. I would like to see the full TOS for that, because I get a sneaking feeling that everything on googles servers becomes property of google... Wave IP and copyright rights goodbye.. only business will benefit, and I will put money on the future change (if it isn't there already) to take everything stored into ownership of google at some point. It's happened before (some photo hosting site wasn't it?) and it will happen again.

Finally I wouldn't be interested in trusting an os built by somebody who has already proved themselves guilty of various unethical actions, selling user search data for instance..

When I look at my train of thought I just realised.. I voted wrong.. they are a foe, as are all businesses which are allowed to become too rich and powerful !!

[sk565]

Ive used chrome but it really wasnt my thing. I like firefox though. Google is I think the best search engine though.
Anyone getting sick of myspace ? I am so sick of them flooding you with multiple windows, its really getting bad. However that was when i was on windows though.
I would say google is a good friend though for searching, but for their browser I to feel that they are stalling on their updates and bug fixes