Is Google Evil?
Every once in a while I see a bunch of people attacking Google for being "evil" in some ways, and it cracks me up. I'm sure that by now, Google wishes they hadn't set broad expectations by setting up such a slogan in the first place. If they had instead used "Be as evil as possible", then I suppose people would be much more disappointed.
First of all, Google had gone out of their way to be as open as possible in every aspect of their business, even when it means leaving money on the table. This should be obvious to any developer - though perhaps less so to other developers. They have shunned lock-in where possible, and gone with open standards at every turn, and even open-source in many places. Even their closed-source applications have open APIs, and developers can even use their infrastructure for free now!
Some examples:
Google Maps - Mostly uses commercially licensed data from other providers - but is free for end user and developer use, and has open APIs.
Google Sketch-up - Uses standard 3D file formats.
Google Voice - Uses industry standard CODECs and access methods.
Google Talk - Uses industry standard chat protocol (Jabber), and open source audio and video codecs.
Android - Uses GPL licensed Linux kernel modifications and ASL licensed Google developed libraries. The programming language used for development is also standard.
Google App Engine - Uses standard languages (Java, etc.)
Google Docs - Uses OpenOffice.org's Open XML formats.
Google Storage - Uses the same APIs as their leading competitor - Amazon's storage.
PicasaWeb - MAkes it easy to get your photos back out at full resolution, should you decide to switch providers.
GMail - Allows access via POP/SMTP/IMAP, Exchange, and more. No lock-in there.
... and much more - In fact, they have even released some of their "secret sauce", like Hadoop.
Also, new standards that Google has created, such as SPDY, as well as codecs such as VP8 and Jingle, have been publicly specified and open sourced where appropriate.
Yet some people just can't be pleased, over the past few years the following issues have come up:
1. The Google Street View - Google went around and started taking photos of everything to put online, which is cool and useful, but people started complaining about privacy violations. Well let's see, taking photos of things outside in public view is generally acceptable in all first world countries. If you don't want a picture taken of it, keep it out of site. It's not like google was using telescopic lenses to look in people's windows or something. The only argument I've heard is something like "Well the law and societal norms are different!" Well that shouldn't be the case, so if you really think so, the law should be changed. I mind security cameras much more than I mind google street view.
2. The whole WiFi Privacy thing - Some Google street view cars inadvertently recorded some WiFi data, and everyone gasped and said "oh my GOD! Google is evil!". Well let's put some things in perspective:
a. Google is the one who admitted this publicly. If they hadn't, nobody would know. They were trying to be a good citizen here. If their plan was to secretly collect all this data and use it to control the world, they probably wouldn't have admitted "oops, we collected this data."
b. They weren't cracking WiFi security or something. Any data they collected was unencrypted data, which by definition is supposed to be non-secret data. Courts have ruled time and time again that when people broadcast unencrypted data (like radio stations), they are giving it away free, and can't complain about it later. If the data was so private, there should have at least been an attempt to protect it.
c. The vehicle was traveling, so it would have gotten only small portions of data from each access point they passed - which is virtually useless. For that matter, half of it was probably people accessing Google anyway.
For anyone who doubts their innocence and wonders why they were collecting any WiFi data at all, it was probably to collect the WiFi BSSID (basically serial numbers) to correlate with location. This anonymous data can be used later to get a rough estimate of location for cell phone/tablet/laptop users who don't have GPS, and is done by SkyHook/Apple, Sony (PlaceEngine), and others. At any rate, the solution is simple, delete the data and move on.
and now...
3. The whole Android Honeycomb debacle. Yes, they said they're not releasing the source code for the current version of Android for tablets, at least not yet. Future versions will be released, and the current version might be released later. This is evil because??? Well, I'm not sure. The source code mainly benefits the handset makers, and they do have the source code. Google stated that it isn't releasing the source code yet because it's not maintainable. This makes sense, since they rushed to ship the thing to compete with the iPad, and it's probably relatively hard-coded at this point. Furthermore, it's their code, they wrote it. Not only that, but the license they released most of it under, the Apache Software License, allows them to withhold the source. And, they already said that they will release the next version when it's ready.
I once read that "A large enough organization will manage to offend just about everybody.", and I can see now that its true. Whatever Google does, some people just won't be happy. Consider the alternative, if Google had released the source in an unsuitable state, people would have complained about that too. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they don't control the platform, people will whine about fragmentation, poor user experience when the specs don't match the OS, etc. If they try to exert some control, everyone will complain that they are worse than Apple.
People should stand back and get some sense of perspective. If they do, they would realize that Google is the most open provider out there in most of the fields where the compete.
Android vs. iOS/Windows Phone
Google Voice vs. Skype
Chrome vs. IE
Java vs. .Net
Google Talk vs. MSN, etc.
In most cases, there is no contest. Most of their proprietary web services have open APIs, and most of their proprietary PC apps are still carry no fee. What exactly do people want from them?
First of all, Google had gone out of their way to be as open as possible in every aspect of their business, even when it means leaving money on the table. This should be obvious to any developer - though perhaps less so to other developers. They have shunned lock-in where possible, and gone with open standards at every turn, and even open-source in many places. Even their closed-source applications have open APIs, and developers can even use their infrastructure for free now!
Some examples:
Google Maps - Mostly uses commercially licensed data from other providers - but is free for end user and developer use, and has open APIs.
Google Sketch-up - Uses standard 3D file formats.
Google Voice - Uses industry standard CODECs and access methods.
Google Talk - Uses industry standard chat protocol (Jabber), and open source audio and video codecs.
Android - Uses GPL licensed Linux kernel modifications and ASL licensed Google developed libraries. The programming language used for development is also standard.
Google App Engine - Uses standard languages (Java, etc.)
Google Docs - Uses OpenOffice.org's Open XML formats.
Google Storage - Uses the same APIs as their leading competitor - Amazon's storage.
PicasaWeb - MAkes it easy to get your photos back out at full resolution, should you decide to switch providers.
GMail - Allows access via POP/SMTP/IMAP, Exchange, and more. No lock-in there.
... and much more - In fact, they have even released some of their "secret sauce", like Hadoop.
Also, new standards that Google has created, such as SPDY, as well as codecs such as VP8 and Jingle, have been publicly specified and open sourced where appropriate.
Yet some people just can't be pleased, over the past few years the following issues have come up:
1. The Google Street View - Google went around and started taking photos of everything to put online, which is cool and useful, but people started complaining about privacy violations. Well let's see, taking photos of things outside in public view is generally acceptable in all first world countries. If you don't want a picture taken of it, keep it out of site. It's not like google was using telescopic lenses to look in people's windows or something. The only argument I've heard is something like "Well the law and societal norms are different!" Well that shouldn't be the case, so if you really think so, the law should be changed. I mind security cameras much more than I mind google street view.
2. The whole WiFi Privacy thing - Some Google street view cars inadvertently recorded some WiFi data, and everyone gasped and said "oh my GOD! Google is evil!". Well let's put some things in perspective:
a. Google is the one who admitted this publicly. If they hadn't, nobody would know. They were trying to be a good citizen here. If their plan was to secretly collect all this data and use it to control the world, they probably wouldn't have admitted "oops, we collected this data."
b. They weren't cracking WiFi security or something. Any data they collected was unencrypted data, which by definition is supposed to be non-secret data. Courts have ruled time and time again that when people broadcast unencrypted data (like radio stations), they are giving it away free, and can't complain about it later. If the data was so private, there should have at least been an attempt to protect it.
c. The vehicle was traveling, so it would have gotten only small portions of data from each access point they passed - which is virtually useless. For that matter, half of it was probably people accessing Google anyway.
For anyone who doubts their innocence and wonders why they were collecting any WiFi data at all, it was probably to collect the WiFi BSSID (basically serial numbers) to correlate with location. This anonymous data can be used later to get a rough estimate of location for cell phone/tablet/laptop users who don't have GPS, and is done by SkyHook/Apple, Sony (PlaceEngine), and others. At any rate, the solution is simple, delete the data and move on.
and now...
3. The whole Android Honeycomb debacle. Yes, they said they're not releasing the source code for the current version of Android for tablets, at least not yet. Future versions will be released, and the current version might be released later. This is evil because??? Well, I'm not sure. The source code mainly benefits the handset makers, and they do have the source code. Google stated that it isn't releasing the source code yet because it's not maintainable. This makes sense, since they rushed to ship the thing to compete with the iPad, and it's probably relatively hard-coded at this point. Furthermore, it's their code, they wrote it. Not only that, but the license they released most of it under, the Apache Software License, allows them to withhold the source. And, they already said that they will release the next version when it's ready.
I once read that "A large enough organization will manage to offend just about everybody.", and I can see now that its true. Whatever Google does, some people just won't be happy. Consider the alternative, if Google had released the source in an unsuitable state, people would have complained about that too. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they don't control the platform, people will whine about fragmentation, poor user experience when the specs don't match the OS, etc. If they try to exert some control, everyone will complain that they are worse than Apple.
People should stand back and get some sense of perspective. If they do, they would realize that Google is the most open provider out there in most of the fields where the compete.
Android vs. iOS/Windows Phone
Google Voice vs. Skype
Chrome vs. IE
Java vs. .Net
Google Talk vs. MSN, etc.
In most cases, there is no contest. Most of their proprietary web services have open APIs, and most of their proprietary PC apps are still carry no fee. What exactly do people want from them?
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