Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you
Updated Hint: It will keep going up
OSes
3 Apr 2024 | 106
A modern day water dictatorship
If you're a ruler, the simplest way to keep the plebs under control is to give yourself (and enforce) the power to allot some vital resource. Someone does you a favour? Give them some more. Someone honks you off, cut off their supply.
We've recently seen Russia do this to some ex-USSR states and their supply of oil and natural gas.
In times gone by, the ruler used water as the subjugating force. Without it, crops died, farmers went broke, people starved.
The neat thing about this technique is that you don't need a large army or internal security force to keep yourself at the top of the pile. You only need enough power to control your resource and everything else follows from that. The bad thing is that because you don't have a strong army or defensive force, while you can control internal threats you are very vulnerable to external ones. An invading army will have little trouble taking over as what forces you do have are not used to conflict: they're used to people doing what they're told.
Historically, water dictatorships seem invulnerable when viewed from the inside but their fall is inevitable.
So it is with Google. They have a firm grip on the internet's jugular. They control who gets the eyeballs that makes the advertising pay the rent. They don't need to be competitive, or innovative. They just need to batter competitors to death with their giant wad - and if that doesn't work, turn off the eyeballs. However, as soon as someone comes along who is NOT dependent on advertisements or search hits they're screwed.
The question is who, what and when.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
