Posts by RyokuMas

Re: OK Google

Shut up and take my money!

... but Google's tariffs are measured in personal data, not currency, right?

"oh look"

... and trotting out the same old links again, too... three years ago is ancient history in IT.

Re: Chrome it is then

"No, but it'll be the only browser that will come preinstalled with new phones, if manufacturers want Google Play."

... and the irony will be how many fandroids try and justify this happening while still bashing Microsoft from shipping Windows with IE pre-installed back in the browser wars era...

Re: Of Course

"I'm surprised they didn't clone Flappy Bird"

They're probably the only buggers who haven't, then!

Re: But what does the scammers EULA say?

"It certainly appears that any criticisms of Microsoft elicit lots of mysterious down votes."

Every major player has its faithful that will downvote anyone who dares suggest that their beloved Microsoft/Google/Apple/[insert company here] are wrong.

Re: Microsoft has a long term plan

"The vendetta looks to originate from Microsoft."

Waaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahah!!! Please! Someone send this guy a tinfoil hat!

Seriously, it's not healthy to hold a grudge like this for so long. Yes, we all know that Microsoft have done some downright filthy things over they years, but to immediately round on them when another big corporation starts getting questioned? Jeez, next thing will be that the axing of Google Earth API at the end of next year will be due to the actions of all the Microsoft staff who have "defected" over the years actually being trojan horses!

Re: "We're not a monopoly, honest..."

"I *think* what you actually mean is Google are evil because of all the *eyeballs* they control. Except the owners of the eyeballs chose Google of their own free will."

Ah, the old battle-cry of the Google supporter - "you can always choose not to use Google!"...

... but can you? As the AC has said above - if you have a directory for looking things up and you choose not to list your business in that directory then you're not going to get found and not do very much business.

The fact is that Google is the biggest "directory" on the internet by a country mile - period. To "choose not to use" is - unless you have a fantastic marketing budget - tantamount to business suicide. Go out onto the street and ask any average bod how you find something on the internet. I'd be willing to bet that at least 75% say "Google it" - a company name has now become a verb in common everyday use.

I'm not debating the hows and whys of how they got to this position as I don't have all the facts - although I will admit that Google do have a damn good search engine. But the point is that the internet real estate they have almost monopolistic control over is "search" - and therefore the power to control who gets discovered and who does not (including potential startup competitors and anyone Google "just doesn't like").

Re: "engaging in such a brain-dead moron-fodder activity."

"When did puzzle games become moron fodder?"

They didn't. Falling for King.com's social engineering tricks that keep people coming back to this farce they have created by cloning CandySwipe is the moron-fodder aspect.

Re: Sic transit gloria mundi

"Xbox was a long haul."

... but that had the advantage of almost no Microsoft brand association whatsoever.

Certainly, it's not like having "Microsoft" stamped down the back of your handset.

The problem is that "Microsoft" and "Windows" still have a large amount of toxicity associated - a large chunk of this is due to some absolutely horrendous decisions, probably made due to complacency, on the part of management.

Another part is that while people in tech often love being up with the latest and newest things, a great many seem to love living in the past when it comes to holding grudges - the near habitual anti-Microsoft posts of a number of commentards on here are proof enough of that.

Microsoft would do well to rebadge their mobile offering in an Xbox-like manner (although I can see Apple kicking off at "Xphone"), and re-invent themselves. The recent open-sourcing of .net was a step in the right direction, but there's still huge amounts of ground to make up.

I can't help wonder though - will Microsoft get another crack of the whip when Google inevitably falls, or will it be someone else's turn?

Re: Precedent has been set...

"One does not HAVE to type http://google.com into the address bar and press return. With MS, there was no alternative installed."

Key word - "installed". Back in the browser wars era, even with IE bundled, I could have searched for and installed Firefox or Opera.

Similarly, if I were to install Chrome right now, I could type "http://www.duckduckgo.com" into the address bar and search from there. However, if I enter something that isn't a web address, it goes through Google's search.

There were browser choices then, and there are search engine choices now. What there is very little choice in, however, is what happens when you are on the web - and this is the crux of the problem. Regardless of what search engine you use to get there, the chances are that the site you're visiting will have Google analytics and tracking. So regardless of what search engine I've chosen to use, the chances are that Google have data about me.

Hell, the entire SEO industry is founded on the principle of trying to second-guess how Google wants your web page to behave and jumping when they tell you to. I don't hear any talk of Duck Duck Go analytics or rankings...

So - coming back to the idea of choice: there were other browsers available, but because Microsoft had bundled IE with Windows, and so the average Joe didn't bother looking any further. In other words, the reason the issue came about was awareness. Now consider searching the internet for something... except we don't search for it any more, do we? We Google it. Yes, just like "Hoover" for example, "Google" is now part of common parlance as an adjective. So people don't learn about choice, they learn about Google, just like when Windows told them to use Internet Explorer (conveniently bundled) whenever they wanted to get online back in the day.

And so we reach the present: Google has managed to get such a stranglehold on the web that major players are forced to bow to their will, or suffer loss of ranking. Other search engine choices get little publicity (or are tainted by their parent company's past), and even if we do use another search engine, unless we go out of our way to avoid it, our data is Google's property if we want to do anything on the web.

Excellent idea!

"Google should just block all European IPs for a week"

... instant proof of Google's monopoly! The damage to business and commerce should easily be enough to invoke all the anticompetitive laws under the sun and ensure Google go the same way as Microsoft when they tried to bundle IE with Windows...

Careful...

@dogged - steady! You can have comments deleted for accusing people of being shills these days*!

* unless they're Microsoft shills - apparently that's still ok.

Re: Why!

"Do we need google for everything????"

Google - and their brainwashed masses - are doing their damnedest to try and convince us that this is the case...

Or, maybe...

"Is it now if you can't beat them, join them to improve the revenue stream?"

The major players recognised just how dangerously powerful Google has become, and made the move in an attempt to redress the balance...

Re: Alternatively

1) Decrease in market share != fewer users

2) Once you apply a piracy rate of up anything up to 95%, only about 4% (at worst case) of the total smartphone market can be deemed "Profitable Android"...

... add to that the huge overheads of fragmentation etc. and it's no wonder that serious developers are quitting Android development.

Re: I take the same doesn't happen

"Perhaps the solution is not to use Google?"

Find me websites that offer the products/service I need without implementing Google tracking/analytics etc. and I'll use them.

Re: Why?

"Is there anybody with an internet connection who doesn't know Google[?]"

The question here is not "how many people with an internet connection do not know Google?", but "how many people with an internet connection do not know how much Google know about them, and what does Google do with this data?"