Posts by ratfox

Re: That's silly

I think the downvoters find that you are mixing stuff that are unrelated. This suit is specifically about antitrust. Google is not going to use the "everybody else does it" defense, because they're the only ones in position to do it — that's the whole point.

You're also somehow accusing Google of money laundering, and I have no clue where you got that from.

I also want to call out the claim that Google is taking £150 a year out of the pockets of "every wage earner" in the UK, first because that's how much Google made in the country over ten years, but also because it's ridiculous to assume that without Google, this money would somehow have made its way into the pockets of people instead of another advertising company.

As to the shareholder lawsuit, Google came very close to striking a deal with the EU, brokered by Eric Schmidt with the previous commissioner, which was scuppered at the last minute by political pressure. I think it was reasonable for Google to think that they would get away with what they are doing, since they almost did. From that point, I don't think that the shareholder lawsuit is justified, since Google really did take the decisions that seemed best at the time. It's blaming them because their foresight was not as good as your hindsight.

Then again, lawsuits don't have to make sense in the US.

Re: Huh??

I suppose the point is to prevent the employees from shredding or burning incriminating evidence. Or more likely in this case, deleting files.

Google probably keeps all its documents in the cloud, but who knows? Maybe The French police will come up with a smoking gun.

I assume that Fitbit is intelligent enough to have included disclaimers in their T&Cs...

Unfortunately, you need to use random names for this to work. It's too easy to just filter out Boaty McBoatface.

15 MILLION T-Mobile US customer records swiped by hackers

Does this answer your question?

Re: former Google staff occupy key posts in areas essential to Google’s

In itself, he number of people jumping from one to the other is not very meaningful. I understand that there are thousands of employees who have left Google for Facebook, and Facebook for Google. Google and Facebook are still at each other's throats, and I doubt that anybody suspects the allegiance of people who switch.

Even when people in high position switch, it doesn't always turn the way you'd expect. Tom Wheeler used to be a cable company CEO, he switched to head of the FCC, and he is a goddamn pain for the cable companies today. In fact, he is acting exactly as if he was working for Google; go figure.

But Obama was always friendly with Google. If I remember correctly, they were doing analytics work for him on his campaign trail. I guess we only need to wait for Obama to get a seat on Google's board.

Re: @ tannin

No one has any idea how much advertising actually pays.

Google does! For them, it pays a lot. And note that Google does not get paid for just showing ads; the user actually had to click on them. Which must means there is somewhere a whole lot of users who like ads and click on them.

I don't know who they are either.

Re: Basic maths...

20% is a rather high percentage to decide not to support. I think Microsoft people would love to be able to give that kind of answer.

It looks like this!

Indeed

Shall we call this a double Irish with an Australian sandwich?

Re: There is precedent.

Do I read correctly that 1670.8 allows their Californian customers to sue them for $2,500? That could be a lucrative business…

Re: This story is so badly written and subbed it detracts from the content

Some examples:

"instead representing penetration beyond simple scanning trigger a response"

"one ransomware attacker compromised a staffer's machine which off site,"

What is implied is that they unfairly target US companies to advantage European companies. Which is technically a violation of trade treaties.

Of course, as the Boeing-Airbus saga shows, countries find all possible ways of helping their own companies to get an edge.

Re: a question

Happened already to Benson Leung:

Google engineer fries Pixel testing USB Type-C cable

I doubt he even got a refund for the cable. Though being a Google employee, he probably just received a new laptop from his employer.

Re: Oh dear, how sad, never mind!

Maybe I got it wrong; but from what I understand, even with acceptable ads, you still need to pay to get on the whitelist.

Which does sound slightly like a protection racket in a "nice advertising revenue you've got, shame if anything was to happen to it" way.

That's the same judge who originally ruled that API were not copyrightable. A shame it got overturned on appeal.

Re: And now this is the worst

It was always possible to decrypt an iPhone. People who had any chance of breaking into an iPhone were already trying to do so.

However, it is now known that Apple will not roll over at the whim of random prosecutors. If they want an iPhone decrypted, they'll have to pay a professional company to do it, instead of just ordering Apple to do it whenever they want.

I'd say Apple won this one. And what's more, I'd say we all did.

Re: OK,

So, the second Google cloud article in 24 hours and both of them are puff pieces full of windbaggery and basic bullsh*t.

In case you didn't know: Google is having their yearly conference on cloud at this moment. Expect a couple more articles on the subject.