Google Draws Fire From Congress 212
bonch writes "Democrat Herb Kohl, the Senate's leading antitrust legislator, has vowed an antitrust probe into Google as one of his top priorities. Others in Congress are criticizing the search giant over several flubs, including scanning personal data over neighborhood WiFi, collecting Social Security information from children in a doodling contest, and sidestepping net neutrality rules through a deal with Verizon. They're also concerned over ties with the administration — Eric Schmidt is a technology adviser to President Obama, Andrew McLaughlin serves as Obama's deputy chief technology officer, and Sonal Shah leads the White House Office of Social Innovation. Google spent $5.2 million last year on federal lobbying, but critics say their increased Washington presence has made more enemies than friends."
Reader walterbyrd contributes an article that suggests this is all just a fund-raising ploy.
Google must not have been bribing... contributing (Score:4, Insightful)
to Congress campaigns enough lately.
Amen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's called a legislative shakedown. I don't mind google being pushed around by idealistic Europeans, but once America's asshats get into the game, well it's a shakedown pure & simple.
Google would eventually turn evil once Sergey Brin dies of course, but thus far they ain't too bad. We should encourage Larry and Sergey to push positive moral aims through their company itself, rather than adopting Gate's be evil & then be nice approach.
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Maybe the government wouldn't go after large corps so much if they paid their taxes.
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From Google's Q4 2010 earnings report [google.com]:
Income Taxes -- Our effective tax rate was 19% for the fourth quarter of 2010.
In the various news articles' rush to be sensationalist, they forgot to note that the low tax rate was only for EU income, because the EU has a tax loophole you can drive a bus through. In order to average 19% given the significant overseas income, that means the US tax rate is pretty high. With a higher tax rate on EU income, it doesn't mean any of that extra tax revenue woul
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-- C.S. Lewis
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It reminds me of the mess caused by both Google and telcos lobbying on net neutrality.
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Of course, that happened back when now-legacy MBA CEOs that thought they could manage anything were common. Hopefully the flaws of them are more well-known now.
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Yep (Score:2)
Speaking out of both sides of their mouths? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm starting to not wanna be in the US, I've been to maybe 30 states, I'm no stranger down there but man is it getting rather inconvenient, expensive, and stupid. And for some reason, the voices of reason are the ones who are shouted down.
Re:Speaking out of both sides of their mouths? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speaking out of both sides of their mouths? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think what the US does is substantially different from the rest of the first world, then you're wrong. The difference is we just bitch about it a lot more. If anything we're just catching up. Amazingly we still have preserved the freedom of speech a lot more than places like the UK, Germany, and Australia.
Ah, I guess that makes it alright as we continue this downward spiral? C'mon, your argument is that of an elementary school kid: "But they did this, which is worse!!!!" That's so childish. Nothing personal, but it's true - and I doubt you got away with it often in elementary school, thus I'm simply not letting you get away with it now.
We (the people, this country, it's elected representatives (who often seem to forget who they represent)) need to always hold ourselves to a higher standard, without succumbing to the "well, everyone else is doing it"/"well, they are doing worse" idiocy. Otherwise, we can justify every travesty we commit by finding someone else to point to - and that will accelerate our spiral downwards at an alarming rate.
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I can't speak for Germany or Australia, but here in the UK we never had free speech nor do we pretend to have it. It seems to be a cultural thing, in that Europeans (and this is obviously a gross generalisation) don't care as much about freedom of speech as USians.
Of course, we're still doing what we can to roll back intrusive stuff. There's even a Protection of Freedoms Bill [parliament.uk] before Parliament at the moment, along with a new Defamation Bill (designed to tighten up libel law). The Identity Documents Act alre
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Really? Because I don't consider police raiding the house of individuals for showing films or bookshops for having books that weren't approved by the Australian government to be considered free speech. Heck, I don't consider not allowing the sale of any speech material of any form to be an invasion of freedom of speech. Australia also has some of the most intrusive internet censorship laws. They feel the need to make sure that no adult likes small breasted women and therefor can't be turned into a child por
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4chan
M rated games (it won't be classified, so they're forbidden to sell)
porn with woman with small tits (who are above 18)
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Aside from recent crackdowns with piracy, there is virtually no internet censorship in the US, while there is plenty in Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia [wikipedia.org]
Also, aside from broadcast television, any censorship on TV, movies, video games, books, is left entirely up to society. Nothing needs to be approved for classification by the government to be distributed in the US. You can basically publish anything you want aside from child pornography, though there are restrictions
Hypocrites (Score:5)
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Let's go over this again. There is nothing, per se, wrong with a monopoly. You are allowed to build a monopoly as long as a) you do not acquire it illegally (e.g. Microsoft seems to haver achieved their monopoly on office software by deliberately making other office suites not work properly) or b) you do not use it to illegally influence other markets (e.g. Microsoft took over the web browser market by illegally leveraging their monopoly on operating systems).
Google has definitely been gaining a monopol
Great use of our time and resources (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, when I think of out-of-control industries that are stamping on the rights of ordinary people, colluding to price-gouge us and passing legislation harmful to American interests, I think Google. Not the RIAA or MPAA or union-busting industries or economy-wrecking fraudulent financial groups or small-business-annihilating megamarts or the military-industrial complex or cable and phone companies. Definitely Google. Please oh please stop them before they voluntarily collect our publicly available SSNs and information we blast out over wireless on clear unencrypted channels.
Sadly, though I have mod points, I have already posted in this thread, otherwise I'd mod you up... hopefully someone else will.
The real reason they are after Google is here (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer:
I am not stating here that this information is correct, but it's certainly worth a read.
So go ahead, and have a read over here. [goo.gl]
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Yet to this day poor people still think the government should be financially at behest of the "most successful people".
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disgusting.
not sure which I hate more; our 'chosen leaders' or our 'non-elected corporate overlords'.
they both stink to high heaven.
Herb Kohl (Score:4, Interesting)
Herb is kind of above reproach. Having grown up in Wisconsin and actually met the man once, I can say comfortably that he isn't some kind of fundraising whore; he's a principled legislator who will probably get swept out in the next tide of teabagging. So I would be very careful in ascribing any kind of sinister motive to his investigation, or in drawing any conclusions about what the committee's findings will be.
Did Herb Kohl talk to Murdoch about Google? (Score:2)
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Herb is kind of above reproach. Having grown up in Wisconsin and actually met the man once, I can say comfortably that he isn't some kind of fundraising whore; he's a principled legislator who will probably get swept out in the next tide of teabagging. So I would be very careful in ascribing any kind of sinister motive to his investigation, or in drawing any conclusions about what the committee's findings will be.
I'm going to quote the AC from above because it has a good list of examples:
Yes, when I think of out-of-control industries that are stamping on the rights of ordinary people, colluding to price-gouge us and passing legislation harmful to American interests, I think Google. Not the RIAA or MPAA or union-busting industries or economy-wrecking fraudulent financial groups or small-business-annihilating megamarts or the military-industrial complex or cable and phone companies. Definitely Google.
Can you address this point? If this guy is such a goody-goody, why is he going after Google, who as far as anyone can tell hasn't hurt anybody and whose major offense seems to have been making its competitors butthurt that they have to compete with a company that makes good products available in exchange for nothing more than viewing little text adverts? Instead of going after Comcast, Sony, bankers, etc.?
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>>Can you address this point? If this guy is such a goody-goody, why is he going after Google
If you read the article, they want to investigate if Google's domination over the search business gives them an unfair advantage in other areas by prioritizing their own companies in search results.
Which is an entirely reasonable thing to investigate. /shrug
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If you read the article, they want to investigate if Google's domination over the search business gives them an unfair advantage in other areas by prioritizing their own companies in search results.
Which is an entirely reasonable thing to investigate. /shrug
I don't see the reasonable. Anybody can buy advertising on Google's search engine and have their site listed on the first page. It isn't like Google is charging higher than market rates for ads to their competitors. Any kind of argument that Google would have to charge itself for the placement, assuming the accounting doesn't already work that way, is just silly. It makes no difference to anyone if they move some money from the left pocket to the right pocket in exchange for the advertising. So the only pos
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>>So if there is any sort of investigation then why does Microsoft get a free pass?
You should read up on antitrust laws. This was exactly what got Microsoft in hot water during the 90s.
Or read about how American Airlines manipulated airline search results from their dominance via owning the Sabre reservation system (the first real online ticketing system):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)#Controversy [wikipedia.org]
You can't use market domination in one segment to gain domination in another.
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You should read up on antitrust laws. This was exactly what got Microsoft in hot water during the 90s.
Microsoft is still doing it today. Are their lawyers incompetent?
Or read about how American Airlines manipulated airline search results from their dominance via owning the Sabre reservation system (the first real online ticketing system):
From the link it seems that American was artificially putting its main competitors in the back of the search results or removed them entirely. Removing discount flights was especially blatant. But I don't believe there is any allegation that Google is doing any of that. Likewise, I don't think American offered its competitors the chance to buy advertising at market rates in order to have flights that would not normally appear on the first page
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>>Microsoft is still doing it today. Are their lawyers incompetent?
Haven't been following that story, then? Microsoft now has to offer a choice of browsers in the EU. This would have happened in America, too, except Microsoft started making a lot of campaign contributions and the suit got more or less dropped. (Well, they had to give out "10% off regular price" coupons to schools, which was meaningless, since schools already got better discounts).
>>Taken literally this means that Fox News can't
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Haven't been following that story, then? Microsoft now has to offer a choice of browsers in the EU.
Not the browser thing, the search engine thing. You go to Bing and you search for 'maps' and the top of the page is Bing Maps. And Bing Maps is the default mapping service in Internet Explorer too, if you want to argue about Bing's lack of market share. So either Microsoft is breaking the law or Google isn't.
They can run ads, but they can't prioritize WSJ ads over any other.
What does that mean? There are only so many time slots. There is only so much space on the first screen full of search results. If Google wants to put Google Maps as the first thing under "maps" on Goog
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>>So either Microsoft is breaking the law or Google isn't.
Microsoft doesn't have market dominance. Google does. That's the important distinction.
And yes, the law *is* set up to punish winners.
>>I could see the problem if they were manually altering the algorithmic search results so that a competitor that should have been result number 3 by algorithm is instead result number 2500,
How is that any different from returning Youtube videos as all of the top results, and pushing Metacafe or whatever do
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Microsoft doesn't have market dominance. Google does. That's the important distinction.
Microsoft doesn't have market dominance in operating systems where they make Bing the default?
How is that any different from returning Youtube videos as all of the top results, and pushing Metacafe or whatever down the list?
Putting YouTube first doesn't stop people who are looking for Metacafe from finding it easily. The cliche about everyone clicking on the first result is backwards -- the first result is listed first because it's the one that everybody clicks on. Being in the number three spot does not make you invisible. Being in the number 2500 spot does. And on top of that, product search doesn't put Google in the top slot for ev
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Because Google is an easy target. We already know that their acquisition of Doubleclick violated Clayton, the question is what else might they have violated. And taking on a Wall Street darling would definitely send a message to corporate America, that this could happen to you.
Just because there are other offenders or worse offenders doesn't make Google's violation any less significant, buying up that much of the ad market was an extremely dangerous thing to do.
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We already know that their acquisition of Doubleclick violated Clayton
Do you have a cite for the court case where this was proved?
And taking on a Wall Street darling would definitely send a message to corporate America, that this could happen to you.
From where I'm sitting the message is that antitrust enforcement is arbitrary and capricious, having everything to do with political advantage, and that therefore companies should make sure their Congress is well-oiled with campaign contributions so that they can keep on doing all of the odious things that aren't being prosecuted while the government does the bidding of AT&T and Microsoft.
Incidentally, isn't antitrust supposed to be enforced by
Let me get this straight. (Score:5, Insightful)
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So it's evil when Google mines my data and makes no attempt to hide the fact that they do, but it's ok when congress creates fusion centers that create profiles of average american citizens that have never committed any crimes and places wire taps on phones without proper warrants or just cause. I'm sorry, but I actually feel much safer trusting Google with my information than I do the federal government. Google just wants to make a profit, the federal government wants to control my life.
Apparently... sad, isn't it? And perhaps I misinterpreted your earlier post I responded to, in which case, my apologies.
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Yep, but at least you can avoid Google services if you choose.
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Sure you can. There are plenty of ad networks other than Adsense.
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So it's evil when Google mines my data and makes no attempt to hide the fact that they do, but it's ok when congress creates fusion centers that create profiles of average american citizens that have never committed any crimes and places wire taps on phones without proper warrants or just cause. I'm sorry, but I actually feel much safer trusting Google with my information than I do the federal government. Google just wants to make a profit, the federal government wants to control my life.
Don't be so sure. For instance, Google Analytics tracks you on sites before you can even know the site uses Google Analytics (they require sites to include information in their privacy policy, but by the time you've found the link to that it's already to late, you have been tracked). To "opt out" you have to install a special modification (plugin) to your browser and even then they will not delete the data they have already collected on you. Google does not just want to make a profit -- it's explicit mis
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At the moment, Google might not be doing much that you strenuously object to with your data. But SCO (Caldera) was a "nice company" before Darl McBride. It is a bad idea to put yourself at the mercy of a company's "niceness". Especially one like Google that has made a number of gaffes recently but still seems to believe it "does no evil" - over time the definition seems to be creeping from "we must only do good things" to "if we're doing it, it must be ok." The time to rein things in and ensure there are appropriate balances is before the company goes SCO on you.
Never appeal to a man's "better nature". He may not have one. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Googles real crime: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not donating enough to the various political parties.
A quick check shows Google and its employees [opensecrets.org] are pretty active politically, and I suspect that if Democrats want more money from them they just have to ask. It could be a shakedown, but there's not a shred of evidence that this is the case beyond vague claims that it's happened before. I find anyone who calls himself an "insider", let alone a magazine that calls itself that, to be consistently full of shit.
The simplest explanation for why liberal Democrats are conducting an anti-trust investigation is that
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I think their notions of anti-trust are based on an economic theory consisting of fairness and pixie dust
Would that be the soy-based product typically used for server maintenance?
I want to be governed by Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you reading this, Google? Get on it.
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Uh Oh (Score:2)
Wait ... (Score:2)
Others in Congress are criticizing the search giant over several flubs, including ... sidestepping net neutrality rules through a deal with Verizon.
What? Haven't we been reading in the past few days about Congress discarding the proposed net neutrality rules, the courts tossing out what the FCC had done on the subject, and so on? How can google be "sidestepping" rules that Congress themselves say don't exist?
Did I miss some news on a recent vote? If so, google news doesn't know about it, either. Asking news.google.com about "net neutrality" gets the story dated Mar 11 about "the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology rejecting the F
Utah, Tea Party, and MS involvement (Score:4, Informative)
Tea Party senator presses for 'vigorous' oversight of Google
By Jordan Fabian - 03/11/11 03:12 PM ET
Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants a congressional hearing to examine whether Google has run afoul of antitrust laws.
In a letter to Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), the chairman of a Senate antitrust panel, Lee said that Google's dominance of the Internet search arena prompts the "need for vigorous antitrust oversight and enforcement in this area."
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/149039-tea-party-senator-wants-google-oversight-hearings
So google is an abusive monopolist, and microsoft isn't? How could that be? Oh wait . . .
In his election campaign, the freshman Utah Republican took $5,000 each from executives of Microsoft and AT&T, two of Google’s biggest competitors; executives at 1-800 CONTACTS gave Lee $7,500 in donations last year.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51414450-76/1-800-anti-company-contacts.html.csp
Fund-raising ? (Score:2)
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To be fair, sometimes political contributions are not extortion. Usually it's bribery.
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AFAYK - as far as you know.
Re:It's certainly time for this already! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the biggest myth in tech world, the idea that end-user payments determine whether a service is paid or not.
Here's the fact: Google doesn't give anything away for "free." With most of its services you are the product being sold to advertisers.
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+1, Troll.
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It's not evil. (Score:3)
Re:It's not evil. If it were, why is Skyhook OK? (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is Skyhook, [skyhookwireless.com] a company that war-drives our neighborhoods, collects WiFi info without permission, associates WiFi MACs or other identifying info with Lat. & Long. coordinates and sells a service that can tell WiFi receivers where they are.
So if it's evil for Google to war-drive and collect WiFi identifiers, shouldn't it also be evil for Skyhook?
Disclosure: I don't work for Google but a couple friends do...
Sorta (Score:2)
I think they don't drive around
but use end user devices with gps to collect the data
(So this may make it more heinous)
i.e. if your phone has GPS & Wifi on, it uses end user equipment to build the database
they aren't always 'driving & collecting'.
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Re:It's certainly time for this already! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I look at it this way... if Google is slowly trying to take over the Government, I say go for it. I remember the early days "oh, Google will never profit.. they don't DO anything to make money". Then came "Oh, they'll never stay profitable, they have no real 'market'"... well look at where they are, doing a lot better with "nothing" than our government can with "something" (our taxes, etc). All praise our Google Government!
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Nothing extra, nothing hidden? Geezus, you're young and naive. Nothing extra? How about requiring your installation of windows to "validate" before allowing updates? Nothing hidden? How about that ancient bit of code that forbade Windows from installing on any version of DOS other than MSDOS?
Anyone who cared to enumerate all the little "extra" and "hidden" shit in Windows could go on for hours - maybe even days.
Nothing extra, nothing hidden. Somehow, you've confused Windows with open source software,
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Commonplace in commercial software. To say nothing of why you believe you should be entitled to ongoing updates for free in the first place.
I challenge you to find a commercially released version of Windows that won't install on a non-MSDOS system.
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Which version of DR-DOS will Windows 3.1 or 3.11 not install and run on ?
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Caught red-handed again. 3 times in a row -
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2033736&cid=35459768 [slashdot.org]
Do you have a script that polls ./ every 60 seconds?
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Google is smart. They're playing the nice little guy who give everything for free. Even slashdotters love them because it's free. People fail to see the evil behind all that seemingly nice stuff. All the data mining, selling to advertisers, everything. This is why I prefer to pay for software like Microsoft's - their business model is honest and I get what I pay for. Nothing extra, nothing hidden.
Nuts to that. Google is what it is, but claiming that Microsoft is less evil is ... well, hilarious, really. If you're going to pick a counterexample I can't imagine a more ridiculous one than that. And please let me know when you start paying for the likes of Hotmail and Bing, will you? "Honest Steve" would like to talk to you about about the billing arrangements.
Nice shill, anyway.
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You pay for software that almost works 30% of the time and fails to work the other 70% of the time?
I think you're exaggerating a bit. If you don't like Microsoft products then you don't like Microsoft products, but to claim that they "fail" (whatever that means... instability? functionally?) is a bit disingenuous.
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From my point of view, every single time that Windows is brought to it's knees with spyware, trojans, viruses, or whatever malware - then Microsoft has failed.
I'll probably come close to agreeing with you in one respect. Many of Windows "failures" are probably due to third party software failures. But, I hold Microsoft entirely responsible for their shoddy security and permissions scheme. Someone will respond with "blah blah market share blah blah" - to which I would respond, "prove that little bit of no
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Really ? That's like saying every time someone steals an Escort, Ford has failed. Even if 50% of the time it's because the owner left the keys in the ignition and 40% of the time it's because the installer of the aftermarket alarm and immobilizer got it wrong..
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Re:It's certainly time for this already! (Score:4, Funny)
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Woah. Over reaction, dude. I never said Win7 didn't 'just work'. I said I got a BSOD recently. And I installed Linux on a different machine. That's a lot of hate you got stored up there. Glad you got some of it out. I'm not a microsoft hater. I just decided it wasn't for me anymore. I'm liking Linux a lot more than I did Windows 7. My preference, not yours. I don't push my OS on other people, I was just saying Windows still gives the BSOD. Great story though, bro.
Yes ... you don't usually see people defend Microsoft with such vehemence. I use Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux (various flavors) daily, and I will say this: Windows 7 has come a long way. It's a resource hog of Biblical proportions, true, but stability-wise it's not bad on decent hardware. Not bad at all, and the GUI has some pluses. I still prefer my Linux/Unix machines for a lot of things, and I don't imagine my servers are likely to ever run Windows.
But you're right: Windows still BSODs now and then
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MS have a long history of bungling. I vote this post for best typo of the month award!
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For example, their free gmail service is subsidized by their search products, and these products are largely unrelated.
What are you talking about? It pays for itself the same way every other free email service does, by having ads on it.
And I hope you're not suggesting that running a division at a loss is somehow unlawful, because otherwise Microsoft's xbox and online services divisions are in deep trouble.
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Dumping is not considered unlawful everywhere, but it certainly is anti-competitive. Ok, so maybe gmail may pay for itself by now (this definitely has not been the case when they started), youtube certainly is operating at a loss.
You might want to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) [wikipedia.org]
If you're still not convinced, let's assume that you are the owner of a game development studio. Suddenly, microsoft comes along, and with the money they earned on OSes and office software, they can a
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Ok, so maybe gmail may pay for itself by now (this definitely has not been the case when they started), youtube certainly is operating at a loss.
YouTube has been operating at a loss since before Google bought them, and they're in the process of slowly turning that around. This is the normal way industries work -- you have to make an initial investment to create the infrastructure necessary to enter the market and the returns don't come until some time down the road.
If you're still not convinced, let's assume that you are the owner of a game development studio. Suddenly, microsoft comes along, and with the money they earned on OSes and office software, they can afford to give away games on a large scale. And suddenly you are out of business. Under normal circumstances, when a corporation pushes another corporation out of business, this can be viewed as ''evolutionary forces at work''. But here this is definitely not the case, because these divisions of microsoft are clearly unrelated. It is an anomaly in the system, and this is exactly what governments should protect against.
The logic doesn't really work for digital goods. The idea with dumping is that you sell for less than the reproduction cost. With digital goods the reproduction cost is effectively zero.
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Google might have the slogan "do no evil", but considering the above facts, Microsoft is really not all too bad. I certainly have to agree with the parent that their business model is more honest, at least.
Hotmail does all the same things. Microsoft product. Next riddle?
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Ummm, the market price for webmail is free. There are exceptions and the "free" services are generally fremium, but that doesn't change the fact that consumers expect the service to be free. It's not dumping if ad revenue covers the cost.
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You're right - everyone notices advertisements. That's why I have a massive HOSTS list, and use AdBlock Plus, along with several other tools. I don't see very many advertisements on the internet. And, because I'm such a disagreeable asshole, those advertisements that I DO SEE help to ensure that I DO NOT buy those products. So, yes, you're right, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
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You're right - everyone notices advertisements. That's why I have a massive HOSTS list, and use AdBlock Plus, along with several other tools. I don't see very many advertisements on the internet. And, because I'm such a disagreeable asshole, those advertisements that I DO SEE help to ensure that I DO NOT buy those products. So, yes, you're right, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Yep. For some unaccountable reason, some people feel that not viewing advertisements is, somehow, amoral. Or they worry that the Web will no longer be "free" if we don't view the advertising that is pushed on us. Oh well.
.... well, that's okay too. You'll noti
Me, on the other hand, feel the same way about it as I do telemarketing: I'm paying for the communications medium, I get to decide how it's used. Now, if a particular Web site wants to get testy about that and deny me access if I don't view its ads
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Microsoft gives away plenty of "free" software like internet explorer, visual studio express, security essentials, etc. They also have free email, search, etc. Bing has ads; hotmail has ads. What's so different from what Google does other than Google does it better?
Whoa, nobody said Microsoft isn't dumping. Look at the PC software market over the last twenty years.
There's what, a computer or two in damn near every household now, and I don't have numbers, but think to yourself how much money each household spends on software to run on said computers. Subtract money paid to Apple and Microsoft. This is pure speculation.. I don't think there's very much money moving around for home PC software. Probably a rather large part of that is in games, and we know how that c
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Don't click - Links to goatse.
Blast to 1999 (Score:2)
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the karma bombing is a bitch, isn't it? I am a decade+ (so to speak) poster with a damned good karma rating; yet I was bombed a year or so ago (very unknown reasons) and I was stuck like you, with -1 for quite a long long time. nothing the developers (I emailed many times, sigh) could do would reverse it. maybe they just didn't care, don't know.
realize that its happened to others. I did not create a 2nd account and just gave up even trying to post for close to a year. yeah, it sucked; then again, I had
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Good plan [jonholato.com].
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AT&T is far more guilty of cooperating with the NSA and the Dept. of Homeland Security than Google has been. http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/att-complaint.pdf [eff.org] What is amazing to me is the level of misinformation that can subsist in a world where information can be received from a myriad of sources (none of which are in a vast "cabal" colluding with each other to keep us all in the dark). Steve Jobs was pointing out google's "do no evil" slogan as bullshit had to do with his iPhone's war with Androi
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the only other option is to hire a fool and do the opposite of what s/he says.
Which is still better than our current policy of hiring shipfuls of fools, and then blindly following them off the edge of the Earth.