Managing email [ was Re: D 1.076 and 2.061 release ]

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:18:07 +0000
Russel Winder <russel at winder.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sat, 2013-01-05 at 02:20 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > Yea. Google's "Don't be evil" is a complete load of
> > self-rationalizing bullshit. I mean, christ, their whole business
> > is based on mining/selling personal information, and then they
> > twist and contort the web technologies themselves into whatever
> > they see fit (people bitch when *Microsoft* tries to do it, but
> > when Big Brother does it it's apparently ok), and then they have
> > the audacity to pretend their mantra is "Don't be evil." I hate
> > Microsoft as much as anyone, but I'd sell my soul to MS if it got
> > rid of companies like Google and Apple.
> 
> Google is a complex beast in that it it clearly evil, money grubbing,
> etc. as it has to be as a company with shareholders,

Yea, I was very disappointed years ago when they announced an IPO.
Prior to that, they were more or less just a fairly respectable search
engine. Very unsurprisingly, that didn't last long after going public.

> but it also does
> do a lot of community support to try and give back some. Much more so
> that Microsoft and Apple, both of which are just evil without any of
> the giving back.
> 

That is a fair point. OTOH, Google (by their very nature) is dead-set on
things like making sure the web gets treated as an application platform
and getting people to store their personal data on Google's private
"cloud" (a moronic and unnecessary renaming of the works "hosted" and
"internet", but that's a separate rant).

I know some people may not have a problem with such things as
web-as-an-OS, but I see it as doing very severe damage to the entire
world of computing as a whole. Which is not offset by anything they
could even possibly give back. They may see it as relieving the world
from the tyranny of Windows, but really it's just exchanging one facist
dictator for a nuttier, but more charismatic, one.

Also I think another part of what makes Google (and Apple) so dangerous
is that unlike MS, most people are still hailing them as wonderful
and benevolent companies.