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There's no turn-by-turn GPS navigator for the G1, despite the fact that one was been demo'ed that uses Google maps and the built-in GPS receiver. The license for Gmaps specifically forbids its use by a real-time GPS application.
Google's complete and total capture of the FCC - they're 3 for 3 on major issues right now - is breathtaking.
Evil is banal, something that happens while we're thinking about other things. In that sense, well, the evidence is pretty clear.
And Google's success in convincing the FCC to embrace forced openness doesn't really make Google any worse (or better) than most other large tech companies out there. It's just that Google has been skilfully gaming the regulatory system as of late. Don't hate the playa; hate the game.
The program that Google is pursuing in the regulatory realm has to be judged (at least in part) according to its effects on the connectivity business and the content business, and I submit that such an analysis would show that Google is actually harming the very Internet infrastructure they pretend to protect. The "openness mandate" tends to reduce the Internet from a genuinely multi-service platform supporting a diverse set of uses into one where video streaming and web surfing are the only viable applications. The reason for this is that the other uses - mainly real-time communications of various kinds - depend on carriers discriminating among streams and boosting the priority of some while lowering the priority of others.
And Google's insistence on the use of the White Spaces as an unlicensed and lightly-regulated commons means they're destined to become overloaded and dysfunctional at some point. Of course, these developments will ultimately harm Google, but long after the numbers are in for the current quarter and the current year.
So there's a disconnect between the Google interest and the public interest, and a disconnect between Google's short-term and long-term interest. Their pursuit of short-term interest and obliviousness to the larger interests marks them as evil in my book.
I doubt anybody will make these points in the debate tomorrow.
Perhaps you’re right, but at least in this case, what Google is doing (regulatory gaming) is the norm, rather than the exception (as in murder). And I don’t mean to say we should completely excuse firms that advocate harmful policies; rather, we should focus the brunt of our criticism on the regulatory agencies which have so much authority that profit-maximizing firms have little choice but to hire lobbyists lest they lose out to more influential competitors.
I’m strongly opposed to forced openness in nearly all cases, but I’m not sure if Google is actually against the prioritization of time-sensitive data streams if conducted in an open manner without endpoint-based discrimination. Still, Google has got it wrong on net neutrality and I won’t hesitate to say it.
Again, you are right that the white spaces ruling represents a wrongheaded approach toward spectrum allocation, but Google was far from alone in pushing for the FCC to allow unlicensed use of white spaces. Microsoft and Dell were big proponents of white space devices as well.
I don’t have the insight into Google’s long-term plans to conclude that their victories in DC are contrary to their own long-term interest, though I do agree with you that, in some cases, Google’s policy agenda isn’t aligned with the public interest. But this makes Google no worse than countless other firms that throw money around in DC with hopes of achieving a favorable regulatory atmosphere. Name any big company, and I bet you can come up with an example of that company calling for a harmful policy at some point or another.
Large firms advocating policies that benefit their bottom line without regard to the public interest is really nothing new. Attempts to game the system have been commonplace in Washington for decades, and chances are they won’t disappear anywhere soon, despite the best efforts of those of us who oppose regulatory power in general.
I do believe that the long-term goal of fighting government intervention in the economy is a worthy one, and perhaps even in the best interest of a corporation with a long-term focus. But I do not know of very many large companies that are willing to resoundingly abandon the tactics of rent-seeking and instead embrace an open marketplace where success can be achieved only via innovation, rather than lobbying prowess.
There will always be some company that's on a regulatory winning streak. Today it is Google; tomorrow, it's anybody's guess. The regulatory interventionism that you and I abhor is rooted not in corporations, but in the government itself. Take away the ability of regulatory agencies to make judgment calls on how the airwaves are used, and opportunities for rent-seeking dissipate (at least as far as spectrum is concerned).
We should certainly criticize companies when they advocate bad policies, but branding firms like Google as "evil" only fuels the flames of state intervention that threaten the future of online content.
One thing I've always admired about Microsoft is their lack of pretense. At a meeting I had at Microsoft once, when my colleague complained about the price of MS-DOS licenses the MS product manager simply replied "there's no steeple on this building, is there?" Honesty is always refreshing.
Doesn't Google's complicity with China's censorship also "abandon the Chinese people to government-approved information sources only"? If China's censorship is problematic, why isn't Google's facilitation of that censorship also problematic?
"Google Earth, Maps, Street View, and basic search challenge privacy, but Google has made itself a model corporate citizen by working to educate users, by making its products transparent, and by openly resisting government subpoenas."
Only under duress did Google agree to blur out identifiable faces/license plates on Street View. Only under duress did Google (finally) agree to add a link to its privacy policy on its homepage. Only under duress did Google agree to limit the expiration date of its cookie. I hardly see such actions as those of a "model corporate citizen".
I think the Chinese people are better off with Google in there slow-walking their compliance with the Chinese authorities. When I last spent time with this issue, Google was indicating it to Chinese searchers when their results had been censored, which is crucial meta-information that a Baidu would not provide. So, no, being there and complying with censorship law is not the same as not being there.
Chinese censorship is problematic (at least), but the focus should be on the government with its wrongful rules rather than the company that complies with local law. If a building code requires using highly flammable materials and people die in a fire, you blame the building code, not the contractor that complied with the code.
"Model corporate citizen" may have been a bit generous. Perhaps they're a "model" for all the companies that are worse, as opposed to a model of perfection.
I'm not sure any of these changes occurred under pressure rising to the level of "duress." When a legitimate concern has been raised, Google has fairly promptly and easily agreed to privacy-protecting changes. (The whole thing about having a privacy policy linked from its home page was a canard, in my opinion, btw.)
Google did, in fact, induce more openness about the government policy.
http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/Transcript...
Nonetheless, it appears that the contestants had a good time.