[aklug] Re: Google Evil? Was: Re: I'm an Android

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 7:20 PM, Christopher Howard <choward@indicium.us> wrote:

>
> Somebody tell me if this is OT. But it seems very related to me:
>
> I don't understand the Google bashing. Google has probably done more for
> open source than any company on the planet, depending on the measuring
> stick you use, of course. Google has supported Google Summer of Code for
> years. Google pays 85% of the expenses of the Mozilla foundation, and is
> therefore pretty much responsible for giving us the only truly
> marketable open-source browser (outside of Google Chrome). Google's
> flagship mobile OS -- Android -- is released almost entirely under the
> Apache license. Google gave us Google Apps which, outside of OpenOffice,
> has been pretty much the only successful crack in the Microsoft Office
> market.
>
> Outside of their search technology, virtually every software project
> they've every championed (that I know of) has either been an open source
> project or has advanced open standards in some way.
>
> I hear some people bash Google over privacy concerns. I'm not
> unilaterally standing behind them, and maybe you can educate us better
> on that. But there is no law saying that you have to send search queries
> over an unencrypted connection to Google, in order to get a free
> response back. And Gmail is a free e-mail service provided to almost 200
> million people. Can we really expect Google to exhaust their company
> savings defending client privacy when some agency comes along demanding
> particular information?
>
> - --
> Christopher Howard
> frigidcode.com
> theologia.indicium.us
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>

I love Google--Google is one of the few big corporations I don't
believe to be evil. However I can understand why some have concerns.
 Google has access to a crazy amount of information.

-- 
Chris Kunzler
ckunzler@gmail.com
(262) 586-9537
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