The latest #Google excuse for snooping

Like I'm going to use a cloud-based "notes" app from teh Google, an online, cloud-based version of Mac's Stickies program. Good excuse for a mix of Google the snoop, Google the nanny and Google the hypercapitalist. Sorry, Wired, but Google Keep AIN'T "overdue."

Of course, Wired has a "greeaaat" history with privacy issues. Just ask Bradley Manning.

And, it also has a "greeaaat" history with being honest about privacy issues coverage. Just ask Glenn Greenwald.

Even worse is the obtrusiveness. Imagine if this gets put on Google Glass as well as smartphones.

You're staring at me, but I can tell you're actually looking at your Google Glass. You suddenly say, in a monotone, "Oh, I have an errand to run."

Even worse, can you imagine politicians using this as a fricking mini TelePrompTer? (And yes, it spells that was a trademarked name.)

Pretty soon, most people's lives, who have the money and geekitude for it, will be nothing but a canned sales script. Speaking of, even worse than politicians using this as a mini TelePrompTer, imagine horndog types combining Google Keep on Google Glass with the infamous NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

And, on the privacy side, beyond Wired, don't forget Google was the Do Some Evil if You Can Get Away With It folks who ran Google Street View then lied about it.

Finally, get a laugh out of Sergey Brin doing a TED talk on Google Glass.

First of all, if he thinks his geeky device will be any less distracting, not just to one's self but people around oneself, as a smartphone, he's full of bullshit.

Second, per commenters — hey, Sergey? If you can't present any better at a TED talk, get somebody else!

Then there were three: #Google, #Apple, #Amazon infowars

Yes, infowars. The latest news on Amazon's planned new tablet, including proprietary apps and a "forked" version of Google's Android OS show that information control wars between the Big Three are only going to heat up.

Jaron Lanier recently talked extensively about Apple and Google's stake in this.  The "this"?

It's the "hollowing out" of the cost of information delivery devices, often along with initial loss-leader prices on at least a sampling of information with proprietary control.

Then, J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch argue that Amazon (and, to a lesser degree, other e-publishers) may be going down the same path of hollowing out and information control.

This is another installment of my "dark side of the Internet" series, for that reason.

Let's not forget that Stewart Brand's famous, or infamous, "Information wants to be free" quote was only one half of the issue:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

What Lanier is saying is that the Apples and Googles of the world have the critical mass to make information free, or nearly so for now. And, I read Konrath and Crouch saying the same about Amazon. Then, later, like WallyWorld, in a more and more semi-monopolized Internet, where they have more control of the "right place," it will get expensive.

(Update: At the same time, Lanier is himself some sort of tech-neolib, who is dumb enough, naive enough, or on the take enough to assume that Big Data will give you or I micropayments for using its services.)

(Update 2: Brand himself claims he's blamed for a lot of tech-neoliberalism stuff that is not his fault. The rest of that interview indicates he's lying to himself if he really believes that and lying to the rest of us anyway.)

So, let's take a look at each of the Big Three, their current "stake" and what may be ahead.

Apple? The"proprietary control" issue has it at No. 1. Apple's apps can't be tweaked without jailbreaking, it makes all its own products/hardware, and it's very vertically integrated. Plus, it has a whole suite of its own software, such as iPhoto, iLife, etc., beyond its mobile apps.

Plus No. 2? A fanatically loyal customer base, along with an almost mythical image as being an "anti-corporation," i.e., not IBM. (Even more than "not Microsoft" in some ways) Can Tim Cook maintain it, especially in four or five years, after Jobs, assuming further health decline, steps down as chairman of the board?

Weaknesses? It has little information to manage/control in the traditional sense. It's well set for the management of information with all of its self-centeredness, but it has no pile of information yet.


Google? The personalization of its logo on its home page for many holidays, tied with the personalization of Internet searches that Google offers us, brands Google as being an anti-corporation, i.e., not Microsoft, but in a different way than Apple. Through "personalized" web searches, it also fosters that image.

At the same time, such search personalization, a "real names" policy on Google Plus and cloud computing, show Google's profit motive is at least as transparent as that of Bill Gates for anybody who looks at all.

Specific to this issue, Google has the strength of Internet search leadership and the willingness to spend on anything that will increase such leadership. Buying YouTube, developing Google-Plus after previous social media flops, and continued investing on cloud computing all illustrate that.

Weakness? As Amazon's "forking" of Android shows, it's not made its information flow very proprietary yet. Cloud computing may change that, although with the amount of rented server space Amazon offers, that may not be an unchallenged strength for Google in the future.

Weakness No. 2? Government regulators in both the U.S. and Europe worry that Google IS the new Microsoft.

Below? Amazon, the "new kid on the block," and further thoughts.

More on the Apple iPhone spying

First, Apple has already spoken, indirectly, about this issue in the past, but it's still not talking now.

Among its claims is that it "decouples" the GPS tracking data it gets from individual phones. Well, if that's the case, then why can't it also create a way for that data to be erased from the original phone after 12 hours, if a jailbreak app can do that and more.

Then, there's Steve Jobs' hypocrisy about how it's OK for Apple to spy on its users but NOT for third-party app makers to do this:

"Before any app can get location data, they can't just put up a panel asking if it can use location, they call our panel and it asks you if it's OK," Jobs said.

"That's one of the reasons we have the curated App Store. A lot of the people in the Valley think we're old-fashioned about this. But we take it seriously."

Some of us think it's not "old-fashioned," but Orwellian.

Second, not so smug from Jobs haters. Some Android phones do the same thing.

Google iPhone knockoff just around the corner — a skeptical look

The gPhone, powered by T-Mobile, is just around the corner, priced to move, and slap Apple in the face, at $199. The phone is platformed on Google’s open-code Android software.

The one critique so far is that it lacks the iPhone’s attractiveness quotient.

And, as far as slaps in the face, Research in Motion and the Blackberry may be in Google’s sights more than Apple.

Flip side of skepticism on gPhone?

Will the Android program, like Chrome, turn out to be another version of Google as Big Brother?

Let me put it this way — I wouldn’t bet against that.

Flip side of skepticism No. 2?

Google doesn’t always get things right. And doesn’t always do a good job of fixing what it didn’t get right in the first place.