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+title: 'Do whatever!'
+categories:
+  - computer
+  - culture
+  - Own cloud
+  - privacy
+date: 2012-06-12T11:47:33
+tags:
+---
+
+(I had this post in draft queue for a long time, but for a moment I
+couldn't get into one of my code.google.com projects which made me
+panick; it seems to be fixed now, but now when this panic made me to
+finish this post, I will publish it anyway.)
+
+I know that I am probably too late to the party discovering that Google
+had thrown their original motto down the drain. However, I would still
+like to write down a couple of points on their way which were somehow
+missed by most of bloggers and journalists.
+
+1. First sign that something is wrong came very soon after Larry Page
+   took over CEO position in Google (I don’t think there is a link,
+   project had to be prepared long time before) was when Google released
+   `Offline Google Mail`_ working only for their Chrome, although it
+   should be possible to create virtually same application using
+   platform-neutral standard HTML5 capabilities. Since then all talks
+   about Open Web and platform independence died, Dart came (and so far
+   fortunately doesn’t seem to make any waves), and almost everything
+   created by Google is if not Chrome-only, then certainly
+   Chrome-first-and-if-it-works-somewhere-else-good-but-we-don’t-care.
+   Not mentioning that I am with Firefox nightly constantly bombarded
+   with ads that I should upgrade to “modern browser”.
+
+2. Just months after Mr. Page took his throne, `Google codesearch`_ got
+   killed (don’t be mistaken, what’s there now searches only through
+   Android codebase now). I don’t think it cost Google much (after all,
+   if I understand correctly, they still go through all those pages and
+   index them), but it was clear signal, that Google fallen victim to
+   Apple envy and they turned their back on developers and want to be
+   mass-users company for those “normal” people.
+
+3. Of course, no whining against Google would be complete without
+   mentioning of Google+. From start completely closed and although
+   support for open API has been promised since start, it never
+   materialized (and probably it is not on horizon). Just by its
+   popularity among hackers it finally killed OStatus and status.net
+   (noise of shatters banging in empty status.net accounts is really
+   deafening). There seems to be still some life in Diaspora, but one
+   wonders for how long now, when its users will never come (I am
+   afraid). It isn't about privacy (that's relevant, but something
+   else), but about trust. It seems to me that trust is getting to be
+   really most important currency on the Internet for long-term growth
+   and many (I should probably mention Facebook here, right?) don’t get
+   it. I thought that Google did get it, but lately they seem to loosing
+   tons of trust every action they make. And although trust could be
+   supported by `sharing and giving back`_, in the end deed shout louder
+   than words.
+
+Friends of the free software used to have a friend in Mountain View. I
+am afraid, that we have lost one friend, and although I believe in
+possibility of repentance even on the dead bad, I honestly not expect
+anything than final turning of Google into AOL. Good luck and hope we’ll
+meet again on the crooked paths of the computer development.
+
+.. _`Offline Google Mail`:
+    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk
+.. _`Google codesearch`:
+    http://google.com/codesearch
+.. _`sharing and giving back`:
+    http://magazine.redhat.com/?s=Alan+Cox