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'Do whatever!'
##############
:date: 2012-06-12T11:47:33
:category: computer
:tags: culture, OwnCloud, privacy, google
(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/gmail-offline/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk
.. _`Google codesearch`:
https://google.com/codesearch
.. _`sharing and giving back`:
http://magazine.redhat.com/?s=Alan+Cox
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