Google The New Evil Empire?

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Frank Cox
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Google The New Evil Empire?

#1 Post by Frank Cox »

Google has decided to not only withhold support for FF2, Sea Monkey, Opera,and even Chrome 3 to force it's agenda on us but it is their stated policy that any document you store on their site can be used for basically anything they wish. That is criminal,few will ever read that statement.

The browser problem is particularly disheartening to people who do not have access to broadband and rely on these older browsers and people like Scottman who work hard to customize them for Puppy.

This is a post showing their "privacy" policy for what it truly is.

How do I justify the Business Risk to my IPR when I see the Terms and Conditions...? Report abuse

David MBW
Level 1
6/9/09
How does anyone dare do any work via Google Docs when the T&Cs quite clearly allow everything to be used, copied, amended etc by Google. We were going to share Project Spec and Development documents here, but this is a commercially sensitive venture and i will not grant google the opportunity to use it!

How do others get round this business risk? or don't they care/don't read the Ts & Cs? Extract from Ts and Cs below.

I'll have to see what other people are offering in teh shared app/cloud environment, I can't believe Google does this - this is teh sort of rapacious behaviour i would expect of Microsoft! Whatever happened to teh "Do No Evil" culture? Quietly dropped in exchange for a Redmond oriented approach it seems.

Relevant extract from the Ts and Cs (my bolding):

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

My reply:
.
Thanks for the info!

This is outrageous! If Google needs to use a document for advertising they can easily create it or ask people to allow them to use one of theirs.
Google could legally sell your business secrets or use them .
I have not read the T&C of online backup services but I know Carbonite claims that they cannot and will not read your files. If I had sensitive info I would never trust it to Google.
It makes you feel like uploading encrypted documents that when deciphered just say,Shame on you Google!
Another Redmon like act is trying to force everyone to use the browsers they choose. There are millions on dial-up still and browsers such as Opera , FireDog for Puppy Linux, SeaMonkey,FF2 etc. make a huge difference on usability. Not to mention text only browsers like e-links etc.
This would be a great opportunity for an upstart to offer a similar service that had a version from the simplest text browsers to the latest FF and IE and supplied software to encrypt or at least linked to open source software that does.

What a dream ad campaign! Portray Big Brother selling your personal and business secrets from your online storage and then offering an alternative that rebukes that nonsense and allows you to choose the browser you like and respects your privacy and intellectual property.

Opportunity is knocking, hope someone answers.The Open Source Movement is missing a HUGE opportunity if they miss this one. A new Browser War would give them priceless advertising.

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abushcrafter
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#2 Post by abushcrafter »

With the web browsers its for HTML5 from a weddevs point of view its a must. Any way the latest version of opera supports a lot of HTML5.

Frank Cox
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Google

#3 Post by Frank Cox »

abushcrafter wrote:With the web browsers its for HTML5 from a weddevs point of view its a must. Any way the latest version of opera supports a lot of HTML5.

It may be that iHTML 5 allows you more possibilities but how hard could it be to provide a version of the page without all the bells and whistles? If you did not have access to BB your attitude would change. America is number 17 in the world in the ability for people to access BB.

My only choice is to buy a satellite for 400.00 and pay 70.00 plus a month for service that often is as slow as dialup, is not nearly as fast as the slowest DSL even on a good day and often does not work at all forcing you to pay for dialup anyway.

Do you feel Google should be able to do as they please with your private docs?

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abushcrafter
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Re: Google

#4 Post by abushcrafter »

Frank Cox wrote:
abushcrafter wrote:With the web browsers its for HTML5 from a weddevs point of view its a must. Any way the latest version of opera supports a lot of HTML5.

It may be that HTML 5 allows you more possibilities but how hard could it be to provide a version of the page without all the bells and whistles? If you did not have access to BB your attitude would change. America is number 17 in the world in the ability for people to access BB.

My only choice is to buy a satellite for 400.00 and pay 70.00 plus a month for service that often is as slow as dialup, is not nearly as fast as the slowest DSL even on a good day and often does not work at all forcing you to pay for dialup anyway.

Do you feel Google should be able to do as they please with your private docs?
What about there basic page, no bells or whistles there! What about the link to the older version. Is that left long term or do they plan to remove it? As for Google Doc Licence, I don't like it! Thanks for pointing that out BTW.

What does BB mean?

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jemimah
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#5 Post by jemimah »

I've always wondered what all the hype about "cloud computing" was about. It now becomes obvious that's it's something of a gingerbread house.

It's staggering when you think about the potential power of an omniscient Google.

I think they probably gave up on 'don't be evil' when they went public. If so, then they will probably be the most efficient and effective 'evil empire' in history.

nooby
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#6 Post by nooby »

I don't defend or support Google at all. I am very worried over the power they have.

But to be fair the statement that they can do anything with our texts or pictures or anything is what almost every such provider say. AFAIK. I know this from email services, they write such too in their policies. I guess it has to do with protection against being sued in USA or something. A kind of legal technicality?????? I am unsure. But it has been with us for many many years.

Facebook refused to delete account of a young guy who died and his girlfriend and his mother wanted his site to be taken down but they had not his password so they asked Facebook to do it and they refused. They owned it and said they decided to keep it for all to read.

so this is something not specific for google. Unless google own facebook?

If one feel very bad about google one can join the Church of Google, they use humor to tease google to reconsider things. If enough people tease them on blogs they maybe start to listen?

I did no join because me too confused to be of any good use against such clever guys as google :)
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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abushcrafter
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#7 Post by abushcrafter »

Where is this "Google owns your docs " statement from as I can't find it?

http://www.google.com/google-d-s/terms.html

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Lobster
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#8 Post by Lobster »

I have just been looking at Buzz (Twitter from Google)

Twitter is better and it is better to have independent and smaller (not that twitter is small) companies rather than megacorps IMHO

Google is big. It has the best search engine.
However processing of information - for example making sense of twitter info might require something new . . .
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DMcCunney
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#9 Post by DMcCunney »

Lobster wrote:I have just been looking at Buzz (Twitter from Google)

Twitter is better and it is better to have independent and smaller (not that twitter is small) companies rather than megacorps IMHO
Twitter is growing like topsy, and the question is when the bubble will burst. The fundamental issue is that Twitter has no revenue, nor any announced plans to generate revenue. It's a throwback to the days of the dot com boom when people seemed to believe that the price of the stock would ascend forever simply because it was a dot com, in absence of things like revenue and profits.

At some point, Twitter has to generate revenue and make money. A lot of folks will be much happier when they drop some hints about how they plan to do it.
______
Dennis

Frank Cox
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Google woes

#10 Post by Frank Cox »

jemimah wrote:I've always wondered what all the hype about "cloud computing" was about. It now becomes obvious that's it's something of a gingerbread house.

It's staggering when you think about the potential power of an omniscient Google.

I think they probably gave up on 'don't be evil' when they went public. If so, then they will probably be the most efficient and effective 'evil empire' in history.
Sad but true, I fell for it, I can barely remember the names of the other search engines.

Frank Cox
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Search Hint

#11 Post by Frank Cox »

abushcrafter wrote:Where is this "Google owns your docs " statement from as I can't find it?

http://www.google.com/google-d-s/terms.html
Hi abushcrafter:

http://www.google.pl/support/forum/p/Go ... 5602&hl=en

Hint-to find an article copy and paste a unique line of text from sais article into any search engine but google :}

Frank Cox
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Re: Google

#12 Post by Frank Cox »

abushcrafter wrote: What about there basic page, no bells or whistles there! What about the link to the older version. Is that left long term or do they plan to remove it? As for Google Doc Licence, I don't like it! Thanks for pointing that out BTW.

What does BB mean?
Hi abushcrafter.

BB is my shorthand for broadband, probably not a good one.

I appreciate that Google let me set my account to basic html but now every time I access it I get a Billy Message {Microsoft-like error/warning}
that they are going to stop supporting my browser. It may not adversely affect e-mail but I have come to depend on google docs.
I only get the warning on google docs.

To be fair Google is just one of many who ignore dialup users by blocking older ,fast browsers. Many block all but the Billy Browser "IE" .
Google runs on Linux so they have not dome that,yet.

These people are trying to help:

http://anybrowser.org/campaign/

If anyone knows a cheap online file service please post it.

Frank Cox
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Twitter

#13 Post by Frank Cox »

At some point, Twitter has to generate revenue and make money. A lot of folks will be much happier when they drop some hints about how they plan to do it.

My guess is Google will take it over or force it out . It would not surprise me if they own it , or somehow control it now.
______

Frank Cox
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email-vs docs

#14 Post by Frank Cox »

I think you missed the point entirely. There is no security in email and legal issues do cause some strange behavior .
But we are talking about Google Docs, the private files of anyone are just that .private. There are documents you would never transfer by email that should be rather secure by uploading them
Google is saying they can use the information in the private documents of the public, small businesses , and corporations as they see fit.

If carbonite was smart they would add this to their package-online docs-and use Google's policy to advertise it. It is not so hard to encrypt all the files. Possibly the legal risk of guaranteeing no one will steal them anyway is too great for a free service to bear but Google is in fact claiming co-ownership rights.

Please study before commenting, I may be dead wrong but please don't respond with broad unsubstantiated statements.

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#15 Post by abushcrafter »

I read your link. Now I see. I can't read legal documents! However this makes me confused:
https://docs.google.com/support/bin/ans ... swer=82366

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abushcrafter
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Re: Google

#16 Post by abushcrafter »

Yea I plan to use the button but then can I face supporting IE.... :?.

DMcCunney
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Re: Google The New Evil Empire?

#17 Post by DMcCunney »

Frank Cox wrote:Google has decided to not only withhold support for FF2, Sea Monkey, Opera,and even Chrome 3 to force it's agenda on us but it is their stated policy that any document you store on their site can be used for basically anything they wish. That is criminal,few will ever read that statement.

The browser problem is particularly disheartening to people who do not have access to broadband and rely on these older browsers and people like Scottman who work hard to customize them for Puppy.
I think you need to go back and re-read what they are doing.

They are not discriminating against people who do not have broadband. They are discriminating against older browsers that do not support current web standards. And their drop of support is for Google Docs and Google Sites, not GMail (which was the initial complaint you made in a different thread.) They not that long ago re-architected their code so IE 6 would be fully supported by GMail. (I don't envy them that effort. IE 6 is the least standards compliant browser in popular use, and web devs tear their hair trying to get stuff to work in IE 6 that works in everything else.)

A lot of what Google is trying to do in Docs and Sites requires support for current standards in HTML CSS, and JavaScript to work at all. The browsers on their drop list lack the required support. (And note that v3 of their own Chrome browser is among the affected.)

I use GMail as my primary email, and make use of both Google Docs and Google Sites. I don't have a problem with their policies. For instance, I've never considered email secure, from any provider, so I don't generally say things in email I'd be unhappy about having made public. Sure, Google can theoretically read my mail. Let them. I don't care. (If it's that private, that's what GPG is for.) The stuff in Google Docs and Sites is there specifically to permit others to access it as well as me.

I normally access GMail from Windows on my desktop. On Puppy, I often use Basic HTML view, because the old, slow box I run Puppy on has problems with the AJAX stuff used in GMail, and I see "A script on this page is running slowly or has stopped responding. Do you want to terminate the script?" messages. The machine just can't process it fast enough. Basic HTML doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the AJAX version, but works fine for reading/replying to mail.

Folks still on dial up are at a disadvantage, because an increasing amount of stuff on line assumes you have broadband and the bandwidth to properly view things like streaming video, but this is hardly Google's fault. The days are long gone when web devs had to assume their users were at the other end of a 14,4KB modem, and had to code for small pages with a minimum downloaded to be able to view the page. The majority of the market has broadband these days, and development is aimed at that majority.
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#18 Post by abushcrafter »

The one thing I hate about GMail is your forbidden to send archives and .exe files :(. but its better then Not So Hot Mail and BooHoo (yahoo) Mail, they and ebay are very evil read here:
BooHoo: http://www.netdisaster.com/desktop/faq/ ... ident.html
EvilBay: http://www.netdisaster.com/desktop/faq/phishing.html
Last edited by abushcrafter on Wed 10 Feb 2010, 20:21, edited 1 time in total.

Frank Cox
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Nonsense

#19 Post by Frank Cox »

I can think of a 2 letter abbreviation for cattle poop that describes Google's reply.
If they wanted to make it clear why not just state Google will never do anything with your files, including look at them without your expressed written permission.
The line they need this blanket permission to reproduce files you gave others permission to access is nonsense.

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#20 Post by abushcrafter »

Thanks.

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