Google Is Target of European Backlash On U.S. Tech Dominance

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I was going to say that Google sure seems like Europe's whipping boy lately but it would seem the term "whipping Wagnerian dragon" is more fitting these days. ;)

Across Europe, Google has been under fire, reflecting the broader challenges facing American technology companies. Google, fairly or not, has become a glaring proxy for criticism of an intrusive American government and concern over America’s unmatched technology dominance.
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Let them take a page from China. Cut them off and let them build their OWN crappy localized also-rans.
 
They did the same with Microsoft, attempted with Amazon, and slapped Apple on the pinky.

This no longer surprises me.
 
Vae victis comes to mind.

Perhaps instead of crying about it, they should nurture their own tech revolution/evolution.
 
Dear God the gullibility. Consider the source, and be sure to read those linked articles to understand why the EU and countries around the world have had it with Google. My final conclusion is that the American people either don't care or are too stupid (maybe both) to realize the current situation with Google is catastrophic for free speech, global communication and the internet as a medium. We desperately need an objective search engine for the internet.
 
JeffDC said:
Dear God the gullibility. Consider the source, and be sure to read those linked articles to understand why the EU and countries around the world have had it with Google. My final conclusion is that the American people either don't care or are too stupid (maybe both) to realize the current situation with Google is catastrophic for free speech, global communication and the internet as a medium. We desperately need an objective search engine for the internet.
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Yup, internet.
 
EU IMO is lookin for money in any place they can outta any company they can for any reason. They went after MS cause they included IE cause opera whined about it.
 
JeffDC said:
Dear God the gullibility. Consider the source, and be sure to read those linked articles to understand why the EU and countries around the world have had it with Google. My final conclusion is that the American people either don't care or are too stupid (maybe both) to realize the current situation with Google is catastrophic for free speech, global communication and the internet as a medium. We desperately need an objective search engine for the internet.
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There are some people in the US that are starting to figure it out, but very few of them have. Even in the tech industry, people who got used to cheering for Google because they were another underdog haven't gotten out of that mindset and don't wanna acknowledge that the company is now a hideous monster.

In fact, it's gotten even worse since they so graciously changed their legal statements to remove the "difficult to understand" legal language under the guise of making it dumbed down enough for commoners to understand. What the average person doesn't get is that the statements made about what the company is doing are very vaguely worded, allowing pretty broad interpretations and the average person just assumes that it's all okay when it isn't. There was a reason why legal agreements between people and companies used such painful language. It spelled out in specific terms what was going on which is no longer the case with Google.

Americans have been asking for it for ages now and while they're busy freaking out about police because they're scared of authority figures or waving signs at government buildings because they think that a revolution is gonna change something for the better, corporations like Google are quietly watching people move around, recording every call they make, search they perform, word they send in e-mail or text, and mining it all for more than just advertising profits.

It's too bad that the people on the other side of the pond are the only ones smart enough to have figured that out. I guess we're all too busy with "my team winning the big game last night" or yelling about the "natural rights" that humans invented for themselves so they could feel entitled to realize what's happening.
 
People really sometimes don't understand that all of this government intrusion in the guise of "defending the little guy" is merely a posture assumed to get the gullible public (the little guy) used to the idea of punishing success wherever it rears its ugly head by way of back-door taxation. This is about revenue collection and absolutely nothing else at all--well, that and local politics--where various government crooks & stooges posture with dung-eating grins in the spotlight as to how they are "defending the little guy"--one of the oldest chump phrases in modern politics.

I've been challenging governments doing this (ever since our own DoJ first betrayed Microsoft so many years ago in a genuine show trial reminiscent of the USSR) to give the money they collect directly to the people they claim they are working for (the "little people")...but hell will freeze over before that happens. 99% of the money the government collects in the form of punitive fines drops into the general kitty where the faceless bureaucrats (never elected to anything and unknown to the public--see, IRS) decide on a daily basis how every penny is spent. If the little people are lucky, a few of them might collect 1% of the total of back-door taxation levied.

People who are afraid of Google but not afraid of their massively overreaching governments are, in my estimation, either hypocrites or fools. Here's why: the US government in terms of resources alone is literally thousands of times bigger than Google--it could swallow Google whole and not even burp. But that's not even the main issue. If you don't like the tax bill the government sends you, and decide you don't want to pay it because it is wildly inaccurate, let's contrast what Google can do to you versus what the government can do to you:

1) Google *might* put you on a public list connected to a search engine somewhere. That's it. Can't do anything else. But since it would be a public record--so could anyone put you or I on such a list. I daresay there are reams of phony info on people floating around the Internet as we speak.

2) Your loving government, however (again, see IRS), can seize all of your property and freeze all of your bank accounts and, if it decides it wants to throw you in jail--yea, it'll send armed men to your door to arrest you. Over your income tax bill. Happens frequently in the US--we've only just uncovered the the tip of the iceberg where the IRS is concerned.

Simply put, Google can do nothing to you that even compares--Google cannot force you to use its software or its services. It cannot compel you via the barrel of a gun to use anything Google offers as a service or sells as a product. No...like all private companies, Google must earn your business with sugar--that is, either Google provides something you as a customer want to voluntarily use and/or purchase, or Google is gone-gone. Simple as that.

In the US Revolution we fought a war to get out from under the European yoke of totalitarian governments...Divine Right of Kings, religious persecution, and the whole European enchilada. Hell if I want to go backwards to that. Those folks are so used to having their balls crushed daily that they've actually learned to enjoy it, evidently...;) They are the ones who are afraid of itty-bitty Google but blind to their own lack of freedoms--hell, even the more advanced European nations have no or else few legal protections for political speech and press such as we take for granted in the US--they've never had it so they have no idea what it is. Sad. But very, very true.

One last thing: my emails are so interesting that I daresay they would force a hibernating bear into a deeper state of sleep...;) Google has my blessing to read them all if it wants...! God bless 'em...they won't find anything of value there...! *IF* I should ever be so stupid as to write down something self-incriminating for any reason (which would be hard for me since I don't do anything incriminating in the first place!)--I'd probably send it snail mail, anyway. But still, writing it down in the first place is el stupido redundo (not sure about the translation there)...;)

Besides...apparently most people don't know that every one of their emails is already encrypted--and I don't mean digitally, necessarily, I mean by something far, far better and 100% impervious to hacking: context!

Let's say the great email picker in the sky grabs one of your emails out of the ether, and you've written:

"Sally, meet me at the lake house (off Route 4) a week from Monday, and if you wear nothing at all it'll be fine with me...:D Love, [H] Romeo"

So what does that tell the Google robots about you (pretending for one moment that the bots have their own secret prurient natures)? Well, since they don't know who you are and don't know who Sally is and they don't know where route 4 or "the lake house" is and really can't even know which "Monday" the email refers to--I'd say that context alone has encrypted that email wonderfully. The only people who can parse the email to unlock its meaning are the people who have the keys. You have a key and Sally has a key and that key is context. Without that, the information provided by the plain English email is worthless and 100% indecipherable to any outside party.

Indeed, the information would only be of value to whomever has the contextual key to unlock it. Consider the case of people writing joke/gag emails to each other, etc. If anyone outside your life should already have such a contextual key to your life events then you, my friend, are being investigated and you were "up dung creek" before you wrote the first email...;)

That's why I'm smart enough not to cower in front of private companies like Google and beg a totalitarian government somewhere to come and rescue me. Hell, they won't protect me: they'll just tell Google to CC 'em my emails...;) Google can't come at me with a gun--the other guys can. I know what they know and I know what they do and I'm smart enough to create any false impression I might wish to create--if I was motivated to do so in the first place, that is. People are far from defenseless and unprotected when it comes to privacy, etc.
 
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