Steve Jobs calls Google's "Don't be evil" mantra "Bullshit" and Adobe "Lazy"

"Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation."

So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.

Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.

To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade?

It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.

They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing.

In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.

They're keeping it closed for the sake of their users (most of whom would actually be worse off by a very open environment). For example, a couple days ago I talked with a non-technically savvy owner of an android phone, and my god. A Verizon tech has her killing all the background apps every hour so that her battery life isn't atrocious. Might be good for you and I, but not real consumers.

I thank that honor goes to the Chinese government. Google isn't the one that's actually blocking any access to sites.

But of course there are manufacturers of closed source that do not do 'lock-in', that open up their interface layers and protocols and that price their hardware reasonably.

A bit more than the average user can manage, and not so good as actually opting out (in the sense of getting Google to throw away all of their records on you), but you always have complete control of which pages your computer will load.

Google is open where it thinks it can afford to be and not where it doesn't. So is Apple.

Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone. Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives.

Maybe I'm not a good judge of morality. I still hold the romantic notion that people giving you money means people think you're doing something good for them. Apple's fans are some of the most loyal on the planet. It doesn't seem as though they're extorting folks into buying their stuff.

That is a fallacy.

It's very "closed", and that's no secret, but that has nothing to do with being "evil".

This is advertising presenting the right information to the right person at the right time.

On account of the consumer not paying for it, advertising is pretty much diametrically opposed to the consumers wants.

A paid for service which tells you what you want and when you want it is not what google are developing.

That sounds an awful like going to a webpage, for example Google, typing in a query, and having the results be appropriate and useful.

(Roughly, how Google was before it stopped being that and started serving useless shit like dozens of the same mailing list mirrors, shareware download sites and shopping aggregate sites).

"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""

No, because part of the point of advertising is to convince you that you want it. Perfect advertising would be such that whatever they show you, you buy.

You don't have to believe it. But that's what I've seen.

I hope they get the same kind of backlash Microsoft reaped from similar tactics, they are my least favourite company right now.

That said, the Google comment just seems to be so much hot air; "I know we're being pricks, but everyone is, and anyone who says different is simply lying". Yeah, thanks Steve.

The browser doesn't do this. The Flash applet in the page does this. Also, most of the Flash video content on the web is in .mp4 these days, and most big video sites already stream it to iPhones, etc. as .mp4, as if Flash didn't exist.

Oh and let's not forget Shigeru Miyamoto's awesomeness helping out :)

I can see how they had some success during their time with 3rd-party hardware vendors but that was short lived never truly made a big challenge vs. the Win/PC market. Also, this was during the non-Steve Apple and we can be sure that he won't be opening up any Mac OS to third parties because he wants to keep that control.

I'm saying that if you look at the entire time period from when Apple had a 90% PC market share to it's less than 10% and compare that to entire Win/PC market you have to say that a system that is open to 3rd parties is more successful than one which is locked down.

The iPhone and iPad will probably be better products than any Android powered device but that doesn't matter because history shows that a closed strategy isn't successful in the long run.

The truth of the matter is, they did it too late, and when they did, their competition released Windows 95, and later Windows NT 4 ... which were seen as big improvements over their predecessors, and Mac OS 7 wasn't that great compared to Windows.

Practically, it was too little, too late, and it only lasted until 97.