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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's so much about Apple as about Google.

The story about the Gmail Man and privacy concerns was down around number 70 (page 3) at two hours old and 59 points. That's a lot of flagging.

And Android is far more vulnerable to Microsoft than iOS because the major manufacturers all have licensing agreements in place with Microsoft because of patents.

Stories about BN's claims of patent abuse being thrown out by the ITC magistrate on Monday have been flagged down, including this excellent article:

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/01/itc-throws-out-barne...

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> That's a lot of flagging.

Again, the video is plain dishonest. It compares the free Gmail with the paid 365. And why do we need to assume Microsoft's Hotmail banners are not based on page content?

> including this excellent article:

Come on... Excellent and Florian Mueller in the same sentence? The only thing I never saw with his name is a criticism of Microsoft. I have to wonder why...

>Again, the video is plain dishonest. It compares the free Gmail with the paid 365. Why do we need to assume Microsoft's Hotmail banners are not based on page content?

It was just a news article that a lot of people found interesting, it wasn't really commenting on the merits of the video itself. A lot of people thought it was newsworthy so it was upvoted.

But some overly sensitive folks seem to have the idea that it must be buried from more people seeing it, even if there was interest.

>ome on... Excellent and Florian Mueller in the same sentence? The only thing I never saw with his name is a criticism of Microsoft. I have to wonder why...

And there is never anything postive from Groklaw about Microsoft, I wonder why....

Also, do you realize that flagging articles like that can cause the account to be hell banned unjustly just for thinking such news might be interesting and submitting something that's obviously not spam or otherwise bannable content?

OK, that explains the thinking of someone who admits they don't like Microsoft much.

That doesn't explain the scale of the flagging.

What's dishonest about it?

For ad context/relavancy, Hotmail does NOT parse your emails for keywords.

It implies Gmail-man is a sentient entity that snoops through your e-mail and makes conclusions about skin conditions while, in fact, it's just a set of rules that shows relevant (and very unobtrusive) banners. I am quite sure Google does not store the keywords in any way that can be connected to you.

Also, don't fall for the illusion your Microsoft Hotmail (or 365) inbox is any more secure from snooping by sentient beings (the ones who should really bother you) than any other mail service.

And, finally, the video compares the free Gmail product with the Office 365 offering that is 20% more expensive than the Google Apps for Business product. If we are comparing free products, we should compare Gmail and its unobtrusive context-sensitive banners to Hotmail and its obnoxious we-don't-know-how-they-are-selected (other than "poorly") banners.

> it's just a set of rules

That pretty much describes every system.

> It implies Gmail-man is a sentient entity..

It's a corny parody for internal use.

And for all the bullshit that Google spinned towards Bing in public, I consider this fair play. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3536110

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