Comment by koepked | Hacker News Reader

Comment by koepked | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if I like implications of a web-centric OS, especially when its producer is as rich and powerful as Google. I see the market for it, and I think it will be a huge benefit for the average user. However, I see the transition from desktop-based software to web-based as a loss of user control. Today, when governments decide that mp3 sharing, porn, articles of political dissent, or news from non-national sources should be eliminated, they quickly realize, if they don’t already know, that elimination is impossible, because no agency can track down and deal with every user who has decided to install software allowing him/her to do these things. When software moves to the web, I think it will likely end up existing on the servers of one of an oligopoly of computing providers, who will be much easier to influence because of their small number, and because they will have no choice but to abide by legislation if they wish to remain in business.

This may not seem like an issue right now, because there is still choice. But with Google pushing a web-centric OS, I think within a decade, many people will have a hard time choosing something else, much the same way they had a hard time choosing something other than windows until the last five years.

Maybe I’m just a Big Brother fearing nut, but I don’t like where we’re heading.

I concur. I've become more and more aware of the looming Google benevolent giant, but one day that giant's going to get angry and by that point it may be too late.

That being said, I still use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Analytics, and other services. So I'm not exactly avoiding the apocalypse here.

What I think is interesting is that having a hard time choosing something other than Windows may have been quite benevolent in comparison with a Google-situation which turns ugly. What if there is an organisation that has all your email, all your documents, all your appointments and all your conversations and can follow the majority of your surfing via ads. What if this resource suddenly is too tempting to keep hands away from for "fighting terrorism" or something such.

Being forced to use Windows at work could be considered nice in comparison.

I don't think that anyone at Google set out to be evil. But power corrupts and the legal systems and governments have not exactly struck up a fight for privacy for the individual the last couple of years.

Yes! Thank you for capturing more of what I could feel in my gut, but could not bring to words when composing my comment.

I don't think that anyone at Google set out to be evil. But power corrupts and the legal systems and governments have not exactly struck up a fight for privacy for the individual the last couple of years.

I also see scenarios where Google never becomes corrupted by power, but by government mandate a la Patriot Act is forced to reveal content. I don't like that there appear to be many plausible ways where the whole situation could end up generally bad.

Indeed Google may never turn to the dark side, but to have that much information under one corporate entity's control is terrifying to say the least.

Unfortunately in the digital age, it is hard to achieve any semblance true security for your personal information without acting on what lay-people perceive as paranoia.

This is what really bothers me about it. If it weren't Google, it would be someone else.

What we probably have to worry about is that the base level of privacy that is easy to achieve is in freefall. The incentives for any individual organization are too strong, because of the level of service (to consumers or advertisers or whatever) can be so much stronger. It seems to me that compounding this is the fact that the 'digital age' makes monopolies natural in alot of places, even if only for a short time.

We're already rapidly adjusting to a loss of privacy, and maybe it's a necessary progression and privacy advocates will one day be a quaint historical footnote.

Even so, I'm definitely in the paranoid camp, and if we don't make a conscious effort to have a more active cultural attitude towards privacy, we might not be able to preserve any of it if we have a collective 'oh shit' moment down the road.

I don't think this is a matter of 'if' but 'when'.

Already governments are openly leaning on google to get it to do their bidding, who knows what is happening behind the scenes.

As long as Google doesn't do anything to limit my access to competitors or otherwise punish me for opting out of a Google service then I am not concerned at all.

The FUD is strong with this one. If you want to run your own apps, run your own server. Those who don't care will use the public cloud. Nobody controls the whole Web, and as long as your ISP is reasonable (which none are), hosting your own private app is still possible.

When we create new software that benefits from lots of networked users, we will be forced to make that software compatible with the people who do not have their own private servers. So users can run their own servers, but there will be those who cannot afford to do so or do not have the expertise. If there are enough of those kinds of users we will then have to bend to the needs of those users who in turn bend to the rules of the companies hosting their software.

Can I call alarmist bullshit?

I think the inevitable consequence of fears like yours is that you'll be able to pay different institutions, so that you can store part of your data here, and part of your data there. So that you can surf behind company A's proxy most of the time but use company B's when you feel like/need to.

Yes, there are going to be less entities on the whole. But if the internet keeps growing, that might be a temporary setback--the infrastructure is going to hopefully become more spread out, more resilient to attack, and more designed to protect individual rights, and individual property. Think about it this way: as we move more and more pieces of our lives online, the value of our digital "stuff" grows higher and higher, and systems to protect that stuff, and our hopefully our constitutional rights (including the right to privacy), will appear.

At the very worst, you can always wait for some kind of massive privacy or fiscal (or even just data loss) tragedy would at least cause governments to act quickly to more clearly define the rights of an individual online :p

I agree that we have different options. We don't HAVE to choose Google, just as we didn't have to choose Windows; it was just the easiest/most convenient/accessible/popular way to go and so most people do it. Also, I'm sure more systems will be created that are designed to protect our data, as you say, though all you're doing is putting your trust in Corporation B over Corporation A.

Constitutional rights? Right to privacy? The government can listen in on any phone conversation they want (wire, cell, voip...), read any e-mail that gets sent, break into your home if they would like, et cetera. What rights do we have exactly?

Power corrupts. It's human nature. Your trust in the government to not abuse its' power is scary to me.

Agreed, this is just too convenient for, say, the Chinese govt. (as just one example).

But what if there are web-centric OSes and desktop-centric OSes?

In a world where the OS market is fragmented, centralized control and opression becomes even more difficult than it was in a desktop-centric world where one OS had huge market share.

Now that's not the case if we end up with one web-centric OS, but I don't see that happening any more than I see Bing taking over 65% of the search market without any response from Google.

It is interesting that this, the top rated reply, is not about "With what will this compete?" but "How will this kill competition?"

Maybe Google should enable the users to save their data to whichever place they wish. And the web OS, or the authorities who're running it should never have access to users data. The OS should just be the communication interface. Maybe this is utopian, but i guess its the right way to go from here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com