No thanks Google, we've got Ubuntu
zdnet.com.au
zdnet.com.au
I am looking forward to this. It seems to me, no offense, that Linux just didn't win against Windows, and that doesn't seem to change in the next few years. Even on netbooks, most people preferred Windows Xp for $50 to a free Ubuntu, and Win7 is supposed to be even better. It seems to me that Ubuntu is just a niche product, while Chrome OS could have bigger appeal.
They very clearly state it is an OS geared for low-resource netbook style computers, where browsers are up and running within seconds of pressing the on button. We don't have one of these yet, afaik.
Why not work with Ubuntu? It's geared to be the Windows of Linux, an all-round competitor and jack of all trades. In my mind, this would be stupid. That's like the original Ubuntu developers getting grief because they weren't building on some other distro, which may have been built with a different use in mind.
I like using Unix for my server, Win7 for my home laptop, and hopefully giving a stable version of Chrome OS a swing down the line on my girlfriend's netbook. If anything, it sounds like they want to build "down" from ditro's such as Ubuntu, not up. I'd rather not use a baseball bat in a game of tennis. Variety is a good thing.
Edit: Of course, the crunchpad is also the hardware component, making it more all-in-one.
GoogleOS would still be dealing with things like USB devices, a variety of internal hardware, offline processing, keyboard/mouse UI, desktop-class apps, etc.
http://crunchpadfans.com/2009/07/08/google-steals-fusiongara...
My laptop (Windows) and Netbook (Ubuntu) is ready to surf the net within seconds from I bring it back from suspended/hibernated state. I can't recall last time I powered any of them down.
So for me, while you are technically correct, it still fails to have any real world impact as far as I am concerned.
Variety is a good thing.
This I would have to agree with.
If not from that, there'll be real world impact from the fact that it's by Google.
I personally think that there is a lot more to a computer than a web browser, so maybe Chrome OS will be mostly competing with Windows in the Netbooks market - since linux has mostly lost a lot of ground in that area.
The cost of taking world-class components (like the kernel, filesystems, windowing systems) is so low that it makes sense for people and companies to experiment, as we're seeing now. Chrome OS would be prohibitively expensive to develop if they weren't able to take so much off of the shelf.
I call BS. At best, maybe you can get answers like that because you're a already a Linux wizard. Linus and Mark are not going to help me set up my network printer with Ubuntu.
I realize that you are speaking tongue in cheek but it is a less than fortunate example.
Oh, and the offer to help is serious in case you really have that problem.
Support isn't the real issue anyway. You can always buy support (it's not like the support you get with Windows is anything special anyway).
Ubuntu (and Linux generally) is great as a server. I gave up on Ubuntu on the desktop. It was very hard to set up and configure. Sleep/resume was flaky on my Thinkpad. On my desktop it took several days of trying different drivers and hacking xorg.conf to get my second monitor to work properly, and my cheapo webcam is flat-out not supported by any driver I could find (and I really looked).
Yeah, these are mostly driver issues that aren't really Linux's "fault" -- but who cares. In Windows everything just worked out of the box.
I think Google will have the same problems. People aren't going to be happy if they buy a Google PC and nothing happens when they plug in their ancient, oddball plotter printer.
I'm not sure that this is strictly true. The majority of the revenue from Firefox comes from the search deal with Google.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...
Answer: because that is not the point of Open Source.
And if so, why shouldn't that same logic apply to Chrome?
Why not just say ubuntu is for big computers, chrome/os for small ones and not try to shoehorn any one thing onto everything?
It's not bad.
What I fear is that a viable low-memory option for ARM-based netbooks kills the need for memory expansion on them. I want a light and inexpensive netbook, but I also need 2+ gigabytes if RAM to work.
And no. I won't return to a full-size (and full-weight) notebook.
http://www.thinkgos.com/index.html
Ironically, its called gOS which implies strong google connections and thats reinforced by the integration of all the google apps.
I think it boots up in a few seconds, only has a chrome-like browser running and custom launcher for certain apps.
It sounds like the author is angry at Google for competing with a product that he is emotionally invested in. While I can understand his emotional investment, I think it is foolish to get angry at companies for innovating and providing the world with new technologies.
Not my server room, for certain. Debian is doing very nicely there.
Desktop yes (along with Win XP and OS X), but I could go to Debian there, if I wanted to.
If the mainstream go for simpler OSs for those smartbooks, there will be little demand for a multi-gigabyte RAM with real hard-disk class of non-x86 machines.
I love my Acer Aspire One and use it as my main development system, but I have no need for its Windows compatibility and would trade it for longer battery life any day.
And a cache-heavy 4+ core ARM with decent FP capability would still need less juice than a single-core Atom.
Back in the days, when Microsoft was the big, bad guy which everyone feared, not a monopolist, but the Monopolist, the One That Had To Be Stopped(tm), the current state of affairs was as following:
* Microsoft controlled the OS
* Microsoft had a Office suite
(and defacto control of interchange file-formats)
* Microsoft had a web-browser
* Microsoft has a mobile platform
(with support for the Office file formats and little else)
* Google controls the majority of all web search
* Google controls the majority of free web-mail
* Google apps not only makes it their software
but they also control your data
* Google also has access to your local data
albeit only if you use Google desktop search
* Google tracks users everywhere on the web
Google analytics lets them know what you are doing and why
* Google has a browser
* Google has a mobile OS
Oh! And it in ties closely with all of Google's services
* Google has a closed platform for application hosting
Again they have total access to all your data
But I guess it is entirely unproblematic that they can track your every activity wherever you are, on whatever device you are and whatever platform you are using. They are the good guys, right?
And it's not like they have lock-in on the file-formats you use, they just have lock-in on your actual data. I mean who cares about that?
After all they are using web-standards to do the stuff they do, so it can't be bad, right?
Edit: Posts like this makes me wish HN had markdown support for unordered lists allready.
dont use Google, it's perfectly possible to do so.
And how would you know if you send mail to someone using gmail or gmail hosted that google doesn't use this information against you? You don't.
I'm not saying we need to shut down Google, just that I find it odd that most of the FOSS world still regards Microsoft as the one we should be afraid of and avoid at all cost. After all: Google does have its arsenal of closed-source solutions with varying degrees of lock-in and little to no options for opting out once your data is harvested.
If the day comes that the government wants to go big brother on us, I'm pretty sure Google and/or their data will first on the list of things they want to get under their control, not Microsoft.
If not then what foundation does your mis-trust have?
My point still stands though - if you dont trust them with your data dont use them. If you dont trust your data will be safe in future dont use them.
If the "big brother" future ever happens I suspect which company your with will be the least of our problems :) Indeed I would argue that going with a larger company (especially one that has refused to hand over data already) is more sensible - because smaller ones have no power against governments.
And like I said, I'm not saying they are evil and blah blah, I just find the lack of scepticism towards Google somewhat odd when people are screaming bloody murder over any and every thing Microsoft does.
There's no need for proof, and it would be really difficult to find even if they were already doing unspeakable things with the world's data.
The problem is that the data is there, ready to be abused when a Google executive happens to make that decision.
Imagine sitting next to a conveyor belt shifting an endless stream of cheese cakes past you. You know they're not your cheese cakes, and that it would be inappropriate to take one.
Now suppose you also knew that even if you did stuff your face with the cheese cakes whizzing past, there's no way you could get caught.
Now suppose that you knew a guy who'd pay you truckloads of money for a few cheese cakes.
And finally, suppose that the government stepped in and insisted that you leave the room and let them watch over the cheese cakes.
YES consider what data Google stores about you and if you feel comfortable with it. But to suggest they are or plan to do something evil with it you need to actually come up with something more cohesive than, say, a feeling.
Example: I can suggest your bank could be doing all SORTS of things with your data - potentially supremely damaging stuff.... but you trust them, right? ;)
Capacity to do something and trust are different things. So I say again: if you dont trust them. Dont use them. :)
No. Of course I don't. Unless you're banking at "Wee Lil Credite Unione" you'd be foolish to trust your bank.
But I have no choice. I do use a Credit Union for some of my financial needs but when it comes to IRAs, Brokerage Accounts, ETFs, etc, I have only the choice between a large corporate bank and a boutique brokerage with much higher fees.And business banking brings a whole different set of requirements.
Reckless profit-seeking bank, fueled by bonus-hungry execs, levied vast damage to the US economy. I don't trust them. That idea is almost humorous.
But i need them.
And like it or not, I need Google. We all do.
I dare say that the banking sector might not have been best choice of analogy.
I think banking is the perfect example because they are a very similar model. Obviously your distrustful of them all.
Why are you more trustful of another search engine than Google? And if your not then you have to use some search engine otherwise web browsing is a complete pain - and which one do you use? the one you distrust the least (I assume).
Sounding similar to the banks in your model?
At some point you have to extend a level of trust to some entity - be it a bank or a search engine (though I would argue the level of trust for a bank has to be much higher, surely!!).
If you cant do that then you have to keep your money under a mattress, or indeed not surf the internet...
(Edit: In case my point is a bit confusing - why are you suggesting that Google are any more or less trustworthy than any other site you visit. How can you trust pg not to be selling our data to people? I'm personally 100% sure he isn't but the suggestion is there - and I bet if it was made seriously people would demand evidence)
Small companies are more transparent. They are built more on personal relationships than global branding campaigns. When you're small, most employees share the vision of the founders, because they work with them every day, and because the founders wouldn't have hired them otherwise. And because small companies simply cannot afford to seek short-term profits the way large companies can. There's no reward for that.
I'm sorry in advance for sounding like a prick, but isn't that obvious?
The question is, what sort of market forces are at work, both within and outside of the company, which motivate bad behavior? What are the forces that dissuade it?
How would you prove that Google is not doing anything evil? You assume they're not, but that's just as (in)valid as my assumption that they might be. You could argue that proof is needed either way.
> Capacity to do something and trust are different things.
Google has the capacity to "do something", and I don't really trust them. But I can't really "not use Google" either.
The problem is that my chances of affecting what data Google has on me are very, very limited. They have their hands on most of what happens on the Internet.
I can reduce my "footprint" for example by disabling referrer information from my browser, but coincidentally, GMail won't let me in anymore if I do that.
Choosing "not to use Google" is difficult when every site I visit causes my browser to say hi to them. Of course, there are other reasons too. They're still the most efficient search engine, for example.
You're right, my bank could be doing nasty things too, but switching banks would be easy. Assuming it would help, of course :p
But they are a major American corporation. They employ a number of people in high-ranking positions who have very large compensation packages that are tied to profits and stock price.
I'd wager that nearly every working American can tell you stories about abuses of American corporations... dozens of stories... And most could probably tell you some that they themselves have witnessed as an employee.
The stock-price-driven mentality in management at large American publicly traded companies puts emphasis entirely on short term, quarter-by-quarter profits.
I don't mind being slightly inflammatory in saying that anybody with a little _wisdom_ treats all these corporations with suspicion. And you'd be a fool not to.
These are not people: lives will not be ruined by a presumption of guilty-until-proven-innocent. Giving these companies the freedom we give people to operate freely until proven guilty is what results in things like Enron and real lives being shattered.
Google is not a bunch of hippie kashi-eating hackers anymore. Not for a long, long time. It's a bunch of corporatist managers who love money just like every other company.
I'm a software developer and a startup founder. I have the same dreams many here do, the same I'm sure Sergey and Larry Page did. But come on. Don't be so foolish. Google is skilled at marketing and branding, but you're surely smart--nearly all here are. Don't blur the line between admiration and worship.
Im 100% in agreement with that statement.
But there is a vast difference between being careful/suspicious/analytical and saying "they probably sell my data". For the latter I want to see proof - otherwise I feel set against the idea because it smacks of anti-corporation fear.
A lot of that information, they cannot use for legal reasons. But there is a remainder that they can use legally to turn a profit. And in a company as big as that, some young turk is going to figure it out and make a name for himself.
It's a certainty that this will also happen with Google. A lot of information passes through them. A lot of it can't be exploited for legal reasons. Some young turk there is probably figuring out a way that it can be legally exploited, and we on he outside aren't necessarily going to be happy about it.
Google _could_ be evil if they wanted to, but so far there isn't any evidence that they have done so. Microsoft has been a force of destruction in the world, and there is no evidence that they have any desire to do otherwise. Which entity is more deserving of fear?
They do lots of things to generate good will, so there's just no way they could possibly be doing anything evil, right?
They even say "Don't Be Evil", so there's no way they could be evil, right?
People tend to judge entities based on the actions they can see.
Switching to a different provider of search, email, website statistics, ads, browser, etc, is not only possible — it is effortless.
Google haven't made alliances with other vendors to make it hard or even uncomfortable to use a competitor's product in either market. Quite the contrary, many of their services provide means of exporting my data, unlike many of their competitors.
Google does not dominate either one of those markets due to having leveraged dominance on another market, forcing the end-user's choice. I do not have to use Gmail just because I use Google for searching, it is just as easy to use any other email provider instead. Same thing goes for ads, browser, etc.
As long as Google's services continue to be free of lock-in and either one are easily switched out for a competitor's product, I'll be comfortable using their various services in spite of dominance in various markets.
I don't know, considering they're responsible for something like 80% of my business most days I'm feeling pretty freaking locked in...
If you are using 80% of their services now, it is because you feel like you are getting good return on them. If you decide that isn't the case in the future, as the original poster said, it is easy to move whatever portion of their service you aren't happy with to another provider.
If there isn't another provider that offers the same level of service and the same ability to walk away that Google does, that isn't lock-in, and it isn't really Google's fault.
I do wish there was another email provider that I felt had as strong an offering as gmail does, just in case.
I'm not suggesting anything like that.
I'm simply pointing out that for many of us, Google traffic is a SPOF. How to go about fixing that, who knows. Some people are claiming Twitter is the future of traffic, but I don't think so, at least not for most sites.
While Microsoft owned the program and the data format my data was stored, Google owns the program, the data format and the server my data is stored in.
I am not sure how comfortable I should feel. Data export facilities are your friends.
For mail, contacts, reader opmls, docs/spreadsheets/etc there are exporting facilities and in some cases (like in blogger) mass export tools that Google has written to make it easier, in essence, to leave. Some tools aren't as easy to export from, yet.
As to the "server your data is stored on" we won't be shipping that to you anytime soon :-)
I am aware I can pull my data off Google's servers anytime I want, but, if such interfaces or facilities become unavailable, I will be stuck.
Recently, I received a lot of e-mails about my Yahoo 360 account. I have no data there, but, still, someday soon (if not already) all data in those servers will be gone. From first warning to total obliteration, a mere couple months have passed. I had vacations longer than that.
That's why I keep all my important data nicely backed up someplace I control.
You are currently using 1794 MB (24%) of your 7345 MB.
How can I "Effortlessly" move my 18,000 emails to another provider?
How can I "Effortlessly" replace my need to cater to Der Googlebot for the assurance of keeping happy my largest source of traffic?
All I'm saying is... if 3/4 of all toll free phone calls to American businesses were routed thru a single provider, that company would be regulated by the Government. I don't necessarily thing Google should be regulated, but I do think you are naieve if you think the existence of Google circa 2009 isn't as dangerous as Microsoft circa 1999.
Oh store them locally in mail-client-of-your-choice. Or import them into any other webmail service that supports importing from pop3 (none come to mind, but it would be fairly trivial to implement.)
Companies that are making an effort to use lock-in to keep you are not using that effort to keep you by giving you good customer service and user experience. A "no lock-in" policy supports quality. It says that a company is going to live or die by quality, not by something that sucks for the customer.
That's smarmy. I'll admit a teensy bit of bias, since I've never understood why people are so worried about being tracked. My letters to college professors I'm fine with Google scanning; love letters are about as embarrassing as my Google communications get, but I'm not exactly worried about them leaking to the world.
If you don't want to use Google, don't use Google. Use DuckDuckGo for search, set up your own webmail, don't use Chrome, don't use the Google Toolbar, don't use Android, and Google has absolutely no power over you. You're free!
Meanwhile, Google makes their business out of studying data, and its users all seem to think that's worth getting access to Google's stuff.
I hate this sarcastic mode of writing posts wherein it's a given that the company's evil, so you're allowed little jabs like:
After all they are using web-standards to do the stuff they do, so it can't be bad, right?
Nobody mentioned fucking web standards, man. Nobody would ever use that as a counterargument. You're raising strawmen to be baked in gas chambers.
I don't use my Google account at all nowadays. Google doesn't seem too upset by that. I'm satisfied with their level of control if they're not assholes about it when I stop being enslaved.
- Your business plan about your web search startup. - correspondence / health records documenting some medical condition - a personal diary where you admit to something embarassing
All of these - and true, they're created to illustrate the point so a little farfetched - would be a real problem in case google decided to take a more active interest in the contents of your various data stores.
Better options.