Vivaldi boss: It'd be cool if Google went back to the 'not evil' schtick The founder of the web browser Opera has accused Google of "anti-competitive" practices. "A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power," wrote Jon von Tetzchner, now CEO of Vivaldi, in a blog post on Monday. He also intimated there may have been a …
Any company/business that becomes so large, that no one is held responsible for anything, there is no way back. Google has enough re$ources now that playing the legal game is just part of doing evil, er, I mean business. I wonder how many shenanigans google is pulling at this minute and no one even suspects?
A confusing term to say the least.
Why on earth would a company want to be competitive when the sole purpose of a company is to make as much money as possible?
If Opera wanted to get one over google then it should set up it's own search engine and get it to override Google results when a user uses Google.
> Why on earth would a company want to be competitive when the sole purpose of a company is to make as much money as possible?
By the same token the sole purpose of a physical person is to pass on its genes. Why would things like moral sense, ethics, rule of law, etc. (in short, social constructs) be needed if all we need to do is find a creature of the opposite gender and copulate?
"find a creature of the opposite gender and copulate?"
So you agree then as you condone f*cking someone.
It's lovely to see how people react to comments when they disagree with the basics of human nature and how you view the world, in the real world there are people that won't have your moral high ground and to dismiss the notion leaves you wide open to abuse but then again I'm a realist.
I think you need to look up that term and lets use your quote.
"If Opera wanted to get one over google then it should set up it's own search engine and get it to override Google results when a user uses Google."
Well ignoring trademark infringement and deceptive practices by Opera, lets take an example of how Google could be anti competitive.
Google, delists all references to Opera Browser.
Google own the vast market share of search.
How does Opera hope to compete?
You have spotted exactly the point. It's not natural to want to be competitive, it's natural to want to crush your opponents into dust if they are vulnerable, which is why "anti-competitive practices" are banned with government enforcement for the sake of retaining a robust free market. Just like it's natural for a boxer to want a horseshoe in his glove, so we make rules about glove composition and agree the sport benefits from these rules. The general consensus is that consumers would suffer if regulators did not detect and punish anti-competitive practices.
The "anti-competitive practices" is not a reference to the company's competition, but to the market's. Google does things that make the ENTIRE MARKET less competitive. Great for them, because they make more money, not so great for everyone else.
You're right that a company would prefer to have no competition, because then they can charge whatever the market will bear and not worry about getting undercut by someone else willing to make less profit than them. Capitalism requires functioning competitive markets to thrive. If you allow monopolies to go unchecked, the market fails and capitalism is only functioning for the monopoly, not its market or its customers.
...I'd settle for Google NOT buying companies such as Boston Dynamics, which were a DARPA outfit, created to literally make intelligent autonomous hunter-killer robots, capable of running faster than a man, with the ability to get up when it falls over, and hosting a range of lethal weaponry, specifically designed to hunt down humans and kill them.
I'd settle for that, personally.
I think they're trying to sell the robots. Couldn't figure out where to put the ads, maybe.
On topic, I'm thinking Google suspend enough accounts for wrong reasons, and there are enough people criticizing them, for it to be a coincidence. That it took almost three months to reinstate the account is just an example of Google's great customer service.
Google buy Boston Dynamics - maker of autonomous hunter-killer robots
Google buy DeepMind - one of the leading AI developers
Google buy $800million of property in Sunnyvale
Cyberdyne Systems is supposedly located in Sunnyvale
AI + autonomous hunter killer = Cyberdyne Systems
eek!
Everyone should have seen it long coming before praising and supporting Google all this time. The slow monopoly by Google has led it to be the largest ad network provider and the biased ad blocker in today's time. If this continues then we'd be left 'forced' ads by the Google rather than choice.
It's worse than that - I'm pretty sure half of my downvotes on this site have been for daring to criticize the Android platform as being a loss-leader given away in exchange for slurping people's personal data. It's promoted as being open and modifyable, but is so in a manner that only a tiny and shrinking percentage of people can actually take advantage of. So on one hand people whine about Google being evil, and on the other hand refuse to stop using them and even act like rabid fanbois if anyone dares call them what they are. Strange.
I would, if there were ACTUALLY better alternatives out there. Apple isn't that much better. WinPho support is non-existent or gets dropped whenever they feel like it, plus development for it is pretty much dead. RIM/BlackBerry went bust. That leaves a host of Android based custom OSes that are either not trustworthy or not reliably supported.
I use Duck Duck Go as my primary search engine, falling back to Google if I can't get decent results (seldom happens). There are plenty of email options besides Gmail. Seriously - this is all 100% self-inflicted by consumers. If a vendor misbehaves, switch. It's not rocket science, people.
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