Do No Evil

I used to admire Google as an innovative opponent to the lovely Microsoft. I especially liked their motto: Do No Evil. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten about that motto. Either that or they can't tell right from wrong. I suspect the latter is the reason for some of the things they have done / are doing / will continue to do until somebody stops them. They've been accused of being 'autistic' when it comes to communicating with the public, and I think there's some truth in that: they really don't seem to dig certain ideas. Like, the reality that intellectual property always bilong someone - you just cannot scan every book you can find, stick it up on the Interwebz and then say that anyone who thinks they own the rights to any of this stuff should get in touch with them (by the way, have you ever tried to contact a real person at Google?).

So this little story caught my interest. Google's Street View cars 'accidentally' capturing data from unsecured wifi networks they happened to drive by. Hello? The cars have a camera tree on the roof. For what reason would they also have doohickeys to steal data? Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, an old dude they brought in to communicate with the real world on their behalf (because that's where he lives, whereas the founders live on Planet Chocolate), immediately said it was a mistake, or not company policy, or some other bollocks of that ilk. I hope they're paying him a ton of money to be the acceptable humanoid face of this increasingly dodgy outfit.

Now, let's see how long it takes The Googleplex to shut down this blog, which they very kindly host for free on the basis that they can steal anything I write on here.

Oh, and I hate Facebook too. Even more, actually.