Google sold geeks the world over on a different kind of company. A "Don't Be Evil" company. A company we could trust with our personal email. That supported the open source community. But it was a big bait and switch. I never got over the betrayal. That's what I mean by social contract.
Google today is very different.
Sure, we got gmail for "free". Google made a TON of money off that "free" offer BTW. And like many others, I built a dependency on this email system. Countless services and people know me on that email address. I'd LOVE to get rid of it because I no longer trust Google, but it's challenging as hell. That's why dependency on the wrong company is, dare I say it, evil.
A quote from the "Don't be evil" entry on Wikipedia:
"Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."
While there are a lot of great things about Google, there are a lot of shitty things too. Back in the day it was important to make the ads unobtrusive. To separate out ads from organic results. Now on a commercial product SERP you have to page down to get to the first organic result! I mean, the list of issues goes on and on.
You ask:
"What were the terms of this contract? What did the users offer in return?"
Ummm...Google has a gazillion dollars. I think the users offered plenty in return for believing in Google.
--
I remember the excitement of RSS. And how wonderful Reader was. The "gift" of Google's "free" Reader has turned into a massive NEGATIVE for the open source community and those who loved RSS. With "friends" like these bearing "gifts", who needs enemies? This has been discussed ad infinitum, so I'll leave it at that.
But it's in this context that I think you'd be nuts to trust Google with a Dropbox clone.
RE: infrastructure, fair enough.
Final note, knowing quite a few Googlers and Xooglers, the engineers are better individually than what the company has turned into. Since the IPO, things have never been the same.
Google sold geeks the world over on a different kind of company. A "Don't Be Evil" company. A company we could trust with our personal email. That supported the open source community. But it was a big bait and switch. I never got over the betrayal. That's what I mean by social contract.
Google today is very different.
Sure, we got gmail for "free". Google made a TON of money off that "free" offer BTW. And like many others, I built a dependency on this email system. Countless services and people know me on that email address. I'd LOVE to get rid of it because I no longer trust Google, but it's challenging as hell. That's why dependency on the wrong company is, dare I say it, evil.
A quote from the "Don't be evil" entry on Wikipedia:
"Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."
While there are a lot of great things about Google, there are a lot of shitty things too. Back in the day it was important to make the ads unobtrusive. To separate out ads from organic results. Now on a commercial product SERP you have to page down to get to the first organic result! I mean, the list of issues goes on and on.
You ask:
"What were the terms of this contract? What did the users offer in return?"
Ummm...Google has a gazillion dollars. I think the users offered plenty in return for believing in Google. -- I remember the excitement of RSS. And how wonderful Reader was. The "gift" of Google's "free" Reader has turned into a massive NEGATIVE for the open source community and those who loved RSS. With "friends" like these bearing "gifts", who needs enemies? This has been discussed ad infinitum, so I'll leave it at that.
But it's in this context that I think you'd be nuts to trust Google with a Dropbox clone.
RE: infrastructure, fair enough.
Final note, knowing quite a few Googlers and Xooglers, the engineers are better individually than what the company has turned into. Since the IPO, things have never been the same.