I wouldn't really say that Google is in the business of making your private information public...
Sure, they gather as much information as they can, but they use it internally, to build an accurate profile of you, in order to increase the likelihood of you clicking on ads, since the profile helps them to show you relevant ads...
They want to know what you like, what you buy, where you are, ... to increase the chance of income from ad clicks. That way, the advertizers also tend to pay more per click, since a larger precentage of them is relevant (again, a win for Google).

As far as I'm concerned, showing relevant ads on web pages doesn't bother me. I remember the internet before most sites used Google Ads, with all the animated GIF and flash banners and I don't want to go back. Google doesn't (according to their privacy statement) share any personally identifiable information with third parties for their perusal, unless you initiate it (uploading photo's to a public web album, or sharing them, publishing/sharing google docs, ...).

Coming from nowhere, reaching the 3rd spot in a few years isn't something I would call bad by any means, especially when you're selling your phones at a premium, compared to some of other companies' offerings.

My guess is that the Android user base will be larger than that of the iPhone/iPad/iwhatever in the near future, in part due to the larger number of available devices and the variety that brings. However, I think iPhoneOS will remain popular, and a larger part of Android's growth will come from other smarphone operating systems...

The Hero never even made it to 1.6... Still works very well on 1.5 though, and when (or if) the 2.1 update finally comes, it should be even better.
The 'iPhone philosophy' with all phones (capable of) running the same version of the OS (albeit with a few functions disabled in v4 for some models) is an advantage. I hope the more modular updates that are promised for future android versions will remedy that issue.

Well, maybe he should just ask whether he can have a copy of the software for home use on his private computer. If they agree, wouldn't that make them distribute the code, thus explicitly requiring them to provide the source code under the GPL?

There you have it... I forgot RIM, which will probably also remain a strong player for years to come, since it's so entrenched in the corporate world.

I don't understand all the people that want one platform to be the other one's 'killer'. I dont want one platform to kill the other, no matter what the platform is... The market is probably large enough to support 3 or 4 (maybe even 5) large platforms.
My (non-expert) opinion is that:
- there's still some headroom for Apple (after the 5 year exclusive)
- there's some headroom for Android.
- HP's (supposed) commitment to WebOS can also make for some very interesting devices
- Symbian will probably become less important, unless Nokia changes it considerably
- I don't know what to think of Windows Phone 7, but it might be too little too late
- Maemo and Co will remain a niche platform for some time, either to wither away or grow to 5 - 10%

I would really like Apple, Android and WebOS to continue competing for market share in the coming years, since that will get us more features (or better implementations of current features), and more choice, which is rarely a bad thing...

No you don't... You only need to link it to a google account if you want to use the google apps. If you use another mail provider and an alternative market, there's no need for a google account.

Where did parent state that the majority of phones is running a Linux based platform? There are quite a few Linux based mobile operating systems (Android, WebOS and Maemo come to mind, but I guess there are others), but their combined market share is indeed relatively small.
When it comes to increasing market share, I guess Android and WebOS have got the best chances...

3: You can easily get your SMS in GMail on Android with SMS Backup. Since you'll have to fill in your GMail username and password, you might want to create an extra account for this purpose. Your main account can then fetch those messages. You can also check the source code, since the app is open source and hosted on Google Code.

I think the cost of an infrastructure which allows you to negociate peering agreements isn't something you should underestimate. Google pays (more than you'll probably ever own) for infrastructure, which it then shares with other big players . That's a completely different league. If you want to put your server(s) on the net, you'll have to rent a spot in a rack, and pay the associated fees for your connection to the net.

Yeah, but the people with a whole clue call them pipes :-)

Hmm, sounds like a good idea for Google to just buy 1 ISP in each hypothetical country where all ISP's are blocking access to Google (if it ever gets this far) and offer reasonably priced unfiltered internet access... Let's see how long the ISP's keep blocking Google and other high bandwidth services when they see all their customers run away.

When you go to the privacy options in Chrome, there's a link to more information about privacy options. There they state that the information that's transmitted for the suggest feature is anonymized within 24 hours. I have no reason not to believe Google, since they haven't betrayed my trust so far. See: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-suggest.html Apparently, the concern was raised, and Google responded by implementing changes to protect your privacy.

Well, in the EU, MS offers you a nice 'browser choice' window, which lets you choose an alternative browser. That's sure to make quite a few less techie people install Chrome (and other browsers too of course). But didn't google's browser ask you whether you wanted to enable some of those features upon using it for the first time?

Hmm, you must be Steve Jobs...
... if you'd like for PC's to be like iPhones!