In countries like Rwanda, Pakistan and India it rules the roost. I'm sure many others too. The Internet is bigger than than U.S millenials. Their strategy of being on so many platforms (iOS,Android, Blackberry, Nokia Symbian, J2ME for dumb phones) really helped with the "network effect".

And don't underestimate the international angle. It's a globalized world, many people have contacts across borders, and they want to use their phones to talk.

For those talking about free SMS being a replacement, the killer user story here is the persistent group chats, with seamless picture sharing.

Frictionless signup (it just uses your phone number and automagically fills in your contacts) certainly helped too.

The behind the scenes story is that they extended XMPP to make it mobile friendly with proprietary customizations. I'd like to see a similar effort with the open standard itself. Then I'd like to see a mobile XMPP client open source project that makes quality execution on all platforms a priority. The Internet is being balkanized and the fight for standards based mobile messaging is the new battlefield.

Good thing we have you to refute those damn scientists.

As a long time Opera on Linux user, the "pivot" the company has taken towards Webkit and a dysfunctional UI is like "being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach"

Yet another attack by the family courts on the ability of adults to make contracts amongst themselves.

This will be great for offline/remote/low speed situations. Imagine being on a merchant ship or even a cruise ship with a pricey connection package. Scientific expeditions etc.

How about preloading it on OLPC?

What if your high school kid can't do his homework without getting distracted online, but says he needs Wikipedia for research. Bam, here's your air-gapped PC son.

WHY. Incremental updates would have been better. And this is a generic low information density design.

Exactly. Canonical is free to go its own way, but no one should be surprised if other don't join it.

I've got a new tagline for them.
NIH: Not just for closed source.

Maybe for a power user like you. For many people though iTunes is a confusing file system abstraction.

If you want a keyboard that badly try the Blackberry Q10. Its not terrible.

Personally I just dont' want google to have my mobile phone number. They know too much already.

America has effectively criminalized teenage hijinks and curiosity. Non conformist behavior is cracked down upon - hard.

I've said it before: the country is unhinged and more than a little crazed.

Americans have none. How many people are killed with firearms by criminals or the mentally ill in this country?
How many are killed by Islamic terrorists?
A rounding error basically. Yet it is enough to to terrify people into giving up the building blocks of liberty.

The risk of getting blown up is an acceptable price for not living in an Orwellian world.

And because you *would* do that is why you likely *won't* be in the position to do it.

That Relentless Dull Predator Workaholic personality type is generally required to get the wealth that can unlock the yacht/missiles/models achievement. But that kind of person doesn't know how to enjoy it like the rest of us would.

Right up until you to have to harvest them and then an old guy comes out with a shotgun and says 'get off my land'.

Its more accurate to say they share a common ancestor. They've got quite a bit of distance between them now. To ignore that is a way of making a (weak) argument.

And with movements methods become ideology. The Brotherhood are political players and are evolving towards the being able to cope with the realities of power, compromise etc. Yes albeit with an authoritarian bent.

So your conclusion is unnecessarily hyperbolic.