If Google gives us free shinies, that means it's good for us. As a consumer, I will support Google because I get free shinies. What's wrong with that? The customer is happy.

Mm...nope. Not for me. As a person who loves tech, I want to do EVERYTHING possible in tech. No matter the consequences, no matter the danger, I want to see it happen. The tech is an end in and of itself.

The comment to which mine was a response. It had nothing to do with museums.

Well, a fake then. There are some incredibly well done copies of famous paintings.

Nah, I'm pretty much a barbarian when it comes to art. If you show me a printed reproduction and told me it's the real thing, I'd fall for it hook line and sinker. And so would, I suspect, the overwhelming majority of people who go to museums.

Same for sculptures etc. Do a double blind test to check if people can figure out which is the real and which is the fake and well over 99% of people would fail!

I didn't say the art museum can't do what it likes now did I?

Why would you waste time looking at the real Mona Lisa when you've seen it everywhere since you were a kid? Do you think you'll discover something new? The only reason you physically go to such a place is to show others (or remind yourself) that you've gone there and stood in its presence. It has nothing to do with looking at the picture that you can anyway recognize easily.

Translation: I oppose what other people do even when it has no impact on me.

Whatever happened to good old fashioned "Mind your own business"?

Touché :P

True, both can go out of business. But it's my experience that single focus companies take more care of their product. I remember far too many abandoned Google services that just stopped receiving any love. Not that they lost users or anything...just abandoned.

Prime example: Feedburner. It's still hugely used by bloggers around the world. But the last update from Google was when? 5-6 years ago?

Except that when you do it too often, you get a reputation as a company that you can't trust. I mean hell...even Google+ which was launched with more fanfare than ANY Google undertaking the past few years is now getting the step motherly treatment.

Google taught me one important lesson - when it comes to online services, choose companies that do ONE thing, and do it well. Don't use stuff from conglomorates that have their fingers in dozens of pies. That way, each service gets the attention it deserves, releases updates regularly, and never loses focus.

Ergo, I use Lastpass instead of Google Chrome's password manager, am trying to transition away from Google+, and don't want to use Google Keep. I now use Google for their mature products only - Gmail, Search, Android, and Chrome.

I lost all my Google Health data, my Google Wave data, my Google Buzz data, and my Google reader feeds (at least I could transition that one). Moral of the story: Stick to single service companies.

This survey was obviously done not taking into consideration dedicated e-readers and only focuses on smartphones and tablets. There's a world of a difference between the two types of devices. I'd like to see a study done just with dedicated e-readers.

True. Money can be viewed in two ways - short term and long term. A company that wishes to maintain its reputation against any future revelations might decide to not cooperate simply because if it ever came to light it would be very bad for it - especially if there was no legal obligation to turn over the user data for a service specifically designed to protect privacy like a VPN!

But yeah - the govt. can simply block VPNs outside the country, and that would be that.

This probably holds true for local VPN providers or those run by the government itself. But any service outside Iran would see no reason to cooperate with the Iranian government.