While the major providers can't talk about it, not all gov't requests get served. The point is that yes, there is always that possibility that your account gets handed a request, but at least with Google services, you won't get picked up in random dragnet-style surveillance. That's difficult to claim for all the other major providers, and is precisely what Eric Schmidt is claiming.

The whole point for many people in getting the Surface Pro is its Wacom digitizer, which is where the majority of its additional cost is coming from. To compare that to the LG is just completely missing the point -- it's basically saying that capacitive pens are just as good as Wacom tech.

I don't know about the validity of your argument of spending search/ad revenue on other areas. I don't see any reason why MS Office shouldn't pay for IE. Just like I don't see why hotels can't offer me free bag service when I stay at the same hotel (since, you know, my hotel charges pay for the people that handle my bags, and I don't pay for the free bag services directly).

There's a difference between selling below market rate and selling at a loss. And that difference stems from the fact that NASA never purchased their gas at market rate to begin with. Put it another way, if selling below market rate means playing favorites, then who exactly are the favorites on Black Friday? And who exactly is losing money?

You do know that Google owns Titan Aerospace...right? And you do also know that Google has an experimental program do deliver goods via drones, yes? I'm sure you can connect the dots between aerospace ventures and having airfields.

Does "Inbox" read "Gmail" to you? Last time I checked, there's no law saying no company shall make two programs that serve similar purposes in different ways.

Do you have an INVITE? Did you even RTFS? This looks pretty opt-in to me.

And what're they supposed to do? Set it to not improve by default? How does that even make sense? How is anyone going to discover new features?

All of your examples (i.e. privacy) only indicate "police state" to me; I don't see the "socialism" part. Or did you mean to add "adding the highway system, launching GPS, getting humans to the moon, and inventing the internet that you're posting your replies on" part as well?

So you can use your SD Card w/ EXT2/3/4 on CrOS again, I'm guessing? Like, some other use?

Google Maps also has offline maps....

Major breakthrough? I don't think you have to even go there. Given our current rate of progress in biotech/genetics research (not even counting the acceleration that happens as time goes on), we can probably get significant life extensions for healthy people already in their 40s and 50s. Heck, given that they're getting life extensions, I won't be surprised if by the time their life extensions are "up" that they would have even more.

I'm sorry, but you could act a little more creative. If you have the technology to live forever, why can't you, or someone else still alive, find some way to restore your cognitive and bodily abilities to that of its prime?

Yeah, and the NDK also has a target called "x86", and the OS can tell what platform it's running on. How do you think NDK apps are presently being distributed on the Play store? Not sure what your point is.

You can just install it yourself (it's not a secret you can install Linux on chromebooks). It's not like chrome os can't run Linux. If the average user can't figure this out, they probably shouldn't be using Linux in the first place. They should stick to something easier like, well, chrome os.