I agree completely. Gmail was not innovative. It might had worked better than Yahoo or Hotmail at the time, but even then actual email clients were way better. I personally loved to use Eudora. It's sad that they changed it to Thunderbird based code, as it's just not the same. However to this date I still use desktop email client and it's much better. Websites are fine for things like Slashdot etc, but they just cannot replace native applications.

Which is beside the point. Yes, you don't have to use Google. You don't have to use Windows either. But on top of that, Google does tons of secret things (secret to normal user). They track their movements around the web, via analytics and that is not known by normal person. Their business model is not obvious to a normal person. They hide most of their offerings behind cozy feel. Their stuff is free because the fee is hidden behind losing privacy and always getting advertising. Google is great at marketing, I give you that. That, however, doesn't make them any less gullible. In fact, it makes them worse. Everyone hates those phone marketers too. In this retrospective, Google really is the scum of the Internet.

I think it would be more interesting to study cats. Last night I was swimming at my pool (drunk), and the cats around my apartment building seemed interestingly intelligent. They come up on the bench to watch my computer screen, wanted to be hugged and generally seemed to have advanced thought process.

On top of this, geckos seem rather intelligent too. Their callsign "gecko" is not that easy to make, as it has tons of variations in the tune. If you have ever heard the noise a gecko makes you know what I'm talking about. On top of that the reasoning behind the sign is rather intelligent too - it messages to other geckos that "I'm here" and wants to meet with them.

It's almost funny that geeks seek to find intelligent life outside earth when there is so many around us.

Posted by a cow...

The whole thing about IE was seriously stupid. You need to have a browser in the OS, even if just to download your favorite browser after install. No, people are not going to fire up command.exe and ftp to a server address that they have to remember. Removing IE from Windows would had sucked for everyone.

And, don't forget that every OS nowadays comes with a browser. OS X does, Linux does. Hell, Google wants to make an OS that is a browser!

And Google has that storage. They have datacenters all around the world. They several own 100Gbps links going all around the world. They have their own file system, data replication and network based RAID for these things. If someone has the capability to log these things, it's Google. And if someone needs this kind of information, it's Google.

The fact that you don't care that someone is looking over every step you do on internet seems funny. It's your own decision, I guess, but people don't want that kind of snooping. I really doubt you want either, or would you be okay to install my backdoor and secret remote access on your computer to see everything you do? I doubt that. More troublesome is that Google is made of geeks. Often geeks have no trouble abusing their access. Or what you think about this Google engineer.br

Google has not really done any innovation after their search engine and advertising platform. Everything else they have bought off from other startups. Google Maps and Earth come from KeyHole Inc.. YouTube was its own startup before Google bought them, just like Android was too. Chrome is based on work done by Apple. Orkut was bought. Hell, their whole business depends on using other peoples content.

The point being, Google has really left themselves go after the one initial project the founders did at university. Which is fine I guess, but people keep believing they are some kind of innovative company. They are not. Even Microsoft is more that than Google, as they have the largest R&D center on planet, Microsoft Research.

I hope you realize how hilarious it always sounds when someone says "convicted monopolist". It's pretty much a joke already.

Nevertheless, Google is not the new Microsoft. They are way worse than that. Not only do they use every anti-competitive and abusive trick in the book, they violate everyones privacy and collect tremendous amount of data. Everyone in the industry knows this, and it is clearly visible via their Analytics tool to everyone. Not only do they track what you search, but their javascripts are embedded on billions of websites. These scripts gather info for Google about what you do, including all keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks. It amounts to stalking. They know exactly what you did on specific page. Including text that you wrote and later removed. Don't think this is possible? Watch Visitor Recording. Google has the same piece of code in place.