You're right, they should totally stand by while Microsoft gets the FTC to do their bidding.

Likewise, apple is free to not copy google's innovations, namely voice prompts for siri. *chomps on popcorn*

The ITC is inherently biased for US companies when it comes to bans. A ban can be rejected if it is deemed to hurt the US economy, so there is almost no way a foreign firm can ever ban a US company's products. In fact, I am not sure this has ever been carried out.

Too late. Facebook is expanding their online ad presence outside of facebook, so if you ever gave facebook your age/gender/etc, they'll use that to target ads to you even if you're not logged into facebook. This is starting with Zynga but will go beyond zynga. I'm frankly quite surprised, in this age of privacy concern, that no one has raised a red flag. But I find privacy concern is more about following fads rather than actual privacy.

So will Apple reimburse google after copying android vertical notifications?

Vertical notifications, stolen from Android?

That link was posted multiple times to reddit but each link was downvoted so it never made the front page. For once slashdot's moderation system beat that of reddit, which seems to be susceptible to PR companies.

Walk into a department store with computers running windows and you'll see microsoft displaying ads for Bing. Then Microsoft used their monopoly to push their IE product, instant messaging, and a plethora of other products. Can we expect investigations into Microsoft? How about apple for itunes, amazon used their dominance to push the kindle fire. Keep in mind, these products often resulted in other companies go out of business. Why focus on Google? Your point is the rules can change, for no apparent reason, and companies can find themselves in hot water... at least certain companies? This seems like 3rd world-style governance.

This is similar to how costco works. They have control over the retail space, and their goal is to make the shopping experience great for consumers.. That means dirt cheap, at the expense of suppliers. Suppliers go out of business, that's the point. So costco offers cheap ink refills, potentially putting companies like HP out of business. HP hates Costco. Lots of suppliers hate Costco, lots of company hates Costco, but consumers love Costco. Because only consumers matter. The difference here is competitors are using regulators instead of the market place to compete.

Because you like pain.

Looks like Microsoft is joining up on the PR front to tag team google in the media: http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/. I long ago stopped responding to all the bogus claims against google. The myriad of bullshit is astounding, and it's too much to go through. Perhaps that is what the PR onslaught against google had in mind: throw everything and see what sticks, much like Oracle's lawsuit.

I'm like you, however I notice many fellow engineers feel free to make legal statements in email all the time, even when lawyers tell them to shut up, they persist, even get mad someone's telling them to shut up. I can only conclude such people are autistic. Yes they may make great engineers. They just need to be babysat.

...as are Apple's lawsuits against companies like HTC over multitouch. And now Motorola has a huge billion dollar war chest thanks to Google. Yes, I think Apple is getting exactly what it deserves. Apple can make this all go away tomorrow by ... gasp ... negotiating with Google and Android hanset manufacturers and coming to a licensing agreement, and letting the free market decide. Imagine that, billions spent on innovation vs lawyers. The alternative of living by the sword is dying by the sword.

And yet look at how far SOPA got. And look at the age of that article, and the fact that Obama hasn't been back since 2007, and you realize that now Google is perceived as a political liability, and is vastly outnumbered in Washington compared to the entertainment industry. Actually he came to the computer history museum last September just down the street from Google and he didn't go to Google. But he did visit Facebook last year. These days it's just cool to hate Google and being close to Google is political suicide. Because Google makes a lot of money.

This is what the FTC probe ended with:

"“The company also publicly stated its intention to delete the inadvertently collected payload data as soon as possible. Further, Google has made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected in any Google product or service, now or in the future. This assurance is critical to mitigate the potential harm to consumers from the collection of payload data. Because of these commitments, we are ending our inquiry into this matter at this time."
Big deal.

Even so, how does Google know that the current user is (a) a facebook user and (b) has Katy Perry as one of his/her friends. Facebook doesn't share that information with Google. Facebook wants a walled garden vs giving users what they want. Google now knows who is in your circles and can give you better results as such for the entire internet as well as your circle of friends. Already there are bloggers who have written about how useful the new search is.

And if you think this is evil, then will you say the same when Facebook does the same thing? When Microsoft does the same thing? Facebook is going public and you can be sure they will expand into general search, what do you think they'll do with all the information they have on their users? Especially given the low margins of facebook advertising compared to search advertising, it's only a matter of time until Facebook gets into search and leverages their social data. If anything, Google is guilty of pioneering this new way of searching. Users want this. They wanted Google providing search results using Twitter data then Twitter refused to share data with Google, so Google created their own network to give users what they want. I don't see a problem here.