Yeah, I'm sure Google can't do wrong. Right.

I'm really sick of Google sycophants who don't see what kind of a monstrosity Google has become. Yes, Google supported Linux and they were a "good guy" once but you gotta admit that Google has complete monopoly in many areas and they exercise their monopolistic power quite heavy-handedly. They're the new Microsoft and they have potential to be a magnitude more evil than MS ever was.

Google needs to be put in check.

I simply do not trust Google with anything personal and I will not use this service.

... because these "free" gifts are not free at all. There's always a cost associated with them and the cost is often higher than if you paid few dollars each month for them.

Google's become a giant corporation and they're not an underdog that we all loved to cheer for at some point. Now they're trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of "their" assets. These assets are your private information which Google has abused in the past and they'll abuse in the future.

If you want to scare yourself, give their TOS a read and then think twice before you give them another piece of your information.

Personally, I've stopped using their products altogether and now only use their Search once in a while and I do it without being logged in (don't even have an account with them anymore).

Thanks Rob! I've enjoyed this site for many many years and have enjoyed your direction and editorial. Good luck wherever you end up!

Almost EVERYTHING that iCloud is offering is already in Android and has been for some time.

I don't think you understand what iCloud is. Google does things completely differently and it doesn't have app data backup, device backup etc.

Close their software?

They release a ton of open source stuff. Even their SMB implementation is open source:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/smb/

Not to mention their work on llvm and Clang. And they're even under a less restrictive BSD licenses.

Browse the repo sometime before you make wild assertions: http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/

As the article suggests, problem is that Samba has poor SMB2 support and given Samba's history, stable Samba4 will arrive too late for Apple.

I too prefer Firefox because I don't trust Google. Chrome sends so much data to Google (every keystroke that you type into OmniBar) and I prefer not to give Google any of my data. Firefox has no such issues.

Issue with Chrome's ad blocking is that ad blocking in Chrome works by DOM modification and all the ads are downloaded before they're hidden. That also means that all the ad companies have your IP and browser fingerprint as well and that also means that you waste bandwidth downloading ads. Firefox, again, has no such issues because it filters actual requests.

That's extremely impressive. I work at a different industry and we're also looking at iPad to replace a bunch of laptops and a ton of antiquated software.

Have you contacted Apple with this story? You should. I'd love to read a case study and send it to our CTO.

Thanks for writing.

At least a large portion of the iPhone's cost comes back to Apple as a revenue and supports American programmers.

Since Android is completely free and Google does not license it, NO PORTION of most of the Andorid's phones comes back to US. It goes almost completely back to Taiwan and China.

RIM's a Canadian company and all of their revenue goes to Canada.

PS: Be careful when you try to throw stones in a glass house.