The WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.

Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.

The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.

I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.

And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.

As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.

Tax havens are an unfortunate fact of life. All big companies have to do it. Fix the loopholes and level the playing field. Don't expect individual company to drop their competitive edge when the other companies aren't.

Welcome to the real world.

Right, so, let me get this straight. Google is so clever, that two year in advance, in 2009, they wrote a help page, knowing that much later on Apple would introduce a bug in Safari that this web page could exploit.

THAT, is very impressive. It's amazing what a multi-billion dollars can do.

Well, try to come up with a search query line that does something like this: "all documents about Java but only those that relate to this case and do not reveal company secrets that are not relavant to the case".

Speaking of gold...

It seems like previous forms of wealth are being exhausted. All the land in the world has already been discovered. The natural resources, like oil and precious metals, are being used up. Intellectual property is the new frontier, but unlike previous forms of wealth, IP is not backed by a physical entity. So, much the same way that inflation got out of control when we left the gold standard, so now are we seeing huge amounts of IP inflation. Simple, obvious patents are being granted value far above their actual worth.

Step 5: One Man with One Sex Robot

I work for Google, and it does have a heart and soul. Google really is trying to change the world for the better.

I don't expect you to believe me, yet there it is.

Apple applied for the patent in 2000, probably as part of their Spotlight system.

Don't get me wrong, it is a terrible, obvious patent, but if you seek to invalidate it on prior art, you'll have to start looking earlier than 2000.

Apple applied for the patent in question in 2000. Google Desktop was released in 2005 or so. Apples Patent was also granted in 2005.

So, if you want to argue against it on prior art terms, you would have to look back before 2000. I think it should be invalidated on obviousness.

I used to be a real Apple fan, until they showed their true colors in the past year or so.

A real model. Now there's an oxymoron for you.

I appreciate how much effort you put into this response. And I see your point. I can offer you only speculation on why this feature was implemented the way it was.

First of all, this is not a Facebook product. To get anything, even just a mundane internal change, into the source tree requires stringent code reviews. To get a change into a customer-facing produce with a profile as large as gmail, that takes a huge amount of work and effort. There would have been many meetings, arguing about how many pixels and what color and every possible thing that could go wrong. All focused one this one feature. So, rest assured, it was endlessly debated before it was added. This is definitely not a case of some solitary young programmer throwing a hack into the code.

I would also guess that it seemed pretty innocuous at the time. The thinking was probably, "Well, obviously we are not going to change the recipient fields without a positive action from the user, but what could it hurt to offer some suggestions one the side?" It's not like it was some active animation that grabbed your attention. It is just a Div that you can easily ignore. I, personally, have found it useful on many occasions, and I simply ignore it the rest of the time.

I concede your point that when it doesn't work, it can come across as an unwelcome encroachment on your intelligence by what should be a dumb tool.

It seems to come down to a fear that the simple tool will act on its own, and send things to people you did not expect because it is trying to be "helpful". In a world where AI is becoming evermore common, that fear is not so unexpected.

I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that automatically adding a recipient without direct action from the user is something that would NEVER EVER EVER intentionally happen in a Google product. Rest assured of that. But I certainly see how displaying a name that you definitely would not want in the recipient list is something that might make people anxious. I can only say that such an idea was so counter to the intentions of the programmers, that they assumed the users wouldn't think it likely either.

Except this is more like a little message off to the side that says, "Were you going to exercise today?"

I understand that you object to it, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding the magnitude of your reaction.

When you start typing a name in the To: field, and gmail offers to autocomplete it, are you offended that gmail thought you forgot the name of the person you are sending email to?

No. Look at the operator. Not look at what it is operating on. Is it operating on primitive types? Then you know what it does. Is it operating on objects? Then you know it is just a convenient syntax for a well-known function name (e.g. "operator+).

Why do you people find this so hard to comprehend?

Let me get this straight now. Google is not actually adding any unwanted recipients, as you stated in your original post, but they are just suggesting, on the side, that you may have forgotten to include someone. Did I get this right?

And you are also suggesting that people will blindly take these suggestions, include the suggested recipients, and complain that they never wanted those recipients in the first place. Did I get that right?

And you are calling this a gmail killer.

Wow.

As far as why it is useful, it comes in handy when I hit Reply instead of Reply-All.

Or when an email thread drifts to a new topic and gmail reminds you of a coworker who also worked on that project with the rest of the people in the thread.

Or, I can just ignore it. I'm sorry that you lack the self-discipline to do this.

You can open an email in a new tab. Just click the standard little icon of a window with an arrow pointing out of it. If you are not sure which one it is, just hover over icons until you find the one that says, "open in new window."

Google is pushing the envelope on browser functionality, and openly publishing all their findings. Some browsers cannot or will not keep up.