Competition is good. It shouldn't really matter if there is a playing field. If someone discovers an "unfair advantage" and that makes them more efficient, they should do it and others should petition for and be given the same benefit. A process of continual improvement and competition can only improve schools.

I do have to say that this article really isn't news. It is an opinion piece from an extremely statist, liberal publication. Out of thousands of publications:
http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-political-leanings-conservative-liberal-oreilly-msnbc-katie-couric-sean-hannity-2011-3?op=1

If the 7 days is the issue (that you can finish a game). Why not let people download the game and play it for 4 hours. Then charge them to buy it or deactivate it without having the 7 day constraint as they won't be buying it sight unseen.

I had been waiting for months for the Bionic, but everything I'm reading about MotoBlur and Motorola's attempts to lock or close down their phones is scaring me away from their phones. I'm leaving the Blackberry and iPhone because I don't like their closed worlds. The closed formats go hand in hand with a closed philosophy that is not a technology track I want to be involved with.

I'm sure Motorola is not listening to this but I hope many many buyers of phone share this sentiment as demand will hopefully eventually drive supply!

This is all pretty dumm IMHO. There industry has self-policed pretty well today. Additionally, broadband delivery is becoming increasingly competitive (FTTH, Wimax, cable, fast copper, city wifi, etc., DSL). No it is very dumb.

All this regulation is around protecting future changes that might happen to the internet. The reality is that the FCC should not even be empowered to interfere with the internet (their previous attempt was barred from the courts).

If substantial problems do start to pop up (IF), then congress should legislate something to fix it. That day has not come

The result for my business from this thread is to seriously consider corporate gmail. Had been thinking about it, but this article and the link here from jimicus settles it.

Outlook server and the client have been a disaster for our 6 person business. We get lots of emails and lots of attachments. Outlook uses flat file to manage the emails. With 5-10 gig for each of us, this doesn't work. Breaking up email folders into smaller folders is an ongoing pain. And worst of all search doesn't work. Outlooks native search doesn't function across multiple folders (even in Office 2010), Xobni is slow and a hog, and even google's search can't handle these huge flat files.

Disaster.

Thanks.

The US figured out that excessive regulation can wipe out competition for the up-and-coming banks. Australia's probably not far behind if the "big 4" actually feel any pressure. Not to be cynical, but.......

That is if you go with outdated technology. Any interstellar traveler worth their dust would of course use a Cochran field generator.

Don't worry, they will put on adblock like extensions and other bells and whistles. Soon it will be as full feature (and slow) as Firefox.

Yes - I put this in a tarball and sent it to a local tech news reporting agency last night. So far they have been able to download 37 bytes.

I do not think that it is actually about competition. The issue for Google is that they are banking a lot on their online office applications (and other?) that will compete against the MS Word and MS Excel's of the world.

They need a reliable browser platform to support their applications and it is probably safer for them to launch Chrome than to arm wrestle with Mozilla or try to control its development path. Furthermore, it will be much easier to prioritize bells and whistles that support their apps in Chrome than it would be in Mozilla (not to mention the endless trolling they would get for it).

It would be like if GM was worried about the US road system so they would invest in some pothole repair service to keep the roads safe and people buying cars. Errr, make that Toyota...