I don't think that's something we should really let them get away with -- Union Carbide did that, too, arguing that they didn't have any responsibility for what happened in Bhopal because it was some subsidiary of theirs.

Set aside questions of branding and PR, and set aside whether or not some mysterious, shadowy figure in Mountainview signed the order to go ahead. That it happened at all either suggests that Google's corporate culture is so venal and corrupt that Google-Kenya thought that it was acceptable, or that Google is so incompetent and muddled that they're not capable of articulating their legitimate culture to their own employees and contractors.

With the Google Chrome advertising dustup a couple weeks back, it could be either, but neither is particularly good and neither should free them of "condemnation of Google as a company."

It's curious that even though you think "Google is even required by law to enforce its copyright" Microsoft somehow manages to let it go in regards to developers for the WinMo platform. Maybe when you're big enough, you can just ignore the things you're "required by law" to do? Or maybe they realise that when you have a completely rubbish mobile operating system (Android, WinMo) encouraging development for it is more important than getting bent out of shape about what you have the right to do? Either way, regardless of what Google *can* do, what they *have* done is incomprehensibly shortsighted. Perhaps the new telcos signing on to Android (the poor bastards) have forced Google's hand, but it's still intensely bad PR. It's like me going after a kid's lemonade stand because they don't have a license or haven't been inspected by the FDA or whatever. Regardless of how high and mighty I can be about your authority to do so, or how legal it is, it has no potential to make me look like anything other than a spanner and every potential to backfire hideously. Of course, given the geek attention span of "until the next shiny object" I predict the outrage in the Android community to taper off within a week, which is what Google wants and expects. I do think that come time to re-enlist (my contract with TMo is up in January) there will be more than a few people dropping the platform (what with it being complete rubbish and no credible alternative now existing)

Is one of the ways the Pacific islanders used to navigate between islands. It's kind of like dead reckoning but substantially more accurate and impressive. From Gladwin's East is a Big Bird, it's essentially a way of conceptualising space with regards to your boat. You follow the perceived progress of the stars above an external reference island and this helps you to visualise where you are. It's not really a way of navigating per se--in a sense it's like if you were to track your progress on a drive from Sacramento to Fresno by imagining where San Francisco was beyond your horizon.

Or it could be Wikipedia's stuff. But I'd prefer to think my college education in maritime history didn't completely short me, so I picked etak as the, uh, 17th person to do so.