With Google’s announcement that it would create an operating system and Microsoft’s unveiling of its Bing (they should have named it Bling) search engine the battle lines have been drawn and consumers are caught in no man’s land between two huge armies out to gain control of the personal computer business. In this battle no matter who wins, we lose.
You would think a battle between the two computer giants would be the best thing that could happen to consumers because the competition would lead to the creation of better products for all of us. If better means faster, easier to operate and cheaper probably a lot of us would be happy. However, the history of both organizations suggests that even if all three of the above happened they will come with enough baggage that in the end the price for consumers may be too high.
Microsoft
Microsoft has been the corporation everyone loves to hate for quite some time. Much of that distaste comes from Microsoft’s business practices and the quality of its products.
Windows may be the operating system on a majority of computers and Office the de facto suite of choice for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, but I have yet to meet a consumer who is happy with any of them. For those of us who started with DOS, Vista seems like the difference between a horse and buggy and a Ferrari.
Perhaps in this world of reality TV someone could do a quiz show for us former DOS users in which prizes would be awarded if you could remember the DOS commands for various functions that you can accomplish in Vista with the click of a mouse. That Apple users have had this ability seemingly forever only risks another of those Apple versus PC discussions which have gone on for far too many years and seem the equivalent of arguing about the weather forecast.
Yet for all the superiority of Vista over DOS, I will confess I have yet to upgrade from XP Pro. You have to understand I also ran Windows 98 until you could no longer get drivers for it. A friend of mine who teaches computer programming at a local college reinforced in me a sensible rule — never buy the first version of any operating system, but I don’t think he meant carrying it to the extreme some of us have.
The reasons for not upgrading to Vista have ever not only to do with the problems that fill Internet chat rooms, but with Microsoft’s business practices. My house is networked with Ethernet cable I ran to every room when we built it — this was before the days of WiFI, which I still don’t trust and which also is slower. We have six machines running on this network at various times. Upgrading to Vista would cost me between $500 and $1,000.
My refrigerator does not demand to be upgraded every few years neither does my dishwasher or microwave. I might decide I want a new appliance for design or features reasons, but the old ones work just fine, plus Amana and Sears don’t constantly send me updates to fix problems with their products. When I take them out of the box,they work just fine–and my appliances don’t come with bloatware.
Microsoft’s business plan — and its considerable fortune — is predicated on issuing upgrades every few years so that you have to lay out more cash just when you had learned all the nuances of the new system. It is a modern version of the old razor blade game — sell the razor cheap and make money off the blades.
Microsoft makes Windows available for free with new computers and gets you hooked into buying upgrades. But the more insidious side of this is Microsoft’s brilliant idea of the automatic upgrade. Activate that part of Windows and you have essentially invited Microsoft into your home. It is the equivalent of buying a refrigerator with a video camera attached.
If you believe Microsoft does not keep a huge database on the information it gathers from those upgrades, then I have some stock I’d like to interest you in purchasing. But automatic updates are not merely a threat to privacy, they are a threat to your machine because they install things you do not want or need and sometimes they even install programs that screw up your computer. XP Service Pack 3 made a mess of my machine and took the better part of an afternoon to get rid of.
Amana does not automatically put new stuff in your refrigerator, especially stuff that might cause the ice maker to flood your floor.
This brings us to Google which has nothing on the CIA when it comes to tracking your private life. Google tries to get around the delicate question of privacy by saying that the algorithms it uses to run its search engine are proprietary, but proprietary or not they are downright scary.
When I do a Google search that ends with pop-up windows and ads touting businesses in my hometown, I don’t know about you, but I get paranoid. What business is it that Google should know where I live, or what products I might want to purchase? And most important, what other things about me does it know and who does it share this information with?
Maybe I am just an old curmudgeon, but I believe my web surfing and searches are my own business. More pointedly I do not like being involuntarily recruited into what constitutes a giant focus group and not being paid for it.
If Microsoft has risen to its dominance by making us upgraded every few years and planting junk on our computers, Google has risen on the backs of its users to a position where it can challenge Microsoft. Our voluntary uses of the search engine go into Google’s vast database which it sells to the very same local companies whose ads appear on my Google searches.
In short, Google is making money off me without my permission. In the old days when businesses ran focus groups, people were paid for their time and participation. Google does not play by these rules. Its stroke of genius was to construct a search engine that also collected data.
9/11 proved a godsend for Google because it curtailed the use of cloaking programs that might hide your activity. You see if a program hides your Internet wanderings from Google it might also hide the evil wanderings of terrorists. So sophisticated cloaking programs are illegal and Google can break through the various proxy programs as easily as the CIA. Frankly I am more worried about Google watching me than the CIA.
However, the recent revelation that the Bush administration engaged in secret and systematic spying on American citizens under direct orders from Dick Cheney should have us all worried about where America is headed. It will be interesting to know if both Google and Microsoft colluded in those efforts. I would all but that my mortgage at Google may have even shared data gathering secrets with the CIA.
The Bottom Line
The most insidious part of the Microsoft-Google War is that both computer giants are gradually convincing us to accept routine intrusions into our private lives. Many of us blow this off as just the price we have to pay for being able to use those products. But why should the costs of using a search engine involve collecting data about my searches?
The real problem with all of us is that we have no choice. Both Google and Microsoft essentially enjoy quasi-monopolies in their respective areas of the computer wars. With both of them now poaching on each others’ main area of expertise, that will only strengthen–not diminish–the monopoly. That is because the two will freeze out all other competitors.
A Google operating system will probably invade your privacy even more than Microsoft’s because Google will use it to gather even more data about you and combine it with the already considerable data it has gathered from your Internet searches. A Microsoft search engine will come with the usual difficult to sever links to other Microsoft products making it all but impossible to remove from your computer. Those links will also insinuate even more spyware into your machine.
Our acceptance of these fundamental violations of our privacy prepares us for even more nasty actions such as the Bush Administration’s spying on American citizens and others. We are told such measures were necessary to prevent a repeat of 9/11 — and perhaps there is some justification for this. But the extent of the spying and the still yet-to-be revealed substance of that activity went well beyond acceptable practice.
So we now live in a world in which secret data on each of us is held by our government and two of America’s largest corporations. Combine this with the data being collected by credit card companies and there is little about your life that is not known to someone else. The scary part of all this, is what happens when all of these separate databases are combined into one. Then all of us will be living in the equivalent of glass houses with spy cameras in every room.
The other interesting angle to all this is that both Google and Microsoft were among the largest campaign contributors in the last election. For the paranoid among us, this produces the unthinkable. What happens when you merge the databases of these corporations with the databases kept by political parties? Will Watergate become Googlegate?
That Microsoft and Google should now be battling to control my computer does not inspire much joy. In fact it may well be the final push that moves me to the third alternative which is open systems. I really don’t care what neat products of the Google-Microsoft War creates because all of them will come with strings attached. In short I am tired of being a puppet.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
