I recently complained that Google has instituted a requirement that new users of Gmail also sign up for Google+. I was mostly upset with this because my experience with G+ was not great, and I received spam from G+ after deleting my G+ account. But in looking at this now, I do not see Google’s policy as unfair or dishonest. Basically, they are saying that instead of signing up for just Gmail now, you sign up for Google itself … maybe it should have even been that way all along. It could be argued that this sort of “bundling” gives Google an unfair edge over Facebook. But, when I see that President Obama has 24 Million Facebook followers and less than 300,000 on G+, then I don’t think the “bundling” argument is very strong.

What has gotten a lot more bad press from tech bloggers recently is Google’s Search Plus Your World feature. Danny Sullivan discusses this at some length, and notes that there is a browser bookmarklet that will help you overcome the “evilness” of SPYW. What SPYW claims to do is to open up search results to include relevant results from social media. What it does in practice is to limit the social media results to those that come from G+, meaning that you could miss a ton of pertinent information that is available on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere.

At first blush, this seemed to me to be a dishonesty on Google’s part, and at the very least, a disservice to customers (users of SPYW). So, I decided to try it. Turns out that to try it, I had to sign up for Google+ again. What a pain in the ass. I ran some searches and clicked on the “include personal results” link, then clicked on the “don’t be evil bookmarklet” and didn’t see a lot of difference in results for the simple searches I used. Others have complained that the difference can be substantial, though, and I can see where it would be.

I think the problem with what Google is doing here is not so much that its intentions are “evil,” but that it has a reputation for showing results that are relevant and that represent data from all over the web, and it is not living up to that reputation with this new product. In a sense Google is misrepresenting the product, not in terms of the language they use to describe it, but because they should know that people have come to expect that Google always includes all pertinent information, and Google knows it’s not doing so.

Does it matter? Well, as long as you use the “don’t be evil bookmarklet” along with SPYW, then no: you get all the data you could expect to get. If you don’t use the bookmarklet, you will at least sometimes not get all the data you would expect. MG Siegler argues that the problem is not so much that Google is evil, as it is that they are making themselves less relevant. I think is right on target.

It seems to me that we are going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are all trying to get as much market share as possible. Today Apple announced a quarterly revenue that is the highest by any company in history. No doubt we can expect to see Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft being more aggressive in response to this. So, be on the lookout!

The bottom line for all of these companies is: the one that best serves the needs of its customers will be the winner. Right now the winner is Apple, and Amazon probably comes in second (their financial stats are not as impressive as Google’s, but they will probably outlast Google as long as they keep their strong focus on customer satisfaction).

But both companies have recently shown their bad side, too:

• Apple’s end user license agreement (EULA) for its new iBooks Authoring tool is insanely restrictive. As Ed Bott notes in the linked article, it is as if Microsoft placed restrictions on how you used its Word product and also took part of any money you made from using Word. It is this sort of greed that has driven a lot of people from using Apple products to using Android products. It’s Apple’s “walled garden” philosophy.
• Google now requires all new users of its products to register for Google+  … if you want to sign up for Gmail, you must also sign up for G+. Greg Finn treats this in some depth in this Marketing Land article. On top of that, even deleting your G+ account will not prevent you from getting spam from Google+ (if those who have you in their circles decide to share a post with you).

While I expect every company to act in its own self-interest, I prefer companies that do so by working in the best interests of its customers, not by trapping their customers with gimmickry.

You may have even wondered if you want to continue having any of your data stored on someone else’s web servers in “the cloud.” And, if security issues weren’t enough to make you wonder, some cloud services are going away. For example, today we learned that Yahoo may be closing down Delicious, the popular bookmarking site, along with several other services.

And Yahoo is not the only major internet player to close down services. Even Google has done it, and even Google, no matter how altruistic it is, can put its own interests above those who use its services (see here and here).

Pioneering software freedom activist Richard Stallman even goes so far as to say that the cloud is for suckers. And, in my most idealistic moments, I agree with him.

But, as a practical matter, having some data in the cloud lets us access the data from pretty much wherever we are. And, we can count on the data being up-to-date. No longer do we have to worry whether we synced the changes we made at work with our smartphones, and whether we synced to our home computer, and whether the changes we made on our smartphones are synced to our home and work computers, and … Of course, when we do this, we have to put trust in those who operate the web servers that are storing our data, which means we only want to do this with organizations that have demonstrated their trustworthiness.

But, do we really want to do that with all of our data? That is, do we want to put all of our data in the cloud, so we can access it everywhere we have a connection to the cloud?

We didn’t start out with all of our data going to the cloud, but most of us have been steadily adding more and more data. We may have just started out with a calendar, say Google Calendar, but we slowly added ToDo lists and Contacts and files and we began using bookmark sites, and so on. It is possible to reach a point where you don’t even know how much of your data is in the cloud, and that you forget some of the places where you’ve stored little bits of information.

I do not have a precise answer for you, of course, as we have to individually deal with the question of how much data to put in the cloud. I, for one, am moving some things (ToDo lists and Contact lists, for example) out of the cloud and into stand-alone apps (which can sync with my iPad and iPhone). But, for now I am holding onto Google Calendar. By the way, I also ported my Delicious bookmarks to an xml file on my computer, and I’ll eventually figure someone to parse it into Yojimbo on my Mac. (I simply did a search for Delicious exporting and found lots of options.)

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you.

I’ve spent the better part of the day changing my passwords at numerous sites and closing out accounts on sites I no longer visit. You may very well be doing the same, and, if not, it is something you do not want to put off too long. Even if your account wasn’t hacked, this incident may make you want to consider changing your passwords. Just ask yourself “do I really feel safe with my current passwords? are they strong enough? have I used them too long without changing them?”

Two really good accounts of The Gawker Incident are at Forbes and Coding Horror.

As long time readers of Keener Living may recall, I initially required commenters set up an account before they could comment. This required you to leave your email account and setup a password. While WordPress uses an MD5 hash on passwords, and is considered secure by today’s standards, you may be nervous enough about passwords that you want me to delete yours. I would be happy to do so. Just email me at brucekeener@gmail.com. There are only a handful of users who have accounts, because I changed to open commenting shortly after setting the blog up. (I figured that if big sites like TechCrunch could tolerate the spam headache to make it easier on users, I could, too.)

By the way, I highly recommend that you invest in a good password program to store your passwords. I use 1Password, which is available for Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPad. I also recommend that you close out accounts at sites you no longer really use. I have closed my Brizzly, Friendfeed, Remember The Milk, and several other accounts and plan to close a few more.

I’ve even saved some money using Twitter (probably wasted some, too, but let’s not get into that). For example, by following OReillyMedia, I saw one of their tweets to an e-book “deal of the day” that resulted in me paying only $9.99 for the Head First Ajax e-book, which routinely sells for almost $36. And, it’s a great book, too. (Plus, I love the fact that I can read it within the iBooks app on my iPad … very convenient.)

In looking at their main site, I also noticed that they have a Facebook presence, so that’s an alternative for you to follow if you do not like to use Twitter.

If I come across other money-saving links like this, I’ll let you know. If you are already aware of some, please share them with us in the comments.

Few, if any, of these stories suggest that the joint statement portends anything good for consumers. Many are highly critical, with a few of my favorites being:

• Wired’s Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey
• Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig’s writeup in the New York Times: Another Deregulation Debacle
• Dan Gillmor’s Google-Verizon plan: Why you should worry

Google has done a lot of good, and has generously made a lot of products freely available. In fact, I am typing this within their Chrome, and one of the other open tabs in my browser is Gmail.

But, I have never taken their “Do No Evil” mantra seriously, and now a lot of other people are beginning to question it, too. (A company is the sum of what it does, not some bullshit mantra, especially one that shouldn’t have to even be said … when people tell me that they are good people, I immediately am suspicious of them: why should they have to tell me that unless they have something to hide?)

I do know that I am not looking for the FCC to regulate on our behalf, as it is chartered to do. It has been clear for the past several years that Washington is just a pansy for corporations. And it seems to be getting worse instead of better. (And now that the Supreme Court has made it legal for corporations to buy elections, it will get even worse.)

Anyway, I wanted you to be aware of what is going on with net neutrality. Some of you have probably read lots about it, others may only be learning of the issues through this post. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Update: You should also read Danny Sullivan’s How Google & Apple Sold Out The Cell Phone Revolution. And then take your blood pressure medicine.

Chances are someone in your family, or someone else you care about, has or had cancer. My Dad died from cancer. My late wife was afflicted with uterine cancer when she was only 24. A few of my friends have died from brain cancer, and I lost an uncle to it. Many children suffer from this terrible disease. It’s brutal, and it is important that we rid our world of it.

Although a lot of progress has been made in treating cancer, there is a long way to go before our society is freed of the death and misery it can cause. Past successes do show, though, that our donations matter.

(Note that Tony’s book is not available until June 7, but those who make the donation noted above will have the book shipped to them on that date.)

Join me in making this important donation today.

By the way, here are some interesting cancer stats (number of people having and dying from each type). The data are for the UK, but are probably representative of US numbers, at least in percentages (although probably not actual numbers).

Within the past few days, I have come across several interesting articles on corporate influence. The articles are not short, so you may wish to print them out for reading at a later time, but I do recommend that you read them.

The first article is one from Search Engine Land, entitled Google Just Says No To China: Ending Censorship, Due To Gmail Attack. This article gives the best description I have seen on Google’s notice to China that it will suspend censorship in China, and may suspend its operations in China, unless actions are taken to improve human rights.

It’s a bold move, and one could that could impact US-China relations.

On the surface, it seems like a very positive move, although there are some who question Google’s true motives. For example, from the article Doubting the sincerity of Google’s threat:

But to wrap their decision in the melodramatic rhetoric of cyberattacks on Chinese human rights activists? Give me a break. Their supposed naivete about whom they were dealing with just doesn’t sound very convincing. Are we really supposed to believe that, until they experienced cyberattacks on the email accounts of the Chinese human rights activists, they thought that their counterparts in the Chinese government were all good and well-meaning chaps who would never think of such a thing?

I lean toward suspecting that Google’s motives are pretty much as stated: advocating human rights. But, I can see that a lot of complex factors could enter into the process for Google making such a decision.

[By the way, it should be noted that Google is still a young corporation that has not yet had to spend a lot of its brain power and resources on human relations. It is now learning the hard way about how to do this, as illustrated in the NYT article about Google's lack of service on its Nexus One phone: Hey Google, Anybody Home?]

Another article worthy of your attention is this one from The Huffington Post on the Harvard Corporation: Will The Harvard Shadow Elite Bankrupt The University And The Country? A few quotes from the article should stir your interest:

Harvard lost $11 billion from its endowment last year, plus another $2 billion by gambling with operating cash and $1 billion in bad bets on interest rate fluctuations. Harvard had been borrowing vast sums to leverage its assets and to expand its physical plant; its president, Lawrence Summers, had described as “extraordinary investments” what ordinary people would call crushing debt. The only way to balance the looming deficits was through huge investment returns. The speculating worked for a while, but when the bubble burst, Harvard was left almost insolvent.

A presidential resignation might have been expected, but Summers, the president most responsible for Harvard’s unsustainable growth plan, had resigned already–he is now a top economic adviser to Barack Obama. In any case, plenty of costly mistakes were made after he left. In this era of heightened corporate accountability, one might have expected instead a shake-up of Harvard’s board. But Harvard’s directors are invulnerable.

…
The Corporation is stunningly secretive. The members are listed on a Harvard web page–but with no contact information. Their meetings and agendas are unannounced, their decisions unreported. The Fellows, scattered across the country, are isolated from the institution they govern. Even the university’s statutes–the closest thing to a constitution limiting the Corporation’s discretionary power–are almost impossible to locate. The colonial-era board structure is failing the modern university.

…
Rubin is now gone from his leadership role and his board membership at Citigroup, hauling away $126M from a firm that was $65B poorer than when he joined it, with 75,000 fewer jobs. But he remains on the Harvard board, in spite of the financial meltdowns at both Citigroup and Harvard and his poor oversight of the problematic president he persuaded Harvard to hire.

An interesting article about corporate control of government, again via The Huffington Post, is ‘Shadow Elite’: Outsourcing Government, Losing Democracy. A quick quote from the article:

We’ve learned the hard way, most starkly in the Great Depression and now in the Great Recession, that men and women are anything but angels, and that government first and foremost must protect the American people from the unmitigated avarice of the private sector.

The problem is, what has happened to that lofty, Founding Fathers notion of government as our protector? To me, the most important contribution, and the most disturbing part of Janine Wedel’s brilliant new book, “Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government and the Free Market”, is that she has laid bare the lie that we have functional separation today between the public and private sector. Over time, capitalism and democracy have become gradually melded into corporatism in the corridors of power in Washington (and in many other national capitals around the world). Public and private are now substantially blurred, as the “transnational” political elites and the financial elites have become literally the same people. It is a condition which leaves the people feeling unrepresented, unprotected and utterly disregarded, a prop in their own play, a hollow feeling the great Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti once eloquently described as “cosmetic democracy.”

I’m sufficiently intrigued by this article that I plan to read Ms. Wedel’s book.

The final article I’ll mention today is from the NYT: A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics. Provides a pretty concise summary of the impact of the largest media corporation on politics, and describes Roger Ailes’ role in making Fox News the success it is. An interesting side point from the article is that Murdoch supports Fox’s conservatism, even though it is contrary to his own politics, apparently because it makes good money for him.

The tool finds locations for the H1N1 flu and regular seasonal flu. The tool works on the latest information it has, but that is not always going to be the current information. Hence, it cannot tell you whether a clinic has recently run out of the flu vaccines, so you should call ahead.