The regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on today’s roads is very thick indeed. The content, behaviour and performance of “stuff on roads” is massive, and grows by the day. Try hot-rodding your lawnmower – or deciding that on Thursdays, you will only make left turns, and see how far you get.
By contrast, the regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on the internet – its content, behaviour and performance – couldn’t be simpler. There isn’t one.
When people buy software – buy it in seriously large amounts – it isn’t just today’s binary they’re choosing. They’re buying what they think is a bit of the future – they’re buying a piece of risk insurance. This explains why very mature and well-proven systems often lose out to the Newest Kid on the Block. It also explains the enduring effectiveness of FUD and Vapourware.
And it’s not just software. From TP monitors, to minicomputers, to Novell Netware, recent history is full of examples of perfectly splendid systems being thrown out and replaced with something that doesn’t live up to the billing – and perhaps never will. Which sounds wacky, but that choice is being made on the rational calculation that the software or hardware of choice today won’t be made or supported, or the standards that bind the parts of the system together will become obsolete. (Which leads to the same thing.)
Sometimes a brave company bucks the trend. Most famously Microsoft refused to “eat its own dog food”, and stood firm against the move to client/server computing running PC or Unix-based databases like Microsoft SQL Server, instead insisting that its mission-critical accounts department ran on, er, an IBM AS/400 mini.
But by and large, the strategy works very well for companies that trumpet a “paradigm shift”, or “new era in computing”, and convince people that they own a secret part of the future – one that no one else can yet see. It worked for Microsoft, and Google hopes it will work for it, too. The Chrome browser today is little more than a piece of demoware, but it’s not just about “today”, is it?
Before we see what Google is hoping to achieve with Chrome, let’s take a look at a precedent from history that I find quite spooky.
Old-timers may excuse this brief wallow in nostalgia.
The US Senate today embarks on what could become years of antitrust investigations into Google by the IT, telecoms and media industries. The hearing today is just that – a piece of political showboating ordered by antitrust subcommittee chairman Herb Kohl. It’s not a formal investigation, let alone a lawsuit. Yet with the destiny of … Read more
A philosophy of science that may be the best thing we’ve ever run WiReD magazine’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has just seen the end for scientific theories. And it is called Google. The concept of the mind, and by extension that of a person, was also affected, with far reaching implications. In psychology, Behaviourism was one … Read more
While Bill Gates now holds a lucrative monopoly on digital images, his successors don’t see the same prosperous future for the digital word. Microsoft is withdrawing from the Open Content Alliance digitisation project and will cease to scan books, the company said on Friday. It’s abandoning its Live Book Search venture – a curious decision, … Read more
The Phorm bug is spreading. The idea of collecting a user’s browsing history and flogging that data doesn’t just appeal to ISPs. The Mozilla Foundation, the people behind the Firefox browser, want some of that action too. The Foundation is officially a tax exempt non-profit – but still manages to pay its chairperson $500,000 a … Read more
Casting around for an example of the simple life to use in an Arab-bashing column, veteran columnist and editor Alexander Chancellor alighted on what he must have thought was the perfect foil to the free-spending Saudis.
It appeared right there in front of him, on his PC, nestling between some coloured balls.
Unlike Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, wrote Chancellor on Saturday, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “don’t have private jets, Rolls-Royces, yachts or any of the other pointless accoutrements of the super-rich”.
“Page and Brin each own nothing more flashy than a modest Toyota Prius, the environmentally virtuous hybrid car,” he explained, adding:
“Like the other princes of Silicon Valley, they don’t show off. They are eager to appear unpretentious and affect to like simple things. Theirs is a world of jeans, sneakers, Starbucks, and girls-next-door.”
Chancellor didn’t mention high school bops, the Everly Brothers or bobbysox, but it was clear he’d fallen asleep by his PC, dreaming of some forgotten 1950s film (or girl).
Then the blue ball bumped into red ball, and reality returned.
Google is set to give the mobile phone business a body blow today – the second punch in the guts it’s had this year. Apple delivered the first blow, by turning the operators’ subsidy model upside down – as well as making rival manufacturers look like knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. But Google’s arrival may prove to be … Read more
Imagine if you walked into Scotland Yard to report a crime involving children, only to be given a telling off, before you’d opened your mouth, about the dire penalties for wasting police time. And that your complaints would be forwarded to a watchdog – and that you’d better come back with a lawyer.
That’s how a group of parents feel after seeing photographs of their kids defaced on Orkut. Members of Google’s social network created “mash-ups” of photographs originally posted to Flickr – adding text, some of which contained sexual innuendo, for children as young as five.
The upset parents turned to the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which permits private copyright holders to deal with infringement, without going through a lawyer.
Now if you only read WiReD magazine or anti-copyright bloggers, you’d think the DMCA was only ever abused by corporate bullies: the Act is notorious for being deployed under dubious pretexts in a small number of high profile cases.
However, it’s also been used by thousands of individuals, including many artists, and remains the most powerful tool for the ordinary citizen to seek redress without expensive litigation. It’s a question of filling out a simple form.
Not that you’d ever guess from Google’s page for DMCA complaints. The web advertising giant turns the presumption of guilt back onto the complainer.