[kwlug-disc] [OT] Google sniffing wifi, collecting emails and passwords.

[Paul Nijjar]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 08:31:01PM -0400, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> I didn't imply that all people will switch, or most of them. But that those
> who are averse to the practices of a certain company will avoid it and use
> alternatives.
> 
> We have this today: identi.ca vs. twitter, the Leave Facebook movement, and
> us using Linux and OpenOffice and FireFox.
> 
> We can't expect EVERYONE will switch, otherwise we would not have MS IE6
> today.
> 
> But those who care will.

And then they "fall behind" the technology and aren't cool and can't
get jobs. I'm not a twitterati and I don't blog much and my facebook
is a placeholder and I don't have a cellphone (never mind txting on
one), and I live in constant anxiety that I am becoming a
technological dinosaur. I even worry that I should be playing World of
Warcraft, because WoWers have skills and connections that are totally
alien to me.

I don't like *any* of the search providers out there. I mistrust a lot
of the Web 2.0 platforms, not to mention putting my private data on
The Cloud. How do I opt out of these things without falling behind and
becoming unemployable?

If you think that's hypothetical you should speak to people who
shrugged off learning e-mail and computers, and are now really
struggling to do basic web searches. 

Of course, you are talking about people choosing different
alternatives, not dropping out entirely. But I think the issues are
largely the same. We can say no. We can choose the unpopular,
unworkable alternatives (hello Desktop Linux!). But there are
consequences for doing so. 

I think Glenn is pretty smart to be alerting us all to Google's
shenanigans. Google in 2010 is like Microsoft of the late 20th
century -- a huge player that determines the rules of the game, and
really hard to ignore. 

- Paul