I'm a pretty secure guy when it comes to online activities. I've been a long time supporter of Google ever since it started. Recently I've decided to use Google without any security softwares enabled, especially my ad blockers; one of the most hated things you can come across online are ads..
To my amazement, there are ads everywhere on Google. Well, I don't mind the ads on the Google search engine or anywhere else, but what's shocking were the ads in my inbox's page. I realized Google scans your emails and place ads on the right side relevant to those emails you're viewing... Now that's a scary sight. I know this is old news to many, but for someone who hasn't been exposed to ads in years... is a big slap in the face. It's also hypocritical that Google has a spam box and yet they're happily supplying their own ads.
If you look at all of Google's products, like Google Search, Google Mail, Google Earth, Google Direction, Google Docs, Google Voice, Google Wave you'll realize all those products could later become a privacy issue concerning millions of people. The giant company is practically indexing people's personal life digitally which could potentially bite you later in the back. I mean I could search John T. Haller on Google and find so much information about him if I wanted to ... imagine what Google could do with all the other products they offer. Ill be switching my email addresses soon to either yahoo or microsoft, and say screw off to Google Wave, Google Voice, Google Mail, Google OS, Google Chrome, etc etc etc. EXCEPT Their search engine which I don't have a problem with... but than again I'll take a look at Bing to do a full retreat from Google.
Google is truly looking like an evil empire. Ugh...
[Moved to Off Topic forum - Mod SL]
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Well, I'm easy, since I have some pretty personal stuff on my own website here:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/
But yes, many of the free email providers do this (I think both Yahoo and Microsoft do this now, too). It's not really new and it's been widely known. It's basically the price you pay for the free service. That's why I pay a monthly fee for my own private email.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
From what I saw, Microsoft didn't have any ads when I logged-in. Maybe I had my ad blocker activated so I might need to recheck unless other users can verify that. Yahoo may have a few since I didn't look at it thoroughly, but they're more likely randomize ads rather than specific ones aimed toward you.
Sorry for derailing your post, but it seems the PortableApps.com RSS entries on your website are not reflecting what's actually on the feed. Nothing serious, just to let you know
Isn't that self-promoting?
He's too special to moderate his own comments :P.
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
If you really worry about it, Microsoft and Yahoo! do it even more than Google... for example, with Microsoft mail, it goes and sticks an advertisement in the footer of your email.
None of them manually do anything with the data though; it is all automatic, and their privacy policies prevent them from legally accessing it.
Really though this isn't the place to post this; I think it should be in off-topic at least, really off this site completely...
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
"If you really worry about it, Microsoft and Yahoo! do it even more than Google... for example, with Microsoft mail, it goes and sticks an advertisement in the footer of your email."
That's not true. Here's some screenshots from each company.
http://i37.tinypic.com/2uzr0w1.jpg
http://i37.tinypic.com/10dd3tl.jpg
http://i35.tinypic.com/erlsa0.jpg
As you can see, both Yahoo and Microsoft do have ads, but they're randomize ones. Google on the other hand actually scans the emails and has more ads listed. The point in all this is, "don't mess with people's personal data."
"Really though this isn't the place to post this; I think it should be in off-topic at least, really off this site completely..."
Didn't realize there was an Off Topic, it was way down the forum. My apologies.
you know you can turn that off
I dont have a single add in Gmail.
"It's just an online installer. It's not going to mug you.", JTH
"The shell is the key to unlock Linux's greatest advantages."
I think Google only started turning evil when they decided to acquire DoubleClick and post video and image ads.
Google: if ads are to work, they CANNOT look like ads. Else selective viewing takes over.
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Google isn't evil. They're a publicly traded company trying to get by in the recession, same as any other. Like Yahoo, their money comes mostly from advertisements. Their services are free to the end user on personal computers, and a lot of their mobile services (all?) are free as well.
On top of all that, they are the best in the world at what they do. Gmail is pretty awesome, and I don't even use all its features, e.g. keyboard shortcuts. My wife still uses Yahoo! Mail, and it's so outdated, comparatively. Google Maps far outshines Mapquest and Microsoft's offering, I forget the name of which, but it was behind Mapquest, and Google Maps is far in advance of that. None of the other big players have something like Google Docs, do they? Microsoft is going to offer Office Live at some point, but it will cost money. Google Docs is free. And now Google Wave, it's just a beta (an actual "beta") but it shows promise. And one account puts all this within reach. For free. (P.S. -- Let's not forget YouTube.)
Also, they don't seem to care (at this point) if you use an ad blocker, though they do push their own web browser from time to time. No big deal.
Privacy is what you make of it. You put something online, you gotta know it's so much harder to take it off than it was to put it on. Others can put you online, but you gotta be in control of your own personal and private information.
So no, Google is not evil. They do a lot of good and all they ask is that you see ads. They ask, they don't demand, and they don't retaliate or withdraw their services if you use Firefox and Adblock Plus. It's very generous of them, and yet they still manage to make the money.
On top of all that, Google does a lot of stuff that is very cool -- aside from offering all those cool services for free. There's the homepage, with the logo that changes nearly daily. For the week leading up to Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, they displayed a different Sesame Street themed logo every day. On the actual 40th anniversary they did not, but that was Veteran's Day, so Veteran's Day trumped Sesame Street. Yesterday or the day before when water was discovered on the moon (yes, in case you missed it, that happened, it was on nasa.gov) their logo reflected that. Any excuse they can get to change up their logo, they do. They've even had kids draw the logo. I've heard their cafeteria only serves food prepared with ingredients made within 100 miles of their Mountain View, CA facility. Having lived in CA and having driven by the Googleplex, as they call it, I can tell you they're not 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean. 60 tops. So that limits their area, too. I've heard other things about their working environment, I can't imagine having a job cool enough that I'd turn down a job offer from Google.
And their founders are truly among the elite of tech visionaries, along with Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, Myiamoto (the Nintendo guy), the founder of Harmonix (not even gonna try to spell out his name), and so many others, who saw something and envisioned a better way. That list, then, would be subjective, and we could even apply that definition to our own John Haller here, for PortableApps -- yes, U3 did it first, but only on specialized flash drives, so it doesn't really count.
Maybe Google should have a completely ad-free service, with none of their tracking stuff, and charge for it. I wonder how many people would pay.
Completely agree. Google rock. Yes I understand people's concern that if you do everything online through Google (as I do) they *could potentially* one day aggregate that information into a huge database of everyone in the world, but they have shown no sign of doing anything so sinister so far.
The just offer stellar services for free.
So I'm going to trust and keep using Google. They rock. (Wish they'd offer Ogg Theora on YouTube though...)
Google is less evil than others, but they have their badside, mostly the stalking and ads. M$ is the worst offender, besides probably facebook, who owns your soul.
as for Theora, i suspect the will open source better codecs within the near future. Keep and eye out for it, because once they do that, I think you'll see youtube using mp4/whatever format their codecs use on youtube, based on browser.
that huge database your talking about, already exists. Its called facebook. They are pure evil.
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
1. I do not have a Facebook Account, nor will I ever.
2. I use LINUX, unless I'm having an issue that prevents me from doing so and/or have to use a system that only works with M$ software (right now, it's my college's e-learning site).
3. If I ever had to do something online I wouldn't want somebody else to find out about, then I'd just proxy to the max.
Besides, anything somebody else posts about you on a personal basis is no more than hearsay; or libel if it's not true, and then you can sue them for it!
Actually, "Portable Firefox" debuted in March of 2004 on JohnHaller.com with "Portable Firefox 0.9+". Thunderbird not too longer after. U3 announced what they would have in January of 2005 but didn't release it until the end of 2005. So, if anything, they took the idea from us. They didn't even have real, workable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org until they contracted me to make them (based on the standard portable versions, of course).
We beat them out of the gate by a long shot and we're still going strong.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Wait... what? PortableApps.com, in some incarnation (or at least Portable Firefox), predates U3? Awesome. Still, the point firmly stands, even if it's gotta be changed to mean that U3 might have been more popular at one point, but you did it better, supporting all flash drives and portable storage devices, where U3 required some funky two-drive system that Microsoft and I guess SanDisk like, but everybody else seems to think is stupid (I certainly do). SanDisk makes shoddy flash drives anyway, at least the Cruzer (standard) I had. I must have bumped it, because the connector got bent and it would come and go, Windows thought I was pulling it out, pushing it back in, pulling it out... I just wiped it real quick, and then threw it out. Been loyal to Corsair ever since, though I hear Patriot makes some good drives...
Anyway, hope you feel better, man. (Read in the status update that you might have the flu.)
Our stuff existed on JohnHaller.com *long* before U3 existed. It was on there, then it kinda moved to MozDev for a bit, then was hosted on SourceForge.net, then the homepage moved to PortableApps.com with the launch of Firefox Portable 1.5.
So, yes. We were first. It's the original... and still the best
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Get some sleep.
Sleep will make the platform even better (and maybe let you recover faster).
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Wow, yeah, that's news to me.
Anyway, you might be the first to organize apps portable for the sake of doing so (though part of me is still skeptical nobody had done it at all) but in any case, apps being installed and tied to a Registry is much newer than portable apps anyway; before, it seems like all apps were natively portable. They've always been portable (or at least modular) before the Registry came along. Right? Seems to be that way. Pretty sure on the Amiga and in DOS nothing was tied to its location.
I disagree -- I push myself pretty hard when I'm sick. I sweat it out. Sometimes, anyway. Doctors disagree with that, though, so don't listen to me over them. I'm a nerd, I'm not real active to start with, I just don't let a cold get me down. Of course, working the mind (programming, or writing) doesn't count, so I am praying I don't get sick until after November/NaNoWriMo is over. I'm over quota -- 25,441 words as of about 15 minutes ago (the line between a short story and a novel, apparently, is 40,000 words, but NaNo shoots for 50k). And my story isn't half over yet, so it will run over. And then there's editing... but I won't be able to focus on it if I get sick. (Posting on forums takes a lot less energy, though.)
Again, best wishes to you and yours, I just found out this morning (well, yesterday morning) that my six-year-old niece might be sick, but that might have just been a guilt trip her mom tried to put on my brother-in-law for staying out all night jamming with us on Rock Band. Seriously, we brought him home at a quarter after nine in the morning. It's all very suspicious, but I'm still gonna have to check in tomorrow (Monday). Adults can fight a cold and do alright, but kids are another story, and there are few things in life more rewarding than making a kid more comfortable when they're sick. Bonus points if you can make them laugh.
As for keeping this on topic, remember all that controversy about people searching Google for health information, and Google tying those searches to their profile of you, or something like that? That made Google look pretty bad, but I didn't hear much else about it. Guess it never really amounted to anything? If I wasn't married, I'd look up all kinds of female problems on Google (e.g. breast cancer) and really throw their system for a loop, eh? Yeah, not very funny. I need to kick my sense of humor into overtime for Monday.
I push myself when I have a cold, too - I know the docs all yell about getting sleep and so on, but I try to keep a normal routine and let my body deal with it.
Only thing is, John said he's got the swine flu - IMHO, pushing himself could be disastrous. This isn't any ordinary cold...
John, please get some sleep!
(Don't want to seem out of line or anything, but we're worried about you...)
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
...is little more than a legalized software pirate, so I'd hardly call him a visionary; evil marketing genius, perhaps, but otherwise just your typical suit & tie scumbag.
Worried about Google's search engine tracking you? So am I... I think their whole relationship with DoubleClick can lead to nothing but trouble for us. (I recently heard about one woman who sued DoubleClick, subpoenaed their records on her, and found over 700 pages of information!)
Anyway, I'm using Scroogle for my search engine now - https://www.scroogle.org
NO cookies, NO ads, and it's served over a secure connection. Best of all, it really is a Google search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Just take a look at what they've done to YouTube. Pre-video adds, forced new beta channels, (despite all the bad comments and the 1.5 rating on the announcement video) site slowdowns, Audio muting, HD that lags so much, and the new twitter-like comment reply system.
Simplifying daily life through technology
Stevoisiak, all that you said is not a proof that Google is evil, it is a proof that Google cares for their users, but doesn't care enough as they think they know what the users want when they might not.
Slow HD is better than no HD at all; muted audio is better than a video took down due to copyright problems (they don't want to be sued, duh!); the beta channels are actually decent, what happened is that the users got afraid of the beta channels for no reason; and if you notice, the twitter-like comment/reply system is used on PortableApps.com itself and it is awesome (at least in here)!
<joke hasTrueThings="true">The ads are there not because Google is evil, but because Google is a greedy bastard.</joke>EDIT: I am in no ways trying to defend Google, I am just saying the reasons you gave do not prove Google is evil or not. If Google is evil, I honestly don't know.
EDIT #2: To the original poster: Shouldn't this be in off-topic? And also, if we are comparing evil companies, I think Google is less evil than Microsoft, or at least they hide it pretty well. (They make most of their software OSS... they charge few money or none at all for most of their services... They now even allow you to sort of control search results related to you!...)
Blue is everything.
Well, the twitter system was just a cheap fix for the problem about replied comments not showwing up as replies, there is no option to switch back to the old channels, if there is on bit of copyrighted music, why isn't that one part muted, or why can't we replace the upload with an edited version without reuploading the whole video, and now they are dropping support for those who don't have a linked GMail and Youtube account.
Simplifying daily life through technology
Still, that is no proof that Google is evil, it is just a proof that it cares more with their server's performance and programmers time than their users, nothing more.
And not caring is not the same as being evil, as an evil company actually cares to make their users (or the competition) suffer to such a point the company is willing to play dirty and almost commit illegalities.
And I say once again, I am not trying to prove that Google is not evil, I am trying to show you that your arguments to proof that Google is evil actually don't proof that Google is evil, they only proof that Google doesn't care a lot with their users that much as the users hoped to.
Blue is everything.
These kind of debates really make me laugh (if I don't laugh I tend to get angry). It's interesting to see how "evil" corporations are personified as some faceless, doomsday machine, when the reality is that they were built by human beings, for human beings and they are run by human beings. Human beings just like you and I.
The very bottom line is that we made this happen. This is what we wanted; industrialization, technological revolution. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. Did somebody descend from the heavens and say, "People of Earth, this is how your society is going to run, like it or not! You WILL have giant evil corporations!". Not to my knowledge they didn't.
Very few people want to grow their own food any more, build their own houses, build their own furniture (or have Bob the carpenter next door make it), make their own clothes (or have Bill the tailor next door make them), or make their own repairs to house/furniture/clothes/objects. Most of us want the convenience of having somebody do it for us, so that we can go out and earn money, with which we can then use to accumulate more "stuff".
Isn't this way "civilized" society is supposed to work? It's certainly the way we've constructed it to work. So I guess we're all evil from that perspective.
Google scans the website's source html and does a google search, then provides links revelant to that.
And M!c@so#t is worse than google
You just can't get good service these days
sure you can
PortableApps.com provides good service 
how do you think we did so good on the sourceforge community choice awards? lol
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
thread will be moved to off-topic in an hour, it really isn't 'General discussions of portable apps and news' and it keeps leaping up the tracker.