I am the other way around, with Apple I know that they are trying to sell me stuff, but with Google I am the product. Either way I cull tracking cookies every minute, so hopefully what they glean about me is pretty minimal.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

That still didn't protect users, when they decided to can MobileMe. They replaced it with iCloud, but the bit that were most useful for me were phased out with MobileMe.

Yes there were some features that were useful, but I never had my own webpage so that was not really a problem. My real concerns were syncing my devices, and that is easier now.

The key part was my later sentence saying, "but that doesn't mean I trust Google."
I just don't feel that Google is trying to lock people into their software as much as Apple.

Quite the reverse in fact...

Really? I don't see an 'export' option anywhere in Gmail. And how do I convert my Kindle purchases to epub?

There may not be a button on the website, but since it works with pretty much any client it's pretty trivial. You just need to pick one.

I'm not sure what your Kindle comment was aimed at?

Merely an example of where Google is no more open than anyone else. Google is only open with things it makes no money on. The things it does make money on - Kindle books, digital movie sales, search algorithms, ad placement systems... all of those things, it's just as closed and proprietary as the opposition. The 'Google is open' idea actually has as much relevance to reality as the ' Google do no evil' one. It's a nice piece of marketing.

Google does open source stuff. Microsoft has open source stuff. Apple does open source stuff. Google's stuff is just more high profile because Google are good at advertising it (Google, good at advertising, who'd have thought) and because an email account is more 'user obvious' than a webkit library. All these companies equally keep the things that contribute to their bottom line very much to themselves, thank you.

The notion Google are any more open than the competition is similar to the whole 'Steve Jobs reality distortion field' thing. People believe what they're told because it suits them to.

Erm...







...Amazon

Take a look at http://www.dataliberation.org/ this is a Google run service for exporting your data from all Google services. GMail is about half way down the page.

Oh, and Kindle is Amazon.

Yeah I think we can safely assume Jon knows that.

He said: "Merely an example of where Google is no more open than anyone else". I assumed Amazon was "anyone else".

To be honest, I was typing faster than I was thinking so it got a bit muddled. However the point still holds for Google as the ebooks they sell in their store are ePub with DRM (they claim it's the publishers forcing them to do that but then Apple make the same claim).

The point I was making is this : all companies operate purely in their self-interest. if it serves their interest to charge for something, they will charge for it. If it serves their interest to protect something with DRM, they will protect it with DRM. If it serves their interest to give something away for free, they will give it away for free. This applies to Apple, it applies to MS (using IE to basically kill netscape for example), it applies to Amazon (Kindles aren't sold at much of a profit because the books are sold at a decent profit) and it applies to Google as well. None of these companies operate with any sort of altruism. But they all tell you they do, because that will make you like them more and give them more money. Well, actually, Microsoft have pretty much given up trying to do that but the others still do it.

You may believe one company is more well meaning or operates more in your interest than another. You are wrong. Any such correlation is pure coincidence.

Amazon have that DRM. And they're quite good at providing free readers for all the mail OS's out there. If you buy ebooks from Apple on the other hand can you read them on Windows and Android etc?

It's in Amazon's interests to get you buy books. It's in Apple's interests to get you to buy Apple devices. As I say, each company is operating in a way that best serves it's own interests. There's nothing particularly underhand or even difficult to fathom going on here.

Jon

Exactly. I use both companies. I think that the Amazon Match and Amazon Prime are worth looking into. Itunes Match does not cover enough tracks for me to consider.