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@GA2G
Hi Ashley
In my many years of working with technology, I have no recollection of any other mainstream company attempting to do what Google actually managed to do with Street View. It took a lot of very hard work to design systems and tools capable of capturing the personal and private data of the public as the Google Street View cars were driving around with the stated purpose of capturing images. Google KNEW Street View cars were slurping Wi-Fi
When I first became aware of this, I pondered on why Google put so much effort into harvesting private data. I then reflected on a problem I had with my personal computer. For a few years, whenever I did a search on my computer, I would receive emails to my personal account related to the search. On the first occasion this happened, I spent two hours scouring my computer for malware including rootkits but found nothing present. A few months later, when I received mail relating to a search that I had only done two hours earlier, I spent an entire day going through the content of my computer. I was convinced some form of malware was present. I used every tool at my disposal to find the malware that I knew had to be present but still I found nothing.
I am very, very good at finding and removing malware. Not finding the malware on my computer really bothered me. Roll the clock forward a few months, to early 2010 and the story of Google Street View hits the headlines. I thought about the Google Toolbar that I used on my browser and it suddenly became very clear to me that if Google spent a fortune arming cars with technology to steal data, certainly their toolbar may not be as innocuous as I had thought. I uninstalled the toolbar and every other bit of Google software I could find on my computer. I haven’t had a single targeted email since.
I will NEVER use a Google product. I will never use Chrome, in fact, I love IE9. I have it configured to block ads – Chrome and Firefox generate income by showing ads and I doubt that they would like their users to easily block ads. My IE9 browsing experience is clean and fast!
As for Apple, their strategy is to form a very close relationship with your wallet. They will make it a difficult as possible for you to leave their eco system but I do trust this very simple and obvious intent far more than I trust Google’s. Android dominates with 50% of the smartphone market share, but it will never be for me.
As for RIM, I run a two Blackberry Enterprise Servers and take care of about 70 Blackberrys. The Blackberry experience from an administrative perspective is poor in comparison to Microsoft ActiveSync that works with everything else. The Playbook device was very, very bad – my clients abandoned them after a month of use. The developers too are abandoning the Blackberry platform in large numbers. Without developers and developer momentum, a platform is doomed. I give RIM 1 – 2 years to continue to exist in the manner we know it today. Possibly they will split the hardware and software parts of the company (like Palm I think?) and may even license its messaging technology to third parties or partners.
RIM and Nokia are in the same boat. They, along with myself, made a bad call on the iPhone. We said that it could never succeed because consumers want good battery life, great call quality, etc. Consumers told us “experts” that we were wrong. Apple created more than a product with the iPhone, they created desire. They reversed the trend of phones getting smaller with very long battery life, to huge phones with poor battery life. Ultimately this left RIM and Nokia without viable smartphone that could compete with Apple and the newly emerging Google Android phones. I know you have a soft spot for Symbian but with a view on the future and the trends developing in the smart phone market, Nokia were very courageous (and right!) to switch to Windows Phone. Nokia were in decline and are still in decline but a few revolutionary products could turn this around. I think Nokia may continue to struggle on the world stage unless they can deliver a range of very cheap smartphones to India, Pakistan, the Far East etc.
My landlord, who is an IT expert sent that to me. We were discussing mobile OS'.