The Circle of Trust

Every day, we entrust our private and professional lives in these United States, and for most of the world actually, to basically these 6 companies, namely Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and Starbucks. To a lesser extent, Snapchat, and Twitter. I have to add Uber and AirBnB as well. Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp will also be talked about under Facebook, as would YouTube under Google.

We do so mostly willingly, but mostly because of some vestigial connections still using that specific service or resource.

However, are these companies deserving of our trust, and our business, at all? Are they practitioners of ethical computing? Is our data safe with them? Can they be trusted in the future?

Over a series of blog posts, I will give you my thoughts on the firms listed above, and why I either have increased, stagnant, decreased, or zero engagement with them.

Believe me, some of these companies are not, and will NEVER be, in my Circle of Trust!

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto

"When Google Met Schadenfreude". A play in €4.3 billion parts

How many people remember the NOISE coalition against Microsoft?

During Microsoft’s transatlantic antitrust woes?

N.O.I.S.E.?

The people who secretly and publicly funded that mofo working with Penfield Jackson to bring down Microsoft?

Novell. Oracle. IBM. Sun Microsystems. Everyone Else.

Surreptitiously, Google was in the “Everyone Else” category, until outed.

At every turn, Google complained to the EU, coming up with farcical BS market dominance theories that  yum-yums running the EU antitrust offices eagerly lapped up like the, well, lapdogs that they were!

It was horrifying!

Under the intellectually-deficient Mario Monti, the thoroughly-incompetent Nellie Kroes, and the dumbass Joaquin Almunia, Microsoft was hobbled.

All the while, Google had a free hand to become unlawfully dominant.

Fast forward to today.

Thankfully, the current European Commissioner for Competition is Margrethe Vestager.

The competent Ms. Vestager has been able to cut through Google’s BS, and has undertaken to hit Google in the wallet for [economic] crimes against the people.

Today, the blow came to €4.3 billion.

Not a small sum to sneeze at, but smallish, to Google.

Sadly, this won’t stop Google.

What the EU competition authorities should have done, was to wrest control of the Android store, called Google Play, from Google.

Allowing Google to maintain control over that marketplace enshrines Google’s dominance over the Android ecosystem no matter what other remedies are ordered.

I sincerely hope that Ms. Vestager is still keeping a close watch on Google.

Until then, schadenfreude bites.

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto

Will Skype 8.0 save the franchise?

Is Skype 8.0 going to be the resurrection of the Skype franchise?

The lack of traction for Skype so far during Microsoft’s ownership is rather pitiful.

From being the communications app for most of the world, across both industrialized and emerging nations, Skype has become largely forgotten.

In the interim, WhatsApp has conquered all.

To an outsider like me, the faults came down to a few things: unnecessary tedious onboarding, a hard-to-use UI, a craptastic user experience, and a seemingly user-unfriendly stance from Microsoft. Making international calls, a hallmark of Skype, became a severe chore!

To crown it all, further development on Skype visibly stopped. New features introduced into competing products weren’t even publicly roadmapped!

How bad was it?

Well, WhatsApp went from nowhere to being neck-and-neck with Skype for a minute, and now being in excess of 1 billion global users.

As for Skype, the last time user numbers were made known, it was at 300 million users. Back in 2016.

What makes this more infuriating, is that Microsoft is a well regarded company that is universally trusted to not abuse customer PIIs and data.

In these days of just-1% slightly-greater-than-1% user privacy awareness, I am pretty sure Microsoft can recapture, or at least, capture, a few tens of million new users if they keep their eyes on the prize.

Sadly, I’m not optimistic.

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto

Google allows 3rd-party humans to read your email

This is bad. Very bad.

Like ELE-level bad!

Think about it:

Your startup, with all your best ideas and innovations, sends all your email via Gmail.

Then, your startup's email, containing all your best ideas and innovations, is read by some 3rd-party yob, in the name of ‘app development’.

This 3rd-party yum-yum, with access to emails containing all of your startup’s best ideas and innovations, now decides to literally use you for his or her personal R&D. Reading all you good stuff. Cataloging all your good stuff. Maintaining a shadow company for all your good stuff. Registering, trademarking, or patenting all YOUR good stuff.

By the time you’re ready to goto market, guess what?

Your game-changing innovation is now owned by some thieving mofo.

All because you trusted your email to Google.

Dare I ask how sunny your days going forward would be?

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto