The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!: Google, My Heart Bleeds for Thee

Google, My Heart Bleeds for Thee

Shameless Self-Promotion Note: I'm in the process of migrating The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks! to it's own domain (omnipotentpoobah.com). I'd thought it about it for quite some time, but when their spambots locked me out of my account for nearly a week, I decided the time had come.

I should be ready for the change-over within the next few days. Meanwhile, you can continue to stop by this location, but watch for the redirect when the final move is afoot.

Feel free to drop in at the new place to see how things are coming together and leave your comments at either place.

Thanks for your continued support.

Google, my heart bleeds for thee. You're complaining about mean old Bill Gates and his Vista O/S anti-competitively keeping you from your plans for world domination. What a shame!

Not that you don't have a point. BillCo has done similar things for years and has been pinched by regulators here and abroad for doing it. Each time their response is, "who us?" and off to court they go. Lawyers are probably the biggest block in the Microsoft software development org chart. Just ask Netscape how that works out.

Who's Complaining About Who?

But your case is pretty weak. In fact, Bill might even make the same complaint about you. Your near-daily purchase of net-related companies looks an awful lot like Bill's strategy of buying your way into market dominance. You have a war chest amassed during the Dot Com boom when investors profligately threw money at anything that began with a small "e" - eAsshats.com for example - and you know how to use it. Despite your Gatesian talk of innovation, the innovating pretty much stops when the 22-year old wunderkind running the new shop takes his millions and goes on extended vacation to raise alpacas in Malibu.

Owned and Operated by Google

But the most frightening thing is the personal intrusions you impose on your users. You already track us from space with photos detailed enough to count the shingles on our roofs and you're introducing 360º views of individual streets clearly showing faces and almost capable of peeking into bedrooms to see who's into anal sex or man-on-dog porn. You've already built massive databases of Google users to drive marketing schemes and search results. You've even attempted to scan the entire Library of Congress and all the public records from every segment of government. Bill only wanted to dominate the desktop. You want to see the sky imprinted with a "Welcome to Earth, Owned and Operated by Google" banner.

Google, my heart bleeds for thee. Maybe the public could form an alliance with Bill to protect us from you.

We'd certainly be screwed, but it might be preferable to being Googled.