Google

We’ve been here before. I wonder if anyone else recognises it? (Well, I haven’t, though I’ve read about it. Let me explain…) There’s an eerie sense of deja vu about the computer industry right now, if you look at it the right way. The PC wars were pretty much over by the time I was born, definitely so by the time I was old enough to be conscious of a computer, but from what I’ve gleaned from my history books and a little recent reading, things weren’t always so straightforward in the computer industry as they’ve been over the last few years. ...

Google recently created a page where they revealed government take-down requests for their services, with some interesting figures revealing Brazil topping the list of take-down requests, followed by Germany, India and the United States. Australia ranks 10th with 17 take-down requests, of which Google has complied with 52%. China however considers the take-down requests themselves state secrets and so Google cannot reveal that data without legal trouble. While this is all well and good in Google’s campaign for internet openness and freedoms, what this ultimately makes me even more curious about is the corporate take-down requests they get - where are the stats for those requests, Google? ...

In case you haven’t heard of Google Wave, or haven’t had the time to watch the video and realise how it really will change just about everything to do with the internet, Andy Ihnatko has written his take on it, and it pretty much lines up with mine - this is genuinely new, and if it’s not revolutionary, it’s certainly evolutionary on the same scale that Homo Sapiens is.