Welcome to your cloud account at Google.

After years of speculation and wet dreams the Nerd world finally got to see the fabled Google Operating System (Chrome OS): a boot loader for a browser. (long video here)

A bit of an anti-climax.

Wired and all the blogs are disappointed – they wanted a razzle-dazzle new OS that would leave Windows 7 and Snow Leopard behind.

That’s not going to happen. Google is first and foremost an Internet company. They live in a “cloud” of servers and web applications. Google doesn’t do old fashioned hardware and applications.

The heralds of the digital age don’t understand that web applications and a cloud based operating system will never offer the same power as desktop computing.

Desktop computing is literally putting “Information AND PROCESSING POWER at your fingertips”. Your data and your CPU belong to you – no stinking net connection needed to “reach it”.

Once we have your data we own you … biatch!

Cloud computing is a step back to how computing was in the old days of Mainframes and Terminals. All the power and data resided in a giant computer the mainframe – and you could “peek” into it by using a dumb and feeble terminal. The terminal itself had no processing power or data storage to speak of – it was just a “window” into the mainframe.

Yesterday’s Terminals are today’s Netbooks, Smartphones and iPhones. Small underpowered devices only meant to “connect” you to small datasets or the “cloud”.

Google, Apple and many other companies want to suck you into THEIR clouds – because once they have your data they won’t give it back so easily.

Services like GMail, Flickrs, Twitter, Google Docs, Apple MobileMe, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft OfficeLive, Adobe’s Acrobat online etc – they all want your data on their clouds.

And they know: once you have a certain amount of “your life” on their server array it’s too much hassle for you to switch.

Because downloading or deleting all those documents, images, videos and links is a time consuming process via the browser – and it is also a “Social Inconvinience”, because all your friends & colleagues have these links and have their “cloud lives” linked to yours.

And you don’t want to disconnect your friends, will you?

Cloud Computing 1.0 – IBM-style …

Microsoft might have annoyed us for years, giving us software and data formats that were less than perfect. But at least we had everything on OUR computers and hard drives.

Once you save something in a “cloud” you have only limited access to it. Internet connections are far from being so reliable like electricity and not everyone has a brutally fast internet connection at home – or on the road. And without (a fast) connection there is no access to your “cloud”.

A backup or transfer of your “cloud life” to your machine or another provider is often cumbersome or even impossible. (so much about open standards)

That is the same strategy how IBM made loads of money till the late 1980’s: the vendor lock in. IBM’s mainframes only ran IBM software – for their customers was no choice and hardly a chance to get out either.

The PC revolution offered hardware and software even mere mortals could afford and operate. Although MS-DOS, Windows nor Apple OS/X are open source, the platforms allowed users to run applications from different vendors. In the case of the Wintel Universe you could buy hardware from any vendor and the Operating System as well as your applications would run. You were not locked into just vendor …

Now we will be equally “chained” to our cloud providers. If they deny us access we are locked out of our own data, email, instant messages, tweets, Facebook profile and our whole online identity – and in the case of the Chrome OS – our own computers – we are fucked! (and you thought loosing your cell phone was bad?!)

You don’t own the cloud – the cloud owns you!

We demand simplicity instead of control over our own data …

I am afraid the great PC revolution is over and many people will welcome the switch to “dumb web 2.0 terminals”, because they are too stupid to manage their own PCs and data.

I can understand them – keeping a system clean and running is a tough job: system updates, driver updates, viruses, malware, hackers, crash recovery, regular backups and their own chaotic file organization.

It’s so much nicer to have Google (or another data centre) taking care of that. You just USE the cloud, you don’t need to keep it intact, install anything or even do a backup.

All done by some invisible hand … and in most cases even for free! How can you compare that smooth “user experience” to the hassle of fixing a broken or virus invested Windows machine?!

Care for your local data – always make backups. No matter how weird your backup medium is …

But dear consumers: beware what you are wishing for!

Just look how your cell phone company milks you for every bit of data you use via their network and devices. Do you really think that even bigger computer companies will play nice once they got you by the balls?

And one more thing: trying to get your data back from your crashed computer is one thing, getting your data back from a locked down server on another continent a totally different task …

Quote: "There is no Information Overload, there is just selection failure!"

Really? Internet nerds and the Generation Web loves to brag about all the information revolution, how it empowers users and saves the world. But instead we are polluted with information noise …

Read the rest of this entry »

Slashdot: YouTube Passes Yahoo As #2 Search Engine 

This is truly sad: Yahoo is slowly disappearing in the mists of insignificance. I have always loved Yahoo – and it’s (too) many free services were often far ahead of anyone else (including Google’s great free stuff).

Yahoo for example had free eMail and Calendar – and a  great Desktop Synching Tool long before GMail was even on the drawing board. The same is true for Yahoo Groups in comparison to Google Groups.

But Yahoo has also the strange talent of fucking itself up.

The interfaces were often overdone – and there was always too much advertising as well. And there was always a serious lack of “cooleness” and “buzz” surrounding Yahoo’s tools.

It’s now just a matter of time before they die, since all desperate attempts to fix itself haven’t helped.

This is just a preview – you can watch the whole interview here.

It is an illusion that there is such a thing as privacy on the Internet, since everything is based on “labeled” data packets that have your address on it.

And most people give away their privacy by shamelessly sharing and providing big companies (not just the Google) with personal information.

How can you force companies to protect your privacy if you don’t do it yourself?

Google gives the Blogosphere a new toys – and the techworld goes bonkers. Calm down people, it’s just a browser.

I’ll admit: it’s nice, clean and works as advertised. Sure it’s minimalism is very appealing – especially when you have propped up your Firefox browser with a gazillion plug-ins.

Dangers ahead

I am just afraid that more companies will build their browser – which mostly serves their web sites and web applications better. Google’s Chrome is supposed to run it’s services like GMail especially fast (I didn’t notice any difference). Microsoft does the same with it Windows Update Website. Opera and Firefox are truely neutral, can’t say anything about Safari, because I never use it.

I don’t want to be forced to use a different browser for different websites.

A look at the Features

Speed. Not really that faster than Firefox. I don’t notice any difference by using it.

Crash Protection. Maybe I have once a year a web page that hangs up on me. So not really needed. And I don’t need another Task Manager (like the Windows one) for web applications. It’s  a nerd feature.

Interface. Nice and clean. Well done Google.

Memory Usage. A bit less then FF again, but not much less. FF uses more memory, because it offers the plug-ins more “hooks” to work with.

Adaptibility. You hardly can change anything in the browser. So you hardly can adapt it to your style of web surfing.

Plug-ins. You can expand the bloody Chrome thing. As much as it simplicity as appealing – for daily usage I need several plug-ins to be a happy surfer. For example: Google is obviously very interested that you see all advertising it throws at you  – it’s their business. But I prefer my websites advertising free.

Bookmarking. Very easy to make bookmarks, but there are no extra tools to manage them. For example I have over 4.500 bookmarks – just dumping them in a list with no serious organizational tools like in Firefox it would be  a nightmare. I am sure Google will improve that, but for now it’s a definitive show stopper for me.

Who should use it?

If you are a casual Internet User you should stick to Internet Explorer. Such users are usually overstrained by any browser, so stick to the one you kinda know.

For more pleasure and a more customized surfing experience there is only one choice: Firefox.

Update: One more thing that’s a showstopper for me: no mouse gestures!

Remember: You don’t your mail on GMail – you are only allowed to access it for free when Google wants you to.

So always keep local copies of your email (by using Outlook or any other normal eMail program to access your Gmail account) – AND get an additional eMail account somewhere else as a backup too.

Never trust just ONE provider.

Google founder Larry Page married last weekend. All the best to him and his lovely wife.

The company itself made a big PR coup by joining to War on Climate Change by developing alternative energy sources, especially for it’s global power hungry server farms.

Good thing that the wedding was total eco disaster: flying in all the guests with private jets to a small island, using huge amounts of electricity to keep the party and the drinks cooled.

Nice work Mister and Misses Google. I guess working on climate change and changing your lifestyle applies only to the little people?

So much about the famous company motto "Do no evil"?! It just proves that most rich people preach modesty to the rest of us, while they indulge the glorious wasteful lifestyle in privacy.