Where I put my attention is where my life is lived. I don't think I'm unique in this respect. I can scan my posts, my comments, stats showing what's of interest and need for readers. I can see where my attention's been over the past week, what it communicates to my readers, is it beneficial...do I need to change. Am I in a rut, in a groove, indulgent, helpful...?
I'm in that process now. I think it's a routine process for most bloggers.
It's the old adage of a life unexamined is a life not worth living applied. A life lived unexamined is pretty soon a life lived in a rut of stagnancy, calcified habits, rigid mindsets, outdated paradigms...out of touch.
I'm not saying I'm not all of those.But I'm less of these from my blogging, stepping back and looking at my blog, responding to those that comment, responding to others' blogs...listening as well as blogging.
What's my point? And why should you care?
I'm not sure there is a direct and immediate point. And maybe you shouldn't. But sometimes we see parallels in our lives and that of our environment. Our external environment maybe reflects our internal lives or it's but a reflection...the universe is as we are.
And, as I'm reading about Google, its plans to merge or partner with Yahoo to control 90% of the search market, its efforts to provide a hosted operating system through its Google aps, docs, email, etc, etc, now its recently launched browser Chrome...it seems its obsession is...Microsoft.
And I'm not sure that obsession is good. It's rarely considered a health habit to obsess about your nemesis. Obsession with your competitors...too often takes our creativity down a dark hole into revenge and destructive tendencies.
I can't help but see its strategy seems less to do no harm and more to replace Microsoft as the world's dominant....something: desktop, operating system, Lord and Master of all things IT...and soon, most hated company, or company we all love to complain about.
And this, possibly, obsessive attention on Microsoft seems to translate more and more into a behavior much like Microsoft with its users and smaller businesses. There's more and more signs of arrogance and arbitrariness and capriciousness and ...dare I say it a blind-missionary zeal, backed with the power of all that is Google today, to those who administer Google's tactics.
Consider this story: Stuck in Google's Doghouse. (NY Times; you may need to register.)
Oh sure, it's one company, one customer of Google.
But it's unique in that it's one company who has the resources to pursue a conversation, using the help of its attorneys, with Google over a period of time, and document its conversations and the impact of Google's seemingly arbitrary and capricious decisions that benefit Google's corporate partners at the expense of smaller customers of Google. These smaller customers being those dependent on a level-playing field of search results from Google.
Where there's this much smoke, a prominent article in the NY Times, there's gotta be fire somewhere. Maybe not where we expect it, always. But still...there's something smoldering.
One of the most important issues to consider with net neutrality is the potential of bandwidth providers to partner with well-funded corporations to in order to prioritize the handling of content from the corporate partner. In effect, the bandwidth provider designates its corporate partner and their digital traffic with a most-favored-content provider status in order to prioritize the delivery of the corporate partner's content to its users. To paraphrase one of the 7 Commandments from George Orwell's Animal Farm:
All traffic is created, and handled, equally. But some traffic is created, and handled, more equally.
At least that's what the telecom providers are trying to sell us as they seek to create 2-tiered system of traffic delivery with the tiers' criteria being theirs to decide.
Quite frankly, it was no different with Microsoft back in the day, not too long ago, when they controlled 97% of the world's desktop operating systems. Oh sure, they weren't a monopoly. But innovators couldn't reach the desktop of their audience without approval of Microsoft. Animal Farm's truism became:
All desktop aps are created equal. But some are created more equal than others.
That designation of greater equality depended on the blessings of Microsoft's two biggest barnyard animals: Bill and Steve, Gates and Balmer respectively. (I'm merely continuing the barnyard metaphor and allusions to Animal Farm.)
Google's control of search engine results...has the same effect. If George Orwell had written Animal Farm today he may have written:
All search results are created equal. Just some are created more equal than others.
Google's acclaimed ability to write algorithms that delivered objective results based on what was considered, by Google, to be all that is true and real in the world today was...is at the moment...one of the drivers that leverged the openness and level-playing field of the internet. This only furthered the combined impact of an open internet on innovation in business, particularly for smaller, more flexible businesses who were quick to adapt innovations like...websites and search engine marketing and blogs, etal. This is where jobs were created and those jobs replaced the those eliminated at larger companies not flexible nor particularly interested in being flexible.
It's interesting now to see Google create...what...rules and criteria for creating sites that are...googly...that are arbitrary and capricious. Surely, they're not in the minds of Google's administrators. But as they're applied and communicated (or not if Google feels it's decisions have been made clear despite evidence to the contrary...), if you're on the losing side of their decision, can appear to be so.
All landing pages aren't created equal; nor are our rules for setting the criteria by which we judge them, nor the means, if we choose to use them, to communicate them or the decisions reached using them, if we decide to use them or another set of criteria based on your designation as a partner.
As night follows day, so does unquestioned, unexamined dominance of an industry by one company, and its partners, create a monopoly throttling competition and the innovation (and companies and jobs) required for them both to survive and grow.
Google's showing signs of becoming that which it mocked: a stodgy, self-absorbed, self-important arbiter of what's best for business...And it's definition reflects more and more the stodgy, self-important aspects of the company, Microsoft, it seeks to replace.
All monopolies are created equal...
But the world ultimately ends up treating them all the same, even if their corporate goal at one time had been to do no evil.
We'll end with the iconic line from the Who, adjusted for monopolies:
Meet the new monopoly. [Behaves the] Same as the old monoply
Before I become that which I blog about...I'll end this post.
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