You know, I can groan and roll my eyes at guys like Steve Jobs, who, for all his corp-o-speak is at least pretty blatant in his desires to produce a controlled software ecosystem rife with hipster-friendly products wherein Apple makes a big killing… and I can pat the boys in Redmond on the proverbial digital head for all the cute catch-up work they do, making sure the Interwebs are safe for greybeards and AOL refugees who love to forward their grandsons them there 9-11 conspiracy emails, all the while extracting oodles of dough from their customers’ pockets in shelling them over-priced, counterintuitive software… and I can even shake my fist in vain at Mark Zuckerberg for sugar-coating how he’s been pulling down Facebook’s garden walls month-after-month… but Eric Schmidt and Google ought to be downright ashamed of their behavior lately. Eric Schmidt is actively lobbying to destroy the very system that made Google a benevolent empire to begin with, and he’s taking us all down with the ship. A free and open information commons, a vibrant and democratized networked information economy is essential to the future of free peoples everywhere. It seems, upon conquering ‘Free‘, Schmidt and his board of directors have gotten a taste of a new kind of teat from which to suckle, and they really like their new, extra cash-flow. But this isn’t entirely Verizon’s doing, though they are infecting a search giant accustomed to unlimited reproduction with the wonders of scarcity. Ultimately, Google must take a deep breath, step back, and think about what they’re doing – and own up to this unfettered attempt to ruin the Intertubes (Ted Stevens, RIP) and find a way to not be so evil again. (Granted, corporations will always be a little bit evil, but Mr. Transparency himself, Schmidt, could be a little more honest about, right?). We shouldn’t, and we can’t, fall for this gigantic “wink and a smile“. Unfortunately, our congress critters WILL fall for it, while the ‘Murr-khun People kick back in blissful ignorance, scarfing down tasty nachos and watching So You Think You Can Dance.
And it’s no wonder that Schmidt says anonymity is going to die. Our new online identification protocols (brought to you by Google™) will be perfect for accessing the tier-level we registered for with our MSO when we log in.
I honestly thought we could depend on benevolent empire Google to be the last bastion of hope for network neutrality. Boy, was I wrong! I guess that’s why they call them empires.
Angry Mattso is Angry. Google, you’re kicked out of the band. Go play with all your other sell-out friends somewhere else.
Context for the uninitiated:
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