Green politics, Copyright Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Corporation is trying to buy Yahoo Incorporated. If it succeeds, it will own email service to about half of North American progressive activists. Due to progressives' inexplicable preference for Yahoo Groups, it will own most electronic forums for and about progressive organizing.
Microsoft already owns Hotmail.com, MSN.com, and Live.com. Yahoo owns Yahoo Mail. Due to outsourcing by consumer entertainment companies Yahoo also owns most email service under domains including sbcglobal.net, rogers.com, ameritech.net, and dozens of others. Roughly half the addresses subscribed to mailing lists on my servers are under that list. That fraction is fairly typical. After the merger, Microsoft will own nearly half the email addresses in North America. That will put it in a position to start making subtle changes to the format of email messages, and give it the leverage to take control of the public email system.
Yahoo also owns Yahoo Groups, formerly Egroups, which is by far the most popular domain for hosting electronic mailing lists.
Chances are your Green local's mailing list is on Yahoo Groups. Likewise whatever local issue groups you work with. Why? Because they're really easy to set up, and because you didn't read the fine print you thought they were "free."
Public corporations don't give things away for free. Broadcast television gives away programming to get you to watch commercials. You're not the customer, you're the product! The advertiser is the customer.
Yahoo bought Egroups during the Internet boom as a quick and easy way to buy "content" and "mindshare." It holds a copyright on everything anybody ever posted to a Yahoogroups list. It owns your Yahoo profile and the rosters of your lists. It gets to mine and sell that data. It gets to terminate your service without notice and without recourse. And it could start charging for the service next week. Have you backed up your Yahoogroups message archive? Could you if you wanted to? What would be the impact on your organization if one day its Yahoogroup disappeared?
Now go through the previous paragraph, and replace "Yahoo" with "Microsoft." Does your organization do anything Microsoft might not like? What makes you think your list will survive if Microsoft buys Yahoo?
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Something you might be interested in is that the Green Party of England and Wales are holding their conference at the moment and a left field magazine has a group blog from there (Red Pepper) at http://greendespatches.blogspot.com - thought you might like to know about that :)
At least, as I understand it. From what I have heard/read, at least one of Google's catch phrases is "Don't be evil." I think that Cameron has pointed to at least one instance where Google should not be trusted to not be evil.
Here is another:
World’s Biggest Server Farm to be Built in India by Google
April 1st, 2007
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=10372
Mumbai, India (AP) - A massive “googlebyte” server farm is being built in a remote corner of India, according to sources familiar with the project. The project is being financed by Silicon Valley giant Google, Inc. If completed on schedule in 2010, “[the server farm] will increase the total amount of installed computer storage capacity in the world by several orders of magnitude,” according to industry analyst Mark Larfey of BuildingStorage.com.
A googlebyte is the largest possible measurement of storage capacity. It is based on the number googol, which is a 10 followed by one hundred zeros. It represents several quintillion times the capacity of the largest current installations of around one petabyte (or one billion megabytes).
“To put this in perspective,” Larfey says, “if each byte of data stored in a googlebyte were the size of a grain of sand, then this server farm would be a thousand times the size of the Sahara Desert. If those grains of sand were laid end to end, they would stretch from the earth to the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
A senior engineer familiar with the project says the googlebyte farm is being built near the small village Lirpagar, in southern India’s Sloofayad region, an area that has to date not benefited from recent growth in the Indian IT sector. The server farm is so massive, it will require the construction of three separate nuclear power plants in southern India to provide electricity to power and cool it, sources say.
Google management could not be reached for comment about the project or its anticipated cost. But sources say the estimated cost are in the $1.8 trillion range, equal to more than twice the entire current GDP of India.
Google has developed other server farms in various locations, “but nothing even close to this scale,” Larfey said. Construction of the googlebyte farm is slated to begin the first of April.
Google eyes Malaysia for next base
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Google-eyes-Malaysia-for-next-...
29 January 2008
US search-engine giant Google is interested in setting up a base in Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says.
"They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia. It will be a big boost for our ICT industry," Abdullah told Malaysian journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"I was told that Malaysians formed the highest group of Google users in Southeast Asia," Abdullah said according to The Star daily.
Earlier reports in Kuala Lumpur said Google was looking at Malaysia, India or Vietnam to establish the world's biggest server farm - a cluster of powerful computers used to store data.
Malaysia has ambitions of being a global technology player. It launched its Multimedia Super Corridor from scratch a decade ago as Malaysia's answer to California's Silicon Valley.
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Did you note the date on the article you linked to?
One was dated in 2007, one more in 2008. Are you under the impression that Google has changed their plans? Nuclear power plants, even in the third world, don't get built in a weekend.
I believe we all should do what we can to avoid contributing to evil, at least as we see it. I believe it's evil to split atoms to boil water, and if Google has plans to depend on three nuclear power stations to operate this facility, I think it appropriate to refuse to use their services. A personal choice.
Maybe I am missing something. esteban, what is your deeper point. I feel like I am missing something.
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It was the date, April first.
If this were real, we'd be hearing a lot more about it.
I'll check in with the person who sent the info to me. It came from an active anti-nuke group I am a member of, and I didn't take notice of the April 1st date.
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Watch this video.
Even though it isn't in English, most of the interviews are, so you will get the idea.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2541917426353772775
Greens support decentralization for a reason. Google does not.
A for-profit company heavily surveilling and profiling users is not
going to be part of the solution to the world's problems? Greens
will not be shocked to learn that the answer is "no."