vendor lock-in

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vendor lock-in in not a phrase you usually associate with Google, right?

well, you're half-right, half-wrong... let me explain in a moment, bear with me.

(btw, this will be a though post to write, as you know, English is not my native tongue)

while you get some courage to read the rest of this post, here's an exercise for you, get me an email account from say... Gmail web support team.

Google has built a very big company around a simple idea, first create a search service that started to crawl the Internet, gathering info, while providing it a free service to all. then, after a lot of data has been collected, they started to monetise the search results, along with text ads.

but seriously, what's running behind all this technology? it's no secret, Google runs on Linux, but not any Linux, it's their own interpretation of what a Linux distribution should be. to be fair and honest they modify the kernel and other components to suit their own needs. they have scalability issues, shared load and some other related stuff, when you run what is now called a \"cloud service computing\".

that in it self is not really bad, hundreds of companies allready modify GPL'd stuff all the time, problem is when the changes aren't given back to the community, that is called along other things a GPL violation.

while Google doesn't do exactly that per-se, it does some very strange mumbo jumbo.

now make a quick introspection, imagine life without Google and its services, I'll give you ten minutes...

see how hard life would be?

you got used to have a faster better email service with GMail then you have with hotmail or yahoo, so you got hooked.

you got used to read, process and share all your documents with Google Docs, so you got hooked.

you search for anything with Google, Bing or Yahoo, but somehow, it sucks less with Google, so you got hooked.

so you are essentially hooked with Google. while not really a lock-in, you are tied-in to a range of services, that while free, makes you depend on them for almost everything. and they keep expanding to other areas, like the so-hyped Nexus One.

and to finish Cylon style, remember this: They Have a Plan!

p.s. and I bet you couldn't find any email contact from the gmail web support team, I guess there isn't any since it is all run by little green elfs...

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