Despite the usual provocative tone (the only good reason to keep coming back reading their stuff, after all :-)), this hit where it hurts, and gives a name to that queasy feeling one may get these days, if trying to work anywhere near the tubes of the intarweb: hostile strategies engrossed into marketing.

On that point, Noogle is no different from the other teletubbies. Whether Noogle is evil or not (or will be, or won't be) seems more and more irrelevant, as it's becoming quite hard to tell the difference between evil and not. Let's be concrete: what do evil do that Noogle doesn't? Collect your personal data and profile you? Lock-you down to a no-alternative situation by crushing concurrence? Feed you up with advertisements until it gets to your stomach? Suddenly storm entire business lines? Sounds a bit like Tinky Winky from the good ol' days, right? And after all, it doesn't seem to disturb people anymore.

Or did it actually disturbed anyone?

Or is this actually disturbing in any way?

Back to marketing. "Open-Source" these days seems to be just another marketing argument meant to keep the sheep flocking. It's pretty remarkable that there now exist T-shirt-fans-grade individuals who actually choose a software based on the single-fact it is open-source (and what other criteria could they have? They usually understand nix, not only about what actually makes a good software, but also about what makes a software the best tool for the given situation) - just like other people would pick one because they like the logo.

Interestingly, that part of the (vast and varied) open-source supporters crowd is often quite contemptuous to the I-dig-the-logo-I-pick-that-one users, making them much more unlikely to actually grow-up one day - at least the logo-lovers admit that they just don't know better.

Don't miss the point: I do love, support, contribute to and use a lot of (good) open-source softwares, in a professional environment, and if I have to interact closely with the software in question (either developing with it, or on top of it, or having to directly temper with the way it works while relying on it). As a "john doe" user on the other hand, I'm growing more and more indifferent.

Concretely, what good does it do me to have Noogle stamp my phone firmware "open-source"? It's quite unlikely I'll ever verify it is, unlikely I'll recompile it from source and flash the stuff (well, yeah, maybe on a very bored Sunday), unlikely I'll ever read the source (well... :-)), and unlikely either that would prevent Noogle from sucking out infos about me while I'm using it.

Furthermore, it's also unlikely that FOSS sticker will magically make it a good platform to develop with, or make the Noogle company suddenly developers friendly (that last point being the corollary of the Register article). And I'm not saying having it close-source would make the situation any better...

Funny how the web aged fast. Funny how rearguard disputes took the best over assessing actual virtues of things, and funny how marketing predated most of the (admittedly weak) meaning there was in the start, trumping people into thinking there was actually something philosophical, vitally important to fight for, about an ecosystem that for most of it is entirely void of any interest.

Hey??? wait! Choose Noo-Noo FOSS marketing or Tinky-Winky crap, that's your right, but you can't say the whole show is just debilitating!

Precisely :-)