“[Google] is promising to silo Fitbit data away from Google's ad business.”
Here is a chance for FitBit users to become the product.
Didn’t Google also promise that Nest would remain completely independent? Until later, of course, when they announced they were no longer going to honor that promise?
It seems that all these mega companies have to do is promise the regulatory panels that they will do such and such, then completely ignore said promise after the acquisition has been approved.
This will be a tough one for Google to renege on since it's under a formal agreement with the EU as I understand it.
There'll just be "accidental" data sharing à la their "accidental" street view password collecting.
LOL. The "bad Google" moment over a decade ago?
LOL. It's like listening to T**** supporters keep moving the goalposts to defend their arguments. Corporate culture is real and doesn't change easily.
Biden begins with a B, but yes, other than that you are correct.
Can you imagine what would have happened if it was the reverse situation in the 2000 election? There's a reason for the democratic process and burden of proof.
“[Google] is promising to silo Fitbit data away from Google's ad business.”
Here is a chance for FitBit users to become the product.
Didn’t Google also promise that Nest would remain completely independent? Until later, of course, when they announced they were no longer going to honor that promise?
It seems that all these mega companies have to do is promise the regulatory panels that they will do such and such, then completely ignore said promise after the acquisition has been approved.
This will be a tough one for Google to renege on since it's under a formal agreement with the EU as I understand it.
If they managed to find enough loopholes in the Sun/Oracle Java licensing agreement to clone and own Java without repercussions, I'm sure they'll have no problem doing the same with this agreement.
Off-topic, but there was no "agreement" that Google broke with Sun in order to use Java.
Sure there was. If you wanted to bundle Java on your devices (and get the benefits of the years of work Sun put into building the Java developer community), you had to pay a per-device licensing fee. That was the licensing agreement Sun had with many other device manufacturers at the time. Google didn't want to pay that fee for Android devices, and so they found a way to weasel around the license by cloning Java using open source technologies and a questionably legal JVM (Dalvik). Sun had a special Java license for the open source community, which didn't apply to Google's situation, but they found a way to take advantage of it anyway.
The Sun CEO at the time would disagree, as evidenced by his congratulatory welcome to Google's Android.
Regardless of how you twist things around, what Google has done with Java licensing, font licensing, video codec licensing, and more, is bad for the tech industry. Their corporate culture is one where they have no respect for the work done by others. They continue to clone and own technology instead of paying licensing fees or purchasing the companies which own the technology. I could understand it from a small startup company, but Google is big enough to pay for licenses instead of weaselling around them. I have no doubt they'll continue to do this with any sort of agreements they encounter.
If anyone thinks that Google is NOT going to [cough] [cough] get hold of the Fitbit data then just ask yourself what other reason would they (google) have for buying Fitbit?
Quote: "This deal has always been about devices, not data, and we’ve been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users’ privacy. We worked with global regulators on an approach which safeguards consumers’ privacy expectations, including a series of binding commitments that confirm Fitbit users’ health and wellness data won’t be used for Google ads and this data will be separated from other Google ads data."
Comments
Can you imagine what would have happened if it was the reverse situation in the 2000 election? There's a reason for the democratic process and burden of proof.
Regardless of how you twist things around, what Google has done with Java licensing, font licensing, video codec licensing, and more, is bad for the tech industry. Their corporate culture is one where they have no respect for the work done by others. They continue to clone and own technology instead of paying licensing fees or purchasing the companies which own the technology. I could understand it from a small startup company, but Google is big enough to pay for licenses instead of weaselling around them. I have no doubt they'll continue to do this with any sort of agreements they encounter.
"Don't be evil"