Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: google

  • Google Street View logs WiFi networks, MAC addresses

    Google Street View logs WiFi networks, MAC addresses

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Google’s roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it’s got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users’ unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along. Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he’s "horrified" by the…

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  • Obama’s got a Google problem

    Obama’s got a Google problem

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Obama has created an exquisite problem by hiring so many senior executives from Google – some of the Oompa Loompas don’t seem to realise they no longer work for the company. Now a Congressman has called for an enquiry. The issue was made apparent when a trail of correspondence by administration official Andrew McLaughlin was…

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  • Google knew YouTube ‘did evil’ – but bought it anyway

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Do no evil? Google execs knew YouTube was in the wrong, but swallowed hard and bought it anyway, emails disclosed to a US court show. In 2006 execs at the Chocolate Factory were aware that the startup was less than wholesome, describing it as a “rogue enabler of content theft” whose “business model is completely…

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  • Google to mobile phone industry: ‘Fuck you very much!’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    "It’s Google’s autistic approach to relationships," one senior phone exec told me this week. "They don’t know what hurt they’re doing, and they don’t care." It’s nothing personal, guys. Today, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, who thought they were Google’s closest partners, will begin to understand how, say, copyright holders have…

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  • Google abandons Search

    Google abandons Search

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    It’s hard to explain to people new to the web since 2004 – the Digg kids – the effect that Google had on the internet at the turn of the decade. They can’t conceive the Before and the After. Google was miraculous, and so much better than the competition that they effectively gave up trying…

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  • Google’s vanity OS is Microsoft’s dream

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    No one will be happier than Microsoft about Google’s vanity venture to market computers with a Google-brand OS. It gives us the illusion of competition without seriously troubling either business, although both will obligingly huff and puff about how serious they are about this new, phoney OS war. Since both of these giants are permanently…

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