Thursday 26 September 2013

Google v Bing - World War Three?

Is it in Syria? No, well is it in Africa somewhere? No, well where on Earth could it possibly be? Actually it is all taking place on your computer.

This is a war between Bing and Google, and despite any agreements, or even laws that might have been passed, this battle still manages to cause me a considerable amount of grief. You see, if you want to download todays most up to date version of Acrobat, Google try to stuff you with a Spanish copy of Google Chrome. And, if you want an additional browser version of Bing - translation and text enlargement - it automatically collapses your handy relationship with Google and the interaction with your email. Oh what fun! But each time this happens, it is off to the IT specialist and that is called spending money!

I am much like any computer user, and I am not technically savvy. But I live all day on my computer and I need it for practically everything I do. In a world where even telephones are rarely used, the web is where we live and how we communicate anything of any substance to one another. So why are we becoming battlefield gun fodder for these two Commercial Giants, when we are in fact supposed to be their b****y Valued Customers?

It has long been agreed that by joining the techno revolution, we would all loose at least some of our freedoms. That is the world today - on which account the global intrusion into our lives is obviously becoming more and more - but what about our freedom to choose? By becoming a victim to these two powerful organizations, loosing our basic freedom - to purchase what we need and not what they want us to have - is surely being usurped? For some reason it seems to me, that these power games are no longer just commercial, but now there is also a political aspect to it as well.

It is also quite surprising to discover how people have learnt to accept these intrusions into their lives, as being good for them - think of being frisked at airports, and stopped by thick policeman to be asked where are you going? ' I don't know, where do you suggest?'

In our increasingly homogenized world, are we going to let these geeks terrorize us and cause us problems just so one of them might possibly win the internet war, or are we going to do something about it? Step up the first internet freedom fighter!

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