Google has completely jumped the shark and is now being controlled by mindless business drones that will drive the company into the ground in just a few years.

Google has completely jumped the shark and is now being controlled by mindless business drones that will drive the company into the ground in just a few years. For your consideration: They allow a patent troll to potentially set a legal precedent for what constitutes a big part of their app infrastructure. They probably figured that its cheaper to build around the patent and let this one developer eat shit. They are killing net neutrality by saying mobile networks are somehow special and don't need it, a very obvious move to bolster Android and their telco relationships. They are now apparently paying Orange in France for mobile traffic related to services like YouTube [1], again trading short term business sense for eventually losing the net neutrality fight and turning the whole internet into many walled gardens at the hands of ISPs. They have settled with news websites in France [2] to avert legal repercussions by a government that is essentially being blackmailed by press. 60 millions is pocket change for them, but the precedent this sets will endanger their business in many countries where press is dying and abusing their power to force governments to pass laws that will benefit their old business models very much to the detriment of Google. They are facing the same thing in Germany right now. News websites by the old printing press garde are the antithesis to the web. They do not understand hyperlinks, they do not understand the importance of giving access to raw material in a Wikileaks era. This move by Google perpetuates their dying business model and damages its own products like News or YouTube, which is thriving as an alternative to the old publisher model in media and music. They let media companies patrol their data (and search rankings) and remove content by automatically generated requests, no questions asked, at exponentially growing scale [3]. They pretend to be under legal obligations to do so, but intentionally muddle the process to the point where if your content is contended, they give you no recourse under DMCA [4]. Sorry, I'm somewhat consumed by rage after reading the comments of the UniLoc persona non grata. 1: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipkAQJJNgj69HxLbKppH80WjUQJg http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipkAQJJNg... 2: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipwetvKBf0rT6uQw7YbPOaGoOeag?docId=CNG.1c0d4a8b5d27b9690ad122821fc8b6ac.201 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipwetvKBf... 3: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/ 4: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/youtube-universal-megaupload/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/youtube-universal-m... Universal said Google’s private system doesn’t count as an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and thus it was immune from legal liability.