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November 1, 2007

How mighty Google is ringing the changes

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Column on the Financial Times comment page

Google is a very big company: its share price broke $700 on Wednesday. It has a market capitalisation of more than $200bn and its revenues are higher than those of AOL, MSN and Yahoo combined. Google has also been known to throw its weight around in a self-interested manner: its attitudes to privacy and copyright infringement are dubious.

But, in the world of mobile phones, Google is an upstart with an agenda that could not only help the company itself but the public as a whole. It wants to break open a closed world built by mobile network operators – particularly those in the US – to protect themselves from competition and consumer choice.

Continue reading this column here. Please post comments below.

3 Responses to “How mighty Google is ringing the changes”

Comments

  1. Dear John,

    I don’t understand your comments ‘against’ Google’s privacy policy where you say, it is “dubious”

    Have you used google products or read it’s privacy policy before becoming coming to such judgment?
    Consumers use it and love it because they feel protected. By the way, their privacy policy is more transparent and not worse than the others including Yahoo & MSN.

    I suppose before you write, you should at least get the facts.

    Best Regards,

    Pradeep

    Posted by: Pradeep Kabra | November 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm | Report this comment
  2. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s new mobile phone software technology could ignite a catalytic reaction in the dysfunctional (at least in the States) mobile phone ecosystem. I’m not sure there are any white knights in this business though: we shouldn’t be so hard on the mobile operators who have to figure out how to make money from their investments, and we shouldn’t be so naive as to think Google’s advertising saturation model will necessarily steer the mobile phone business the right way. I discussed some of this in the recent speech at CTIA which I’ve attached to my recent blog post on
    Will Google be the Catalyst? at www.catalystcode.com.

    Posted by: David S. Evans | November 1st, 2007 at 2:17 pm | Report this comment
  3. Sorry, Pradeep. There was not space in the column to refer back to what I have previously written about Google, copyright infringement and privacy. You can find it at:

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8188a720-387c-11dc-bca9-0000779fd2ac.html

    Of course, you might not agree.

    Posted by: John Gapper | November 2nd, 2007 at 9:12 pm | Report this comment

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