Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla & Google behind the scenes payola

[Michael Crute <mcrute@gmail.com>]

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Hey guys just to put this all in perspective the guy who wrote that silly 
little article is a nutcase that is waging some weird holy war against 
google. His other sites are:

http://www.google-watch.org/
http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/

So check those out first and that will squash what little credibility that 
article started out with. This guy is really of his rocker.

-Mike

On 8/10/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> 
> Billy Holmes schreef:
> > Paul M Foster wrote:
> >
> >> I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this. Google pays Mozilla
> >> to make Google the default search engine for Firefox. Mozilla could
> >> have made it Yahoo or someone else, but Google paid them and that's
> >> bad? This
> >
> >
> > Some people have this idea that making money from OSS is wrong. Perhaps
> > if they gave Mozilla a bunch of cows and goats it would be better...
> 
> Aside from the previously-made point that no one has actually "said"
> that Mozilla is "making money" from this transaction (if I download and
> burn a Linux CD and sell such CDs to others who cannot due to lack of
> broadband, asking only the cost of the blank CD and shipping, I am not
> "making money"; I am only recouping my costs), has anyone actually
> "proven" that Google's position as default search engine is because
> Google 'paid' Mozilla for that position?
> 
> I mean, Google is arguably the best search engine, so it would have
> presumably been the default anyway. Heaven knows that if it was a
> question of money, Microsoft has enough to throw around that if that was
> the only determining factor, the default would likely be MSN search.
> 
> It does happen that you do me an honor (making my search engine the
> default), and I show my appreciation for that by doing you a favor
> (donating some money to your project).
> 
> We call it 'professional courtesy', and it's not the same as 'payola',
> although it can look that way to the extremely suspicious.
> 
> Even if Google did buy their position, if in some burst of insanity I
> decided that AltaVista was better, I could change my default to AltaVista.
> 
> So Mozilla still gets their money (and I do want them to have some
> money, btw), and I still get the default search engine I want.
> 
> Of course I have 50 search engines available in my search box, so
> 'default search engine' is not as meaningful in my case as it might be
> to others who don't feel the need to use the appropriate specific engine
> for each individual search, as I do.
> 
> Holly
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 


-- 
________________________________
Michael E. Crute
Software Developer
SoftGroup Development Corporation

"In a world without walls and fences, who needs windows and gates?"

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