Google needs more criticism. Both constructive and hostile. It's odd that anyone thinks otherwise. But I find this discussion odd. When a newspaper or government creates a position of Ombudsman, the typical reason is that they find themselves the target of withering criticism, in a bad place, and want to earn back some trust. An Ombudsman, after all, starts out in a very tough, corrupted position. Their salary is paid for by the folks they are asked to criticize. Without a very strong external source of hostility, an Ombudsman *cannot* be effective. I think if you talk to any practicing Ombudsman, you will find that they agree. (I'd be interested if they didn't, too.) It would do Google a great deal of good to be under the threat of serious anti-trust action. They are (IMO) a monopoly in their market, and if that became settled law, there are a whole set of rules they must follow as a result. Surely their corporate counsel understand this, and while they will publicly fight such a decision because it does hamper their potential returns to stockholders, the anti-trust laws are the law of the land for a reason. That some of the IP correspondents are fearful that they will be harmed by Google if they say such things is troubling. It reflects the fear that US society is operating under today - a "lawless Department of Justice" may not be a correct description of the state of things, but the actions of the DoJ and many practicing lawyers are troubling. The goal of many actions seems to be to attack popular dissent against actions of corporations and the government by using the law as a weapon to harm dissenters, rather than using law as a tool of justice. Perhaps I'm foolish too. I have friends who work at Google, just as I have friends who work at Microsoft. Just because they are friends I don't think they should be "above the law", and just because they have created great wealth for us all and also for their investors, I don't think that gives them a free pass to do whatever they damn please in the future. So I think Lauren is wimping out in calling for an Ombudsman. Let Google decide that it needs one, as a result of proper public criticism of its actions. Perhaps rather than appointing an Ombudsman, they will actually "do the right thing" which would be far better than merely creating a whitewashing process. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE