[codr4]

Do you know what the best predictor of future behavior is? They're acting all nice and friendly right now, wasn't always like that and there's no reason to assume it always will be. Even the catholic church is pretty chill these days, but give them enough power and they'll have people burning at stakes in no time.

[vezycash]

If you became supreme leader of your country, you'll get power drunk in no time. And it's not just you. It's everyone. Power corrupts people. Absolute power corrupts absolutely!

Remember how developers shunned Windows Phone and paid lip service to firefox os, and everything else apart from IOS and android?

Well, you can see how the power is surely corrupting Google. If you don't see it now, give it time. But it's even too late right now.

No amount of bitching will make Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and other "big bullies" play nice. What will? Strong, credible competitive threats.

You think Intel processors are expensive? Without AMD Intel processors would cost 4x as much. How much battery life would Intel PCs have without ARM? In fact, I assure you that without AMD, ARM would also be dead because Intel would have simply forbidden their partners from using ARM - the same way Google discourages top android manufacturers from using android forks.

About ur catholic reference - there's only one reason why Catholic churches are "pretty chill these days." And that's competition. New protestant churches are sprouting like grasses everywhere - competition has diluted the power of the church.

Competition is the key to niceness. Just look at the behavior of US ISPs.

[codr4]

Mostly agree...

The reason it's not all about power/competition is that corruption is very easy to get into your system; be that individual, corporate or otherwise; and tricky as hell to weed out. Once you've been there and done that, the bar is set lower for relapse.