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by ocdtrekkie 4082 days ago
It's not really "astroturf"ing when FairSearch prominently displays that it's an organization owned by Microsoft on their about page: http://www.fairsearch.org/about/

(Meanwhile, Google goes out of their way to hide their ownership of the Open Handset Alliance, burying the first mention of their name on like the third page of members.)
1 comments
cromwellian 4082 days ago
Jake, is that you? (Jake Weisz made an almost identical assertion on G+) Do you not understand the concept of alphabetic ordering?

Do you really believe Google is trying to hide their relationship to the OHA? The OHA was announced and formed on Day 1 of the Android release (http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html)

No one out there is under any illusion that Google didn't put together and lead this consortium. What else would they do? You make an OS, one that is free of charge and open, and you need hardware and software partners onboard, the only way to do that is to adopt some venue for collaboration.

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ocdtrekkie 4082 days ago
Also, I would hardly consider the OHA's MADA a "venue for collaboration". A venue for control, sure. Collaboration, no.
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cromwellian 4082 days ago
Have you attended any OHA meetings? You're making quite a lot of unbacked up assertions.

Microsoft for years ran many working groups for hardware partners, for example, the Microsoft groups for DirectX which allowed NVidia, AMD, et al, to influence and collborate on common specs. Microsoft "led" the discussion, but NVidia and AMD were clearly able to influence the specs because the API had to be rationalized around real, existing, and upcoming hardware designs in the pipeline.

You have a habit to attributing negative and conspiratorial agendas to everything.

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ocdtrekkie 4082 days ago
I'd love to attend an OHA meeting! I'm sure Google's going to open that up. Oh, wait, the OHA is somewhere around as secretive as the NSA. Although at least the NSA can claim it's trying to protect people. Google's just trying to cover their dirty laundry.

That's actually one of the things I'm really hoping for out of these cases. A judge that won't care about your non-disclosure crud and will post that stuff in open court.

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ocdtrekkie 4082 days ago
Oh, hey. Thought I recognized the name, Ray. :)

But yes, they are. Look at the front page of the OHA site, Google is not named. Nor are they named in the OHA's Overview, like it's about page. You have to go into Members, and then Software Companies, and on that page, four pages deep, Google puts itself as the sixth name down. Bit shifty.

Furthermore, while all other Google websites link directly to Google's terms of service, the OHA site puts a stub page in between, rather than linking directly to it, as would be standard par for the course.

Google takes exceptional measures to distance themselves from control of the OHA, which they most certainly have.

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