Stern response I have faced the giant and won. That much is clear from your letters related to my incisive analysis last week, exploring Google's ills.

Only sadists really like this company, while the rest of us approach it with caution. Do we need another choke point on the flow information? I don't think so. Having Google dominate the browser is just like Microsoft dominating the desktop. Let's get an open source search engine going right now.

I could go on about this all day and night and then into tomorrow and probably the day after. But let's turn to your letters instead.

Brilliant!

I haven't enjoyed a technology piece so much for many years. You are set to become the LJK Setright of IT Journalism.... Peter

No, Peter. I'm just the Old Otto. You are right about the brilliance claim though.

Interesting.... I guess you're what we in the UK call a "stirrer", one of the most important sociological types if you ask me. Nice work, enjoy your stuff enormously, thanks

Keith Carter

Well, Keith, that is what my dear wife Gertrude called me before her untimely death. Thanks for the kind words and shame on you for dredging up such terrible memories.

thank you! I thought that I was the only person who thought that the grubby fingers of google were starting to get a little too personal (i'm not really into that fetish). The entire geek/techy world seems to be hanging on the every word and product as google as the next technological revolution. Personally, I'm getting sick of it, and i'm glad someone else is.

All Hail to Google!! Zeig Heil!!

Ben Lambert

Please leave the Germans out of the Google debate.

Let's face it : The comparison of gas and google dont hold a second.

Gas prices hurt everyone bad at the moment. At 3 bucks a gallon .. what the oil indistry is doing is suck up the economy . Trucking industry , transport cars , jets, heating .. we have no choice but to bend and pay up. The gas we all consume is not a luxury .. it's a must. It's unfortunately holding us all by the tweeties and they are squeezing hard. Google aint ! .. Im not in any way defending either side .. but if you dont like google dont use it .. Gas may be another story .... Im just really eager to see the results of people stopping using gas ! Back to the stone age guys .

Have fun :) Im enjoying your column

Ric Hebert

I had a Google man come to the door, and he certainly said something about my tweeties. So don't speak too soon, Ric.

You attack Google ... an upstart company ... and ignore Microsoft's real global monopoly.

You sound just like a Microsoft shill.

Lloyd Silverberg

Do us all a favor, Lloyd, and improve your reading comprehension skills. For $800, I'll go back through the story and highlight the bits that address how Microsoft is the problem Google is becoming.

For a while now, I have been getting more and more disgusted with the ever-failing quality of tech journalism. It seems like everyone just has the same non-thinking tripe to pass around. Tech sites have become such a constant regurgitation of this moronic crap, that I was just about to stop reading anything.

Then I came across your article "Big Google is much worse than Big Oil," and I had hope again! I am so glad to see there is someone out there with something interesting to say, and who has better things to do than just repeat the same "Google does no evil" crap.

Lee Lloyd

Yeah, you'll need to read CNET for the objective reporting on how wonderful Google is.

Followed your SkyCar link, and saw that:

Skycar Update It is exciting to see the test nacelle as it goes together. There is a big advantage when one re-creates an already tested product. The experience from our earlier nacelle tests taught us:

5. Using methanol as a fuel is toxic to eyes, lungs and skin (forms formaldehyde).

Yes, they actually had to find that out from an earlier test. Hilarious! Aravind

No comment.

It's amazing how loud the reader can hear the voice of an author seething through the literal text of the written word, especially when the writer has an extreme bitter gripe. Your bitterness, sir, supercedes the article you are writing. I highly disagree with your statement. The difference between Google and the Big Oil Company is Google has the ability to push an e-commerce business revenue and profit into the stratosphere polyfold as many businesses have atested to.

This it does for a very inexpensive price, low enough for even the smallest businesses to afford. On the other hand, big oil companies know that it has the entire economy at its knees and takes full advantage of this setting unreasonable prices in production and raw materials to the point where many companies who depend on this overpriced oil fall victim to lagging profits and revenues. You're inability to see this due to your bitterness toward Google. Do us all a favor and check your blinders at the door next time.

Jeff Daniels

I'll check my blinders if you pull your head out of . . . . Wait, wait. The editors told me to be nicer.

Good point.

Oh, for Pete's sake.

Do you REALLY think the U.S. Senate is cracking down on big oil? Have you considered the possibility that these "hearings" might only be a big show that is intended to prop up the sagging popularity of the Republican party, conveniently right around election day?

Talk is cheap. I'll believe it if and when they actually *do* something.

Jude Suszko

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You are funny. Can't take you seriously however. Sounds like big oil has tainted your brain. I'm so sick of paying what a big oil company wants this week or this month or this year I'mk close to getting rid of everything that requires oil to run and just ride my Segway! At least Google peddles harmless things and doesn't use up limited resources. There's plenty of tripe available, as witnessed by your column and others.

Good luck with getting your brain adjusted. I just wouldn't try oiling it anymore. Probably needs some time to dry out.

James Perdue

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Hmmm... You appear to be a complete and utter wanker. First, those oil companies are already loaded. They don't need the money. Rather than investing the money they do have in to finding ways of creating renewable energy they prefer to pollute the planet as much as possible (to ensure that even the richest people, and all their descendents - along with the rest of the planet - will eventually die in a thick cloud of america's finest smog), they much prefer to get the US puppet government to go invading countries all over the place. A bit like a modern day Crusades - only this time as well as getting to kill, imprison or enslave vast numbers of non-Christians, you also get a shit load of oil out of the bargain and best of all it'll be sold in $ rather than Euros!

The US government bitch slapping oil companies for making too much money is merely a limp and very transparent gesture to raise public support for the Bush (another word for Twat) administration while behind the scenes the likes of Haliburton (ooh, I wonder how many of these politicians own shares in that?) rake in billions getting the soverign state they just invaded to pay for repairs to the damage that they effectively caused. Second, open source stuff is rather important if you must know. I guess as you just sit in your desert bunker wanking over pictures of Bill G (probably because Steve Ballmer pays you to or threatens to throw a chair at you), you never actually got round to setting up a software company in this day and age where it's almost impossible to compete with huge monopolies like Microsoft.

Open Source gives start-ups a fighting chance at actually getting on some form of level footing and having a chance to see if we can do any better. If Google is the next Mircosoft, then I say great! At least they have open API's!

And what the fuck's with that picture in the article? I feel all dirty and raped after seeing it. At least put up a picture of some fine naked frippet for us to gork at while reading your fesering tripe excuse for a story*. As a final thought, take a big sledge hammer and hit yourself over the head repeatedly with it. If that doesn't knock some sense in to you, at least you'll die in a pool of your own blood and brain cells. Oh, sorry, just blood - there's obviously no brain matter in that cranium/cavity/cavern/vacuum of yours.

If you were German, you'd be the sort of gimp that thinks David Hasslehof's music videos are great. Weirdo!

* Like a really bad movie, your stories need to be read in full just because it's human nature to hope that things can't get any better. Unlike a bad movie, we don't ponder afterwards "that was crap, but I actually enjoyed watching it" - we just think "Hmmm... You appear to be a complete and utter wanker."

Now go back to the top of this article and recursievely read for the rest of your life (assuming you are to incompetant to beat yourself round the head with a really big hammer).

Oh, I fogot to mention...

You have no friends. You ooze puss from every pore. You smell of poo. Guy

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Bravo, with lots of applause, and a great big LOL on the STDoogle.

Shane Kent

Thank you all for appreciating my genius. ®

Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.