This post was originally shared on Medium in 2016. With all the anti-trust action currently happening in both the US and Europe, it’s still quite relevant. In some ways, things have not progressed very much at all!

Given the things that Google *didn’*t say in their response, I wonder if they agree? Contrary to some commentators, I think what they do goes beyond playing hardball. I’ve no idea whether that’s illegal but they’re certainly not being nice to their “partners.”

How does switching email hosts disable your Bluetooth headphones? Read on to find out.

As many people did recently, I got The Email from Google telling me that my Apps for Domains (Legacy) account is going away and that I should either pay up or move away.

I’m not averse to paying. I use email a lot and I have my own domain, so I appreciate that I’m not a typical consumer. But I do object to paying Google because it feels like they’re double-dipping: both data mining my information and billing me for the service¹.

If you follow any iOS technology blogs you might have seen this recent scandal:

If you bought the app on Google Play (even if you cancelled the order) I have your email address, your suburb, and in many instances your full name.

This, they say, is bad because this is not what happens with Apple’s App Store.

However, I don’t think Google are doing anything weird here, and I say this as someone who is not a fan of Android. The commercial relationship between developers and Apple is different from the relationship between Google and developers¹.

Eric Schmidt says Google is the new Microsoft and it’s winning the war against Apple. I think he’s missing some perspective.

One of the key things that Steve Jobs realised when he returned to Apple in the late nineties was that the industry is not necessarily a zero sum game.

“We have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”

Imagine the scene…

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic.

Recall that I have an iPhone app called Yummy. It has, or rather had, a website called YummyApp.com. Last year I formed a company called Wandle Software and since then have been merging my various web “properties.” The website moved over to wandlesoftware.com earlier this year, email was the last thing that needed transferring.

My email is hosted using Google Apps — Gmail but without the gmail.com email address if you’ve not heard of it. What I wanted to do was move yummyapp.com from being a “proper” domain to what Google refer to as a domain alias for wandlesoftware.com.

I’ve been playing around with Google+ more-or-less since it launched, but I’m not sold on it yet. After a bit of thought, I think it’s because there’s a fundamental disconnect between the kinds of behaviour that it encourages and the kinds of behaviour that it’s actually good at. Or maybe I’m just using it wrong. Either way, I’ll explain my reasoning here.

First, I should describe my frame of reference. I use both Twitter and Facebook, but I like the former much more.

• Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them – “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”
• The Problem With Online Ads – This is why I tend to buy apps I like, even those with free versions. I prefer being a customer to being a target for advertisers.

• Turnabout is fair play – “This is so wonderfully, evilly devious. Superficially, it seems to support creationist methods—but what it actually is is a grand reductio ad absurdam.”
• Google’s Business Model – Who is the customer and what is the product? (via @daringfireball)
• Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’ – “Biophilia is the Icelandic singer’s new project – the word means ’love of living things’ – and promises to push the envelope so far you’ll need the Hubble telescope to see it.”

• Enough Is Enough – “The whole [Lodsys] thing is nuts. I can’t understand why our goverment allows this shit to go on. "
• Android App Removals Cast Doubt on Google’s ‘Openness’ – “It’s certainly more open than Apple’s platform. But really, that’s like being a taller midget.”

• Realism in UI Design – “The more realistic something is, the harder it is to figure out the meaning.”
• Jan. 19, 1983: Apple Gets Graphic With Lisa – And without the Lisa there wouldn’t have been the Mac…
• Googlephone No Match for Kafkaesque Carriers – Steven Levy finds that mobile (cell) carriers are all evil… I wish this was an isolated problem but it seems to happen everywhere. Does anyone actually like their provider?