So much for “don’t be evil” – this guy [ link dead, no archive1 ] got locked out of Gmail because he uses Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension that lets him add content and functionality to web pages that isn’t provided by the authors.
In a world governed by contracts – like ULAs and SLAs – there isn’t any flexibility between people. A contract is an instrument meant to bound the relationship, but it turns out that we (or rather lawyers) are very very good at writing them to be precise and that exactness strips away the humanity of the relationship. It also gives ample opportunities to fuck the other guy over minutia, which isn’t exactly keeping in the spirit of community or civilization.
It isn’t exactly keeping in the spirit of Google’s well publicized “don’t be evil” mantra either. What Google is learning – whether they want to or not – is that business is about profit, and profit making is an essentially amoral act. The Market pretty much doesn’t care if you are evil, only if you are profitable. And so, for the sake of profits, Google is being exact with it’s terms of service, and by being exact, they are being something to users of Firefox and Greasemonkey that appears more evil than righteous in the dogma of the Church of Intertwingularity.
- rootburn: Lockdown in sector 4! — http://www.rootburn.com/2005/06/lockdown-in-sector-4.html ↩︎