What is it about us, the collective human conscious that would always try to help out the needy. We are geared to make the effort, go that extra mile, just to pull the small ones out of the path of the monsters. Whilst this sort of altruistic behaviour is commendable, there is often a subconscious spill over of the same in all our day to day activities.
At the outset I would like to clarify that I in no way disdain people for what their belief systems are. In fact I am also governed by similar forces, but I am merely trying to bring into notice the peculiarities that we exhibit under duress that make us human.
Everybody loves to hate the “Empire”. By that I obviously mean Microsoft. The Redmond giant has been the target of a lot of flak since the 1980s. The libations run from it being anti-competitive with its “embrace, extend and extinguish” policy to joining Trusted Computing Platform (TCPA). It has also gained wide notoriety for promoting Digital Rights Management (DRM) and total cost of ownership. To say the least, the fact that its two flagship products, office suite and the operating system are so overly priced in comparision to their counterparts, irks people even more.
As a windows user for a very long time, I know what it feels to be an outsider in the OS segment. The products, hardware, software, everything in fact gets built around windows and all other platforms come later. It was actually the rise of Firefox and other platform independent solutions that finally made me choose Linux (I use Ubuntu). However, I still run a dual boot system. There are programs that I need that are windows only and any other replacement just does not cut it for me (I am considering virtualisation though).
My move towards Linux had very little to do with the cost aspect. I was just tired of the incremental hardware demands that an OS upgrade from Microsoft would necessitate along with the incompatibility issues I would have had to face. I wanted to spend my 2 GB RAM for the work I did, rather than invest it in the very functioning of a bloated OS. So you get the drift.
People like to be in charge of their Internet, their music, their video management. Nobody wants a big brother dictating what they want to do. So we strive to find replacements, to become more open and thus rightly criticise the heavy handedness that made us notice the little ones in the first place.
But what about Google? Oh come on, almost everybody loves Google. Life without Google would be impossible. The company's unofficial slogan goes, “Don't be Evil”. However, whilst the search giant was once a company to look up to, unscathed in its glory, the pie chart is closing in on it. It has been touted as the search-startup killer and has been under criticism for its vagueness about the privacy of personal information, copyright, censorship and discontinuation of services. From the much maligned “cookie” to even going against a feature as useful as an Autosave in Gmail (which I am thankful for every day), the trend is clear. Google is not a Stanford University project anymore. It rakes in multi billion dollar worth of revenues and the public now has come to perceive it as an observer and not a comrade. Whilst Google's criticism is often over shadowed by the open and fair policies that the company promotes bottom-line is it has become big enough for people to be uncomfortable.
I just elaborated on the change of public perceptions with time and growth (of two companies). Our mechanisms shut off the good that something did after a critical strength has been reached by that entity, and the more a company rises the greater is its potential to be pulled down into a quagmire of constant berating.
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