4. How You May Not Use the Service.
In using this service, you may not:…

use the service in a way that harms us or our advertisers, affiliates, resellers, distributors and/or vendors, or any customer of ours or our advertisers, affiliates, resellers, distributors and/or vendors

The use of “harm” there is an extremely broad prohibition. Imagine I was an unhappy customer of one of Microsoft’s advertisers and I made a short film showing the problems with a product, edited it with Movie Maker, and put it up on YouTube. Publicising bad news about a faulty product? That’d harm the firm in the usual meanings of the word (and I can’t see a legal provision in the license that means ‘harm’ has a much more specific and narrow meaning, but if someone knows otherwise…).

It is hard to imagine Microsoft enforcing that provision and, in their defence, it’s a pretty sure thing that it is a provision that is actually regularly broken day in, day out without Microsoft trying to enforce it.

Which leaves the question, what’s the point? It’s a legal power that if enforced would generate huge controversy for Microsoft and involve it in all sorts of actions that the firm clearly doesn’t actually want to get in to. It also doesn’t do a good job of PR for Microsoft to see that they are willing to stick out such draconian licenses, whether or not they actually intend to use them.

Google dominates the search engine market, both in the UK and internationally. Although there are some countries where a local search service has the lead (e.g. Russia), overall Google is undoubtedly number one.

The world however is full of companies which used to be massive, even dominant, but fell from grace. Remember the days when Novell dominated the server market? Or watch Blade Runner and look at the brand names used back then, firms so big that it was easy to believe the future would include them. Names such as Pan-Am.

So could Google too fall from grace? And if so how?

Google gets a case of commercial madness

No matter how big the company, a domineering chief with a kooky business plan can bring it to its knees. Think RBS. Think Marconi. It may be very much a long shot that Google will commit commercial suicide in this way, but it is not completely unthinkable. (And the highly implausible has a nasty habit of happening now and again. After all, who until a few weeks ago would have thought that one wrong character in one file could break Google’s search engines for a few hours?).

Google gets regulated

The repeated skirmishes between Microsoft and regulators haven’t brought Microsoft to its knees. They have cost the firm in fines, legal costs and reputation, but Microsoft is still one of the commercially most successful companies in the history of the IT industry.

Other firms have though been dismembered by regulatory action; IBM comes to mind most notably.

Could Google ever face such a fate? Its increasing dominance of online advertising markets could leave it open to anti-trust / anti-monopoly action, especially if the economic downturn and resulting advertising squeeze makes its advertising rivals turn up the pressure for intervention.

Google loses the privacy battle

Much of Google technical and commercial success relies on gathering bucket loads of data from us. Lots and lots and lots. And the putting that data to work to improve its services even further and to tie us in to them.

But what if there is a move to give people much more control over what is done with their data? This could cause serious damage to the Google way, and it appears to be the line of attack that Microsoft is taking.

Microsoft has been signing up some of the best privacy talent in the business to work for it. All done in the name of helping to improve its own services of course, but if Microsoft can get public and regulatory opinion on its side, we could see a move towards much greater individual control over data that could seriously damage Google.

Someone does a better search engine than Google

There have been, and are, lots of new search services which try to find an approach that Google doesn’t cover, such as clustering search results around themes or providing visual representations of the results.

This is an area where Google can feel confident, because not only is it their own core area of expertise, but Google has the huge financial resources to buy or replicate any ideas other people have which take off.

Moreover, Google is  now so deeply embedded into people’s habits and systems, that even if a better search engine came along (and several around at the moment argue that they are better), Google has a huge incumbency advantage. To illustrate this, imagine if you invented a superior taste for a cola drink this weekend. What would you actually then start doing on Monday morning to topple Coke or Pepsi? It’s not trivial task to knock an incumbent off their perch, even online.

We stop needing Google

A bigger risk, though, is that people move to using search services built into other services which are beyond Google. This is what was happening with YouTube – until Google purchased it. YouTube has become the second most popular search site on the internet, after Google itself. It may only return video results, but its content is so popular that people are often happy to only be searching that, leaving the rest of the internet alone.

With YouTube, Google’s money snuffled out the threat. But why shouldn’t search migrate in future to another site stuffed full of content? And if that other site, having captured people’s attention with the ability to search its own content, started adding in search results from the wider internet…

Consider social networks, which now get more internet traffic in the UK than search engines.

Or consider Microsoft’s move to turn its extremely widespread Office software suite into a web-based software service. Microsoft’s own search engine has failed to dent Google’s dominance, but imagine a world where Microsoft migrates millions of users around the world to using Office online, making its Office services some of the most heavily used sites on the internet. Drop a search box on to them and it’d be time to start selling Google stock.

There are good reasons to think that each of these futures might not happen. Just as Microsoft has largely successfully seen off wave after wave of competitors, Google might too. But even if the odds of any one method of downfall are low, for Google to continue to dominate, it has to be the case that none of them happens – and that’s a much less likely prospect.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Really interesting health discussion: Sandy Walkington doesn’t got for hyperbole in his description of a public meeting addressed by Norman Lamb but do read through to the end – which has an excellent account of the problems facing anyone trying to come up with policy for the NHS.
• Snow joke: Residents demand grit bins as Labour stop debate: Haringey councillor Richard Wilson is on the case to get more grit bins so residents can do more to take care of their own streets during future snow falls. Haringey Labour’s response? Waffle. (Words rather than food, that is.)

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

‘Sarah’s Law’ sex offender alert scheme may be expanded

Parents across England and Wales could be told about sex offenders who may come into contact with their children.

The government is considering rolling out the scheme, currently being trialled in Southampton, Warwickshire, north Cambridgeshire and Stockton…

Under the measures, police will be able to tell families if someone with access to a child has convictions or has been previously suspected of abuse. (BBC)

Prosecutors close on DPJ’s linchpin

In a saga that threatens to undermine the prospects for Japan’s government, the biggest beast in the country’s politics is at bay, surrounded by media critics and a quieter but more dangerous pack of prosecutors interrogating his aides and poring over his financial affairs.

For Ichiro Ozawa, the mastermind of the ruling Democratic party’s dramatic rise to power last year, the investigation into a 2004 land purchase by his fund-raising organisation is the latest instalment in a turbulent career.

For the DPJ, the much-leaked inquiry spells a public relations disaster that is fuelling doubts about its ability to deliver on the promises of change. Those pledges powered the party to victory in August’s general election in the world’s second largest economy. (FT)

Cycle lane of the week

A masterpiece, spotted by Camden councillor Alexis Rowell.

Sunday Bonus

It may nominally be a Microsoft advert, but the firm and its products only feature at the end. It’s really a great caricature of how advertisers have traditionally behaved:

(Also on YouTube here)

[It] enables you to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features.

Want to hazard a guess?

Perhaps it’s a new social network?

Or something to do with email?

Or a new mobile phone?

Or…

(In this case, it’s Microsoft Sharepoint and gee, they do love their technology jargon and hiding away any hint of simple, plain English description of what it actually does and why.)

The news that Habbo Hotel, the extremely popular social network for teenagers, is launching a tie-up with Facebook is not only significant in itself but a sign of things to come.

It’s immediate significance is in ease and convenience: Facebook users will be able to use Habbo Hotel without having to register separately, users of both will be able to find their Facebook friends in Habbo Hotel and actions in the latter will be shared back with the former.

Beyond the immediate convenience, this tie-up signifies two bigger trends. First, for many people the story involves one familiar firm – Facebook – and one they may well not have heard of before.

Habbo Hotel’s popularity yet obscurity derives from the fact that it is very popular – with a very defined, niche audience (teenagers).  There is more to social networking that Facebook and Twitter, particularly when looking at specific audiences.

Second, hand in hand with enthusiasm for new services over the last few years have been complaints about information and management overload. Tying together different services in ways that avoid the need for separate registration and separate creation of networks of contacts has been with us for some time – as with the one Google Account permitting access to a range of different Google services.

As this trend develops, the battle to be the dominant hub will intensify. Facebook is staking out its ground, but Google, Microsoft and others want to be there too.

But oh my goodness, let’s take a look at the Navteq press release in its full glory.

First, the headline:

NAVTEQ Announces Global Technology Agreement

Yup, technology company has done something with technology. No hint as to why I should be interested in what it’s done as you might expect from a headline. But on we plough.

Advancements In Collection Capabilities To Benefit From New Relationship With Microsoft

Collect more of what? Where? Why? Oh well, at least it names Microsoft. Some progress there.

On to the first paragraph:

NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise solutions, today announced a new technology agreement which will allow NAVTEQ to more rapidly deploy innovative collection capabilities and accelerate the collection, creation and storage of 3D map data and visuals.

Ah, nearly a clue there. Not exactly plain English. And not sure why telling me who NAVTEQ is (leading company? you don’t say! any company say it’s not leading?) comes as more important than telling me what the news is. But the news is “innovative” (you don’t say! any company say it’s not innovative?).

And on it goes, turgid paragraph after turgid paragraph. I particular like this one:

With this new relationship NAVTEQ elevates its alliance with a trusted collaborator to help advance important 3D collection technologies which, when integrated into NAVTEQ’s broader proprietary data collection process, will support the capture of a range of advanced navigable map features at an exceptional level of accuracy and scale.

Cool, whizzy, useful, interesting, lovely data reduced to a collection of tech news release cliches.

We’ve already seen Rupert Murdoch’s desire to take most of his news content away from Google’s reach and potentially put it within the reach of just those who pay direct or those who use Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Last week’s Yahoo/Facebook tie-up is fundamentally the same: enrich the data outside of Google’s reach. Their deal involves sharing data between the two services for people who are users of both. So, for example, someone could log in to Yahoo and see activity from their Facebook friends then and there – without any need to go to the Facebook site.

For Facebook it potentially brings it many new users in the form of current Yahoo users. For Yahoo, the Facebook integration gives people a reason to use their email service over that from Google and thereby takes data away from Google’s reach. Google can serve adverts to its Gmail customers, but can’t if they take their email custom to Yahoo instead.

With Yahoo also linking up with Microsoft to use Bing to power its searches, there is a Yahoo/Facebook/Microsoft triumverate forming which could have enough strength to take data away from Google and survive.

That would have major implications across many areas of the internet, but crucially for the media it would also strengthen Rupert Murdoch’s own drive to get people (or Microsoft) paying to use his news content.

Apple Inc. on Friday approved for sale a Spanish-language eBook version of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, complete with a swastika application icon.

A day later, presumably due to the blogosphere uproar, the $1.99 offering disappeared from the Apple’s Application Store…

9to5Mac, a Apple Intelligence site, questioned Apple Inc.’s policy, saying, “We know the App Store won’t sell overt erotica – even eBooks carrying the ancient love manual, the Kama Sutra, have been banned from the store – so we’re really, really keen to know how come the company approved a Spanish App containing Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, complete with a swastika logo.”

You can read more here, but generally views seem to fall in to various combinations of:

(a) No way should Apple sell copies of Mein Kampf.

(b) Of course Apple should be able to sell the book.

(c) Apple should have noticed that it’s illegal to sell the book in some countries. They should be above the law.

(d) It all goes to show how absurd Apple’s approval process is if they let through Mein Kampf but don’t let through other applications.

(e) Allow it, ban it, juggling with the law and be inconsistent? Apple’s turning in to Microsoft.

What do you think?

Screenshots taken from Microsoft’s English site and Microsoft’s Polish site. As you can see from the full versions on those sites, the person’s hand is the same in both and it is the first (US) one that looks to be the genuine photo.

Hat-tip: Engadget

UPDATE: Microsoft have now apologised: “We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image”
UPDATE 2: Here’s the story from the BBC.

The answer is rather buried away, so here’s a note to help me remember in future and in case anyone else finds it useful:

Go to View / Arrange By / Current View / Customize Current View
Go to Automatic Formatting
It’s then the Sensitivity setting you need to select for your rule

Next question: why did Microsoft decide to bury this fairly obvious customisation so deep, and in particular call it “Sensitivity” rather than, oooh, “Private”, which is after all what the Calendar item screen calls it?