The best things in life are so completely not free, you can’t even imagine
I just read that “The best things in life are free”. What does that even mean?
Apply that to open source for a second. Imagine someone justifying open source by saying, “the best things in life are free”. Well that’s not true! How much time and effort have people put into making that open source application work? I would say that it cost them quite a lot.
Or Google. We use that for free. I must search for things a hundred times a day, its my first port of call, and everything in the whole world that draws breath loves it. Even cats, and fleas, and paramecia, and viruses. Every organism in the biosphere loves Google, and that is good and just, and so may it continue until the end of days. I am so much of a rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth fan of Gmail, I have had to stop myself, on a number of occasions, from writing to the people who had that whole lawsuit over the name to tell them what horrible little insects they are.
If you’re reading, people who set up the original Gmail, you are horrible little insects. Nasty! Dirty! Check it out, I made a picture of you:
Anyway, my point is that even Google, with its incalculably massive contribution to humanity, isn’t free. We pay for it in adverts every time we search, or read our Gmail, or visit a website that uses AdSense.
Nothing in life worth having can be “free”, by definition. That’s illogical nonsense and we must discredit the idea wherever we find it! Also, we must discredit the horrible little insects who sued Google. The end.
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Hahaha, I really like that picture for some reason. Possibly because of the “Also, let’s spread disease.”
Very apt. And hilarious. A+, would read again.
Haha, I’m glad you liked it :D
But do you note… The insect didn’t use an apostrophe in “let’s” — I wanted to imply that he was illiterate as well as stupid!
As a little aside, I don’t know why the insects came out all faded and gray but the speech bubbles are black. Weird, no?
First of all… you got a point with the “no free” thing… a point, not the whole picture. I just say this because I want to make a confession about a more important issue:
I thoroughly dislike Google! (…the heresy!)
The search engine is OK… but I get better results with Live or Yahoo (your mileage may vary)
The center of my disliking of Google is Adsense. These ads are the most annoying thing in the whole universe… I hate them so much that now I just block them in every computer in which I can do so (Given my job: a lot). I remember having a Gmail account and I changed to Yahoo Plus because it was so annoying to read ads that applied to the personal things I was reading in my mail. Yes, I know that nobody really “reads the mail” but is the feeling of your e-mail being “judged” that counts.
Also, if I use Google, I get a lot of payed results that if they weren’t payed would not be at the top of the page… so much for the “democracy of the web” principle of that particular search engine.
Gmail… is an excellent e-mail account (if Spartan) but the adsense thing completely ruined the experience to me (And some other friends are of the same mind).
And now it turns out that if you use their phishing filter in Firefox they actually tell you in the contract thing you are supposed to agree to use the service that they will totally sell you usage information to third parties.
And also… they bought YouTube!… mmmhh… well, not so sure that that is something I can complain about… yet.
Hmm…. I liked Jason’s reply better ;)
Google doesn’t sell placing, actually — you can’t buy a place at the top. I don’t think any of the popular search engines do. If they did, they wouldn’t be popular. You can be sure of that.
And Google adverts, surprise surprise, pretty revolutionary. They were the first company to place relevant adverts on websites. So instead of just sticking any old ad on any old page, they check the page before they place the ad. Plus they’re generally text-based adverts, which is much less annoying than images.
I too block adverts, generally, but you have to remember that the money they generate supports websites you might enjoy. Without the adverts those sites may not exist.