I was reading through Schumpeter’s blog on The Economist and I came across something quite interesting.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is the world’s biggest producer of computers. Recently with the stiff competition  of hardware in the IT field HP decided to switch battles. Instead of spending more money to keep up with innovative, high-tech hardware HP spent $10.3 billion on a software firm, Autonomy. The software market provides larger profits and Autonomy has really targeted a direct market. Autonomy produces software that sifts through unstructured data such as email, and documents. This software is very useful for large businesses and corporations.

This move is bold. HP had just spent $1.2 billion to expand to the highly competitive but profitable cell phone market, by buying palm. They had little luck with the expansion but the OS system designed for the phones is widely recognized for quality and performance. HP hopes to keep the OS but if unable it will sell it along with the rest of their assets. This will be a huge change to the computer industry and will give another company to claim the top the title selling computer brand.

Google, the fourth largest internet company according to Nielsen NetRatings, has always been under scrutiny for invading on privacy issues. They have been accused of collecting Wi-Fi data, location information, and password and user name data. Google even admitted to collecting information through open Wi-Fi networks but retorted that it was a mistake and it was something Google didn’t even mean to do.

With the recent release of Google Plus many people are sceptical about trusting Google with their information. Google already collects data on what we search and best hones their advertisements to effectively target users interested in the products those advertisers selling, but how far will be too far? When they start collecting information about our status updates? When you get in argument with your boss and Google looks to profit by giving the news to your old workplace that desperately wants you back? This privacy issue has been an ethical problem since the start-up of Google and may have inhibited some of their success, but if Google didn’t steal our information than it most likely wouldn’t be the super power that it is today on the internet. So the question you must ask yourself; Google or privacy?

Articles Used:

 http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/google_was_spying_PdKPHjbMely4YXLm5dupEL 

http://www.internetworldstats.com/top10.htm