Google buys Net phone firm
p2pnet news | product news:- Google has been roundly and consistently criticised by human rights groups everywhere for its censorship of Chinese Net users.
At the beginning of 2006 came speculation that, with the fact Google already owns a large telecom interconnection facility in New York in the background, it’s contemplating GoogleNet of its own.
It was the only company to completely fail an important six-month investigation into privacy practices employed by key Net-based companies.
With Microsoft and Yahoo, it’s accused of helping to spread the “virus of internet repression” by Amnesty International, and privacy advocates are deeply concerned because, thanks to in-house technologies and companies it owns or has working arrangements with, it has direct and indirect access to data at various levels of privacy, with and without the knowledge of people who use services it owns, or is associated with.
It recently decided it was time for it to enter the world political arena at government level, and now it’s acquired GrandCentral Communications, a web-based voice communications company which gives users the ability to manage all their phones and phone numbers through one interface.
“You get a single phone number that forwards to all of your phones, giving you one number for life,” it says.
According to Google, the acquisition, “fits well into Google’s efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users,” also giving it access to existing and future user information.
Before Google came along, GrandCentral users could upload sound files for their own ring back tones.
But no longer. Instead, users will have to, “choose from a selection of licensed sound files made available within the GrandCentral service,” say the two companies.
Will there be a fee associated with this, do you think?
Also See:
GoogleNet – Google wants its very own Net, February 3, 2006
privacy practices – Google flunks major privacy study, June 11, 2007
internet repression – Censorship threatens Google profits, June 25, 2007
world political arena – Google, world political force, June 129, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
