The moral of the story of the Facebook patent and all the recent news fromApple and Google: Tech companies are no better or worse than big companies in other industries.
They are all about keeping the stock price high, growing at the expense of their competitors, and the role of users is the same as customers in other industries, you’re a source of revenue.
via Scripting News: Big change in the tech world.
Dave has a number of good points in this article. He points out that the tech industry is becoming no different from the airline, insurance, and health care industries: large and motivated strictly by preserving profit and stock price. Users are merely a source of revenue, customer service falls away to a bare minimum, and you are locked in to their services.
Is there anything you can do? Sure. Get control of your data and services. Find providers that don’t lock you in and capture your data, pay them for their services. Keep local back ups on media you own. Remember, all those digital photo, videos, blog posts, emails, assorted documents, are your personal property. Treat them like you would physical artifacts.