"We shoved this product up your ass real hard, but we still failed to compete with Facebook. Today, we are taking the last step: allowing you to choose any name you want. We hope to gain a little bit of Internet karma with this before we become irrelevant."
> Firefly is an American space western drama television series [...] The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship.
> America: Watch out how far you take the bullying
America has enough power and influence to shut down any possible discontent - both within the country and of their minion states in Europe. It's been ruling over EU for many decades now and knows well how to handle "unpopular opinions".
If Snowden didn't leak data on NSA surveillance none of the "internet giants" would care about encryption now. They'd continue cooperating as usual. What they do now is saving face, appearing like privacy heroes. These actions are likely agreed upon with the relevant agencies and designed to calm down the public.
The request by the PRISM companies is just as hilarious as the hearing. A good show for the public to "commemorate" the one-year anniversary of the Snowden leaks.
They have taken an environment of sharing, and turned it into a paranoid world of fear-based strategies. It's not all their fault - people are responsible too, crappy marketing works - so it has to be stripped out. They way they did it was to throw out all the babies with all the bathwater.
I think some inside Google get this already, but there's not much they can do short of AI. I'm sure they're working on it.
Disclaimer: I most likely have the most traffic of everyone here (give or take) - Have lived off Google publisher cheques for 10+ years. I realise what they are doing is damn near impossible, and that they are not 'evil' but probably a bit overwhelmed.
LGBT community has a very strong support network and is a visible target. In case of Rice, her evil-doing is less apparent and diffused. There's no "minority" to protect - everyone is affected - but not in a personal discriminating manner. Wars happen, but some place else. Surveillance happen, but we don't really see it. Hence, public reaction is a lot less emotional.
Consider that Mozilla is a non-profit that relies very much on the community goodwill, while Dropbox is a full-blown for-profit corporation that cares first and foremost about maximizing revenues.
