Contacts now works more like the rest of Gmail, so if you know how to use Gmail, now you should automatically feel comfortable in Contacts too

It’s all good stuff, but improving the look and feel of Contacts (as well as Gmail itself) has brought even more light to the disparity that exists between mail, contacts and the Task functionality Google provides.  Keyboard shortcuts, configurable with tags on a full screen  – both GMail and Contacts look really good.  Tasks are still a little pop up with a beyond skinny interface and feature set.  It looks really bad in comparison.

In fact it looks so bad, I don’t believe for a moment that anyone at Google is happy with the red headed step child that pops up in the lower right corner.  When you consider the promise available with a tight integration with the other Google tools, the Task implementation is the biggest untapped opportunity they have.

I’ve said it before, I would love to have a tight GTD oriented task management tool built in to Google that would compare favorably with OmniFocus.  They have everything in hand to produce a killer application.  I’m guessing it already sits on a desktop somewhere waiting for the blessing to be rolled out to the public.

…violating its right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by using a monopoly position to harm competitors, engaging in unfair practices and competition under California law, and committing defamation and libel.

KinderStart operates a web site for parents of children under the age of 7. There’s so much we don’t know yet – but this can’t be good news for Google’s PR folks.

The posts closing paragraph is one we’ll be quoting from in the future:

We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring. What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies. When a party resists an overbroad subpoena, our legal process can be an effective check on such demands and be a protector of our users.

Update: I neglected to explain the major theme of the post in my original discussion here – web masters are paying pennies to individuals on shore and off to crank out what they loosely call “original content”. In fact they are outsourcing the production of crap.

My favorite quote:

In fact, search engines are more like a TV camera crew let loose in the middle of a crowd of rowdy fans after a game. Seeing the camera, everyone acts boorishly and jostles to get in front. The act of observing something changes it.

You just have to love that observation.

But then you read the filings between the two sides in the legal wrangle and you get a different perspective. Google receives the original subpoena on August 25^th, 2005. They receive an extension on responding and do so on October 10^th. Their attorney, Ashok Ramani of the Keker & Van Nest firm, indicates that the original subpoena is defective. The argument is made (repeatedly) that the requests exceed the scope of the authorizing Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Basically, the response reads “You can’t compel us to do something beyond the legal framework you have used as a starting point. As we (for reasons described later) are not inclined to provide you everything, we will only provide what the framework authorizes you to request. Even more telling is Mr. Ramani’s last paragraph:

…Google objects because to comply with the Request could endanger its trade secrets. Dr. Stark’s involvement would require Google to disclose the approximate number of queries it receives on a given day, and some details about how it stores those queries…

Short of figuring out the system by which the airline industry calculates fares, I can’t conceive of anything more complex and convoluted then the confluence of attorneys, statistics and (the simplest leg of the tripod which is this story) the privacy advocates. It’s no wonder story after story is being published by technical press republishing each other’s stories. This stuff is denser then iron.

The fact is, you can spin this story a number of different ways:

1. This is a titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil (you assign whomever you like to each party). Google is resisting the governments inclination to use the search engine data as an extension of it’s own power structure.
2. This is a dispute originating from Google’s corporate culture. They are a very young company which has not had to deal with the Government in the past.
3. This is a clever strategy by Google – waiting until after the other search engines comply to produce the impression that they care about privacy and other search engines do not.
4. Google’s views it’s database as a corporate asset and interpretes the request in that light. You don’t simply give your assets to the government. Taxes yes, assets no.
5. Google’s marketing staff saw the bear trap from a mile away and knew, given the topics on the public’s radar, that any disclosure of anything smelling of individually identifiable bits would trigger a nasty reaction.
6. Google receives so much ad money from the online red light district that disclosing the actual statistics would open them up to attacks from the conservative community

The fact is, now that they have positioned themselves this way publically, they must see it through to it’s natural conclusion. They will eventually accede to the demands but only after they have stood on the shoulders of the other search engines and positioned Google as separate and apart from the pack.

Whether that’s true or not is still a matter of speculation. What is true is that this rumor has legs. Seven days after the fact the IT related web news sources are still reporting on it. What probably produced the original rumor is this page on Google’s web site. It is instructions to users in a test market in San Francisco. Is this intended for a broader audience? I don’t know – but it is fun (evidently) to speculate.

1. What if it’s true? Wouldn’t it be great if you could be wirelessly connected everywhere you went?
2. That people are speculating about this stuff can’t be a good thing for internet service providers. Imagine a world in which your primary source of income is removed. Speculating about it is painful much less seeing the reality. Most of us are not faced with the hard reality that the world is changing so fast that entire markets can be created and eliminated inside of a three year period of time.
3. What fun it must be to be Google. They are in the position now of being able to generate earth shaking rumors with trivial efforts. The ability of Google to generate buzz is pretty much unmatched.
4. How anxious are you to have Google track your every movement across the globe? Big Brother where are you?