Thank you for mentioning that. As an ISP owner who competes with cable, dsl, satellite and cell, my biggest obstacle is government regulations. The incumbents get exclusive rights to the resources, so it is almost impossible to compete against them.

If politicians are being bribed how is the government going to help? Seems like a contradiction. The government is part of the problem.

Its probably just a matter of time before they get rid of Picasa, so I am forced to move my albums to G+. And I pay for extra space too!

Hey GOOGLE! Its not the Quantity, its the Quality!

I don't see how it can cost more for me to use GR then Gmail, Calendar, Picasa, G+, Earth, Maps, etc, etc. It's already set up and probably takes very little to maintain. And they get the benefit of my user data across multiple apps and platforms.

I am so tired of companies trying to drive me to be more social. I almost unsubscribed to Wired Magazine because every other article is about facebook, twitter or some other useless social app. I get it already.

Maybe I'll go back to Yahoo...

I agree.
I barely heard anything when Arthur C Clarke, yet I believe he contributed way more to humanity then MJ.

The alleged purpose of the Antitrust laws was to protect competition; that purpose was based on the socialistic fallacy that a free, unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. But, in fact, no coercive monopoly has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. (For a full demonstration of this fact, I refer you to the works of the best economists.)

A "coercive monopoly" is a business concern that can set its prices and production policies independent of the market, with immunity from competition, from the law of supply and demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and stagnant.

The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entryâ"the barring of all competing producers from a given field. This can be accomplished only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or franchises. Without government assistance, it is impossible for a would-be monopolist to set and maintain his prices and production policies independent of the rest of the economy. For if he attempted to set his prices and production at a level that would yield profits to new entrants significantly above those available in other fields, competitors would be sure to invade his industry.

AOL has been nothing but trouble for me. Cox decided to not fix a broken cable trunk for about a month, so I used one of my old AOL "free 700 hour" CD's to sign up.

It was fine and all, but the moment the cable services were up, I decided to cancel my AOL account. The first rep told me, fine - we'll stop charging the account - if you want to start again for 45 days, we'll give the rest of that month free.

Thinking the ads were right and AOL did offer good CS, I forgot about the whole issue. Two weeks later, I got a call from AOL begging me to sign up. I said no - I cancelled because I don't really like AOL's service, and please don't call me again.

The next day I get a call from Michigan asking me to sign up. I reply that I had already asked them to stop calling me, and asked for a name and company.

I got that fine, and was going to report them to the FCC. But, I got busy and forgot. The next day, THE SAME PEOPLE CALLED ME AGAIN, and I just lost it. After yelling at one girl for about 20 minutes, I immediately went to the FCC and reported that I was being harassed by AOL.

Turns out that AOL uses proxy companies to do their calling, and their customer databases aren't always kept up to date. Since they "had no record" of me telling them to not call, there was nothing I could do.

I hate AOL.