I believe they use Facebook's open graph API to scrape data. Facebook has been known to shut down access when you're taking too much information too fast without notifying them (as in the case of Twitter and Ping), but I imagine Greplin will take the time to notify Facebook of their intentions when before this becomes an issue.
I'd love to go, but it seems kind of pricey - did anyone go last year? And if you did, did you think it was worth it? (Not including the benefit of the free phone, which I don't think they'll do again.)
I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want. No lock-ins, no harm to the user.
Assuming you were buying Windows because you wanted Windows for some unrelated reason, or buying a computer with Windows, then you also got IE, but you were free to run other browsers.
How is it being closed source a meaningful distinction?
Free is not, and never has been, a defense to antitrust. Indeed, free offerings are generally considered very good evidence of antitrust: the company at issue is abusing its market power in one market to increase its market power in another market in non-competitive ways (i.e., by using money earned from a separate market to undermine the target market through under-priced goods). The obvious worry is that the products will stop being free (or so cheap) once the company has achieved sufficient market control.
It does not matter what the end user can do, antitrust focuses on what the alleged monopolist is doing.
Also, choice is not a defense to antitrust under the Sherman Act. That's a common misconception among non-lawyers. Choice is only weak evidence, at best, that the an alleged monopolist's activities are not anti-competitive.
If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful.
Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I see they have added many of them).
It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain Chrome.
Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode.
Wow, I thought I was just being shy, but I've been adhering to a similar strategy my whole life when joining a new group: stay back, let the group welcome you in instead of forcing yourself into the group.
I also find that befriending single members of the group outside of the normal group environment works well in gaining some legitimacy in the group. After friending one person, you just apply the transitive property of friendship a couple time and hey! you've got a ton of new friends.
I think the point of the article is that it isn't "obvious to everyone that it's quite saturated" (at least not for me). We are bombarded with iPhone success stories, and he's just pointing out it's not all rainbows and roses on the iPhone side of the field.
