Last time I said the monopoly of Google is not going to do the internet any good and many people ganged on me in Google Plus for publicly making that statement. I also received advices like, stop using Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Android, Google Plus and Google Search etc. I myself wanted to be proven wrong but, sadly, my worst fear is materialising.
You many have heard that strangely and suddenly Windows 8 phone users couldn’t access Google Maps from their browser and was getting redirected to Google homepage. Google didn’t accept that they have anything to do with it. Microsoft cried foul play and I chose to observe just because every hour there is a foul play allegation and lawsuits amongst the tech giants.
Google dominance. Image Courtesy: seorefugee.com
This morning I received a link however, which showed how Google intentionally blocked the Windows 8 phone users from accessing the Maps. The reason? Well, in short, Google doesn’t think IE8 is good enough to display the map. And “As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches” as Google told The Next Web. That is so kind of you Google, but was there any notification to the poor users, who are, sadly, no match of your technical wizardry? No, they were left stranded. Poor souls didn’t know whether to blame MS or Google or themselves for their naivety or mishandling of a hi-tech phone.
This is why I raised the point of complete dominance previously. If we had two equally competent Map providers, Google and Doodle (for say), the users could have easily used Doodle and enjoyed their journey. But, when Google failed (intentionally, I should add) they didn’t know what to do, isn’t this the exact aspect to judge monopolistic market?
Dear Googlers may disagree, like they did not so amicably last time, but this is not a good news for the internet which has the motto of being fair to all.
