It appears that Google has caught M$ in industrial espionage or theft of search results. Google set up a sting by creating nonsensical search results and verified that Bing copied them. Google’s Terms of Service include
“5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.”

M$ is all Gung-Ho to defend intellectual property but here they are caught, publically, stealing intellectual property, search results.

This should hurt M$ in many ways:

• remind the public that M$ is evil,
• Google can likely sue them quite seriously. Search is big business,
• remind regulators that M$ does not take law seriously,
• inform the public that M$ has inferior tech to Google and that M$ knows this,
• could cause a restatement of earning for several years and
• inform potential customers of cloudy services that M$ lacks integrity.

Just when I thought M$ was aware of its limitations, they surprise me by smash-and-grab on Main Street. I hope this matter goes to court so Groklaw can index the details of discovery.

Android 3 is having a coming-out party tomorrow. Having achieved 22% share of tablet PCs with Android 2, a smart phone release, Android’s share should go critical with the availability of Android 3. Several manufacturers have delayed releasing new product until Android 3 was final and one has released new product with 2 with an upgrade to 3 promised.

That other OS cannot match this performance, releasing three releases developed in a year…

Whether you call 2011 The Year of ARM or The Year of Android, this will be a remarkable change in how IT is done globally. There is something in the market for everyone and everyone has a choice, doing things the old way or doing things a better way. I like small cheap computers using GNU/Linux. Others like small expensive computers using GNU/Linux or large expensive computers using that other OS. It is good to have choice. By the end of 2011, I expect the crater made by Android and ARM to have widely penetrated all form-factors of IT. ARM is already shipping more units per quarter than Wintel is shipping. The only question remains is to sort them out. CE will hold a few places but few enjoy really old software.

UPDATE ARM is looking at taking a real share of servers and desktops in the next few years. see TheRegister.

Servers are expected to grow in units shipped and desktops are expected to stabilize at ~150 million units per annum. With the move to thin clients and cloud computing there will be a need for ARM’s price, efficiency, and small size in those spaces. ARM has hundreds of licensees and a bunch of them are aiming to crank out servers and desktops.

I like the portability of tablet PCs but hate the touch screen idea. Here is the alternative for me, a PC in a keyboard, complete with a display where the numeric keypad used to be…
see http://www.itechnews.net/tag/keyboard-pc/

The full-sized keyboard makes this a better tool for those who can and do type on the web or locally. That’s most of us, folks. The one I particularly like in specs is a small cheap computer, $99 including GNU/Linux. Does it get any better than that? Norhtec does not include the display but that’s what monitors are for.

That other OS? That’s $51 more. I like it. You can buy Norhtech’s Gecko Surfboard here. It’s a bit of bait-and-switch. The $99 price apparently is for bulk orders. Specs are 5 watts, 512 MB and 1gHz x86 CPU. That will run GNU/Linux smoothly. XP SP3 not so much. Why pay more for less? Go with GNU/Linux.