Google, Apple and Facebook; all in the naughty corner...
Well what a week it's been. I have to say ladies
and gents there are times when I struggle to think of what to write about and
then there are times when there's such a deluge of web related shenanigans I
hardly know what to do with myself...
So it's been a few weeks since I talked about
Apple; I came, I saw, I ranted, and then I finally moved onto another subject.
But in the last few days, the technology giants, have, once again hit the
headlines for all the wrong reasons. Apparently it wasn't enough to park 74
billion US dollars offshore, losing the US economy 17 billion dollars just at
the time when it was most needed. No, no, Apple are now following the same
business model on the shores of our beloved British Isles; using Ireland as the
tax haven to end all tax havens and losing HMRC £570 million of taxable income
in the process. How? Apparently this is all 'legal' (Ireland has a significantly lower rate of corporation tax, don’t you know), whether it’s
ethical is another question...
Sadly Facebook and Google are following suite, (I
know, I know – I lauded Google in particular in last week’s column, I hang my
head in shame). Is it a wonder then that Google’s share price dropped yesterday
by 20%? Is it really due to a drop in advertising (people waking up to click
fraud – perchance?). The timing may have been a blunder (a printing company
employed by the search engine mistakenly let a press release out of the bag; no
doubt there are some knuckles being rapped down at that company). Facebook in
particular paid only £238,000 of corporation tax last year in the UK on
estimated revenues of £175 million. Hmph, is all I have to say about that. Oh and one post-script; if these technology
giants just paid their taxes in full like the good honest citizens they target,
their profits might just be even higher than present; for companies motivated
by greed, that’s got to be an incentive...
________________
On another note – yes there are always several...
This week brought to light an ingenious new app (soon to be released to IPhone
users and already available on Android); say hello to Cate; the app that allows
you to create a secret log of calls and text messages, perfect for keeping
prying eyes away from the sensitive data on your smartphone. Now I know it
might initially seem like a James Bond Gizmo at the service of adulterous
husbands and wives worldwide, but there is an alternative use that might be
more useful; privacy (for individuals and government organisations). In the
age where sites scour the web aggregating information from a plethora of
sources, privacy is starting to look quite attractive. Which brings me to my
third and final point:
What on earth is going on across the web? Sites
such as Pipl, Peepl, Zoominfo and the French version; Yatedo are crawling the
Internet and aggregating free information on everyone on the planet and then
creating a profile based on whatever they can find. Since some of this material
is old cached pages you’ve tried your darnest to erase, this can prove quite
frustrating to say the least. Google yourself now, to see if you’ve fallen pray
to the grave diggers of the web – and if so, take action accordingly, by
requesting for the profile to be removed, and then contacting Google to have
the cached page wiped at webmaster tools.
And remember – the power of the dollar vote; it's quite literally all we have.
This is Cybergirl, signing off.
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