Peace on earth, everyone.

I’ve been doing this for 10 years, believe it or not, although I missed my actual anniversary by four days. (You can read my very first blog post, complete with reference to “clueless Ziff-Davis vice-presidents,” here.)

Back in December 2002, I thought I was impossibly late to the blogging party. But it turns out this business actually had some staying power.

I shifted most of my energy over to ZDNet in 2006, but I still keep this place alive and am grateful for every reader and every commenter over the past decade.

Former FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, now corporate lawyer for Microsoft (among other clients), wrote this op-ed that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times:

Google is not just a “search engine company,” or an “online services company,” or a publisher, or an advertising platform. At its core, it’s a data collection company.

Its “market” is data by, from and about consumers — you, that is. And in that realm, its role is so dominant as to be overwhelming, and scary. Data is the engine of online markets and has become, indeed, a new asset class.

[…]

I’ve been concerned about Google’s dominant role in data collection — and the profound privacy concerns it raises — since my time at the F.T.C. When the commission approved Google’s 2007 acquisition of DoubleClick, I dissented — because I was concerned that combining the two companies’ vast troves of consumer information would allow Google, which was largely unchecked by competition, to develop invasive profiles of individuals’ Internet habits.

How dominant is Google?

In March, when Google replaced the more than 60 privacy guidelines that governed its products and services with a single policy, it also moved to consolidate the personal data it collects. The company creates as much data in two days — roughly 5 exabytes — as the world produced from the dawn of humanity until 2003, according to a 2010 statement by Eric Schmidt, the company’s chairman, who later declared that he didn’t “believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable, and recorded by everyone all the time.”

In my own web analytics, referrals from Google search outnumber those from Bing and Yahoo combined by about 20-1, typically. Those are Microsoft-in-the-1990s market shares.

Just a thought, but if you have to write a blog post explaining your terms of service, maybe you should incorporate that exact same explanation into your actual terms of service.

Except that the blog post in question is not so much an explanation as a deflection.

“We do not have plans for anything like this…” is not the same as “We will not do this.”

Likewise, “it is not our intention to sell your photos…” is not the same as “We will not sell your photos.”

Words matter. When language is fuzzy like this, it’s often for a reason.

Techmeme today:

Several hours later:

Yesterday we introduced a new version of our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service that will take effect in thirty days. These two documents help communicate as clearly as possible our relationship with the users of Instagram so you understand how your data will be used, and the rules that govern the thriving and active Instagram community. Since making these changes, we’ve heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean.

[…]

Legal documents are easy to misinterpret.

Yes. Yes, they are.

By the way, George Orwell imagined this:

All members of Oceania must show appropriate enthusiasm during Hate Week as well as the Two Minutes Hate, ensuring that they are very against the opposing party and still very much allied with Big Brother.

About the only thing Orwell got wrong was the year.

Amazon has the best price I’ve seen so far on the retail upgrade package for Windows 8 Pro.

At $49.99, it’s $10 more than Microsoft’s online price for a downloadable copy of Windows 8, which costs $40 until January 31, 2013. But that method has some limitations. If you’re upgrading a 32-bit PC, for example, you’ll get a 32-bit upgrade installer. The only way to acquire a 64-bit installer is to use the download link and product key you receive in your email receipt from a computer running a 64-bit Windows version.

You can order backup disks from Microsoft for an extra $15. That gives you both 32-bit and 64-bit installer media, but you’ll have to wait days or weeks for them to arrive.

The Amazon Windows 8 Pro Upgrade (retail package) costs $5 less and comes with free two-day shipping.

I have no idea how long this price will be in effect. If you are considering an upgrade to Windows 8, this price is about as good as you’ll get.

Disclosure: I make a small commission for every sale through the links on this page. I use those funds to keep this site up and running.

This “review” of the new SkyDrive app for Xbox 360 at Geekwire must be a prank. Perhaps the author meant to submit it to The Onion and got his wires crossed.

The good news: SkyDrive users have full access to all the files, photos, music and videos stored in their free cloud-based account.

The bad news? You can only open the photo and video files.  Your Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs won’t open.  All you see is an indication that the files are there.  There appear to be no Office apps available, not even the rudimentary ones found on the Internet version of SkyDrive.

Because really, the idea that SkyDrive for Xbox is a disaster because you can’t edit Excel spreadsheets on your TV is kind of, well, comical.

Xbox is a gaming and media device. The SkyDrive for Xbox announcement explicitly makes that point:

When we thought about all of the possibilities of introducing SkyDrive to the Xbox 360 environment, there were lots of features we could have tied together but we wanted to focus on the scenarios that people have told us they would find most valuable.

And in classic Microsoft fashion they go on to list three key scenarios: sharing photos and videos, “snap and see” for Windows Phone pictures, and party slide shows. See how Photos and Videos is spotlighted?

The real missing piece, the one that an intelligent reviewer would focus on, is music. That capability is certainly on the way. I can’t wait till I can move my extensive music collection (and photos and videos) to SkyDrive, so I can access them from any device. Including the Xbox 360.

But the idea that I’m going to throw a party and share PDFs with my guests? Or that I’m going to fire up Word and write a blog post using Word from the couch?

Um, no.

Google Chairman Says Android Winning Mobile War With Apple: Bloomberg

Booming demand for Android-based smartphones is helping Google add share at the expense of other software providers, Schmidt said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Android snared 72 percent of the market in the third quarter, while Apple had 14 percent, according to Gartner Inc. Customers are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day, Schmidt said.

“This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple,” he said. “We’re winning that war pretty clearly now.”

Except for the slight detail that Google makes no profits from those Android activations, yeah. it’s exactly the same as Microsoft versus Apple in the 1990s.

Ironically, most of those companies building Android devices are paying Microsoft for the privilege, thanks to patent agreements, with two more signing up this week.

But … winning!

Outside observers don’t seem to have figured out that Microsoft’s Surface hardware is a long-term play. As the company proved with Xbox, it’s willing to spend big money for years to build a market. Analysts who take a superficial or short-term view will focus on the losses. Inside Microsoft, I suspect those are considered investments.

Because the company has refused to discuss its sales expectations in detail or provide hard numbers for unit sales to date, news outlets and analysts have scurried to make up both numbers. The result is predictable, as in this AllThingsD report that speculated (from the flimsiest of rumors and one analyst’s guesstimates) that early demand for Surface is “lousy” and that lack of distribution is “killing the product.”

That criticism is about to change.

As of tomorrow, Microsoft says it is increasing production on the Surface RT and will begin selling the Surface RT in non-Microsoft outlets in the United States, including Staples. Its holiday pop-up stores will remain open into January, with some of them turning into permanent outlets.

And the Surface Pro, which is similar in design to the current model but will run Windows 8, will be available from those outlets as well.

After two months with the Surface RT, I’ve come to appreciate its strengths. More details on that subject at ZDNet in a few days.