I’m part of the problem: I never owned a Kodak digital camera. In fact, I’m not sure if I ever owned a Kodak camera–not counting disposable ones–period.

Still, my instinct upon hearing that Kodak is going to stop making digital cameras (along with video cameras and digital picture frames) was to take the loss personally. Kodak says it wants to license its legendary name to other manufacturers–as Polaroid, Sylvania, and other companies do–but it’s not going to be the same.

Kodak’s decision obviously relates to its recent bankruptcy. It would presumably prefer to be one of the top camera companies and raking in vast profits from the category. But even if the exit stems from financial woes, I’m not so sure that it isn’t, in its own way, a forward-looking move–a sign that Kodak is agile rather than a sign that it’s a failure.

After all, there’s plenty of evidence that camera phones are cutting into the sales and usage of basic, consumer-oriented digital cameras–the very kind that Kodak has focused on for many years. The point-and-shoot business probably isn’t going to grow; it’s going to shrink over time, and the products in it will get more commoditized and less profitable. Maybe it’s better to get out of the market than to continue to be part of the furious race to the bottom.

You can argue that Kodak should have been smart enough to invent the camera phone. You can point out that digital SLRs and other fancier stand-alone cameras–the sort that Kodak chose not to make–are still selling well. Given the situation as it exists, though, I think that Kodak is making the right decision, sad though it may be. And it’s quite possible that other companies that make point-and-shoots may follow its lead over the next few years.

[Art at top of post: Detail from 1965 Kodak ad.]

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone’s contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information are removed.

[snip]

In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the ‘Add Friends’ feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology.

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/path/id403639508?mt=8

Good. (Seems to me, though, that most of the “confusion” here was on the part of Path, not the people who were displeased…)

Good news for Amazon Prime members: Amazon.com has signed a deal with Viacom that gives its Amazon Prime Instant Video service access to a lot more stuff–from Jersey Shore to Dora the Explorer. It now offers more than 15,000 streaming videos to Prime members at no additional charge.

Netflix seems to be shy about disclosing the number of streaming videos it has–its FAQ just says “thousands”–but Roku’s site says it’s “over 20,000″ and I’ve also seen a figure of 25,000 quoted. In either case, Amazon Prime, which started out a year ago with just 5,000 titles, appears to be closing in.

But Amazon still isn’t quite marketing it as a Netflix archival. The video streaming is a freebie for those of us who pay $79 for discounted shipping of physical products, not a standalone service with a standalone price tag. That lets it float under the radar and makes it sound like a bountiful bonus rather than a skimpy selection.

My guess is that at some point, Amazon will start treating Prime Instant Video like it wants to take on Netflix in a seriously manner. That’ll presumably involve offering it at a similar (or lower?) monthly price.

The logical time to do so is when the catalogs have roughly the same quantity of movies and TV shows. I wonder if it’ll happen by the end of this year?

We’re just a few weeks out from Sony’s U.S. PlayStation Vita launch, so now’s a great time to review what it is, how it works, what it’ll cost, what’s under the hood and what you’ll probably need to buy a la carte. Ready, set…

What’s a ‘PS Vita’?

A device formerly known as NGP, or “Next Generation Portable.” Sony announced this successor to its PlayStation Portable dedicated gaming handheld on January 27, 2011 (it had been rumored for months) with that unsightly codename. Six months later at E3 2011, the company revealed the device’s much smoother name would be “PlayStation Vita” (the Latin word vita means “life”).

What’s So Special About It, Design-Wise?

The Vita retains the PlayStation Portable’s hockey-rink-style shape, but it’s slightly wider and taller. That’s to accommodate the super-sized 5-inch, 960 x 544 pixel, OLED capacitive multi-touch screen capable of displaying up to 16.7 million colors. By comparison, the Nintendo 3DS’s top screen is 3.53 inches, the PSP’s screen is 3.8 inches and the Galaxy Nexus smartphone’s screen is 4.65 inches (the only smartphone I’m aware of with a full 5-inch screen today is Samsung’s unreleased Galaxy Note). The spec to pay attention to here is OLED (organic light-emitting diode), which means the Vita doesn’t need a backlight, thus improving contrast ratios and allowing for the display to be housed in a thinner, lighter design (the Vita weighs just 260g — that’s 20g less than the original PSP).

While Sony’s eschewing 3DS-style features like stereoscopic 3D (I say wisely) or dual screens, their contribution to the “look, innovation!” pool is the Vita’s rear capacitive multi-touch pad, a back panel wallpapered in Sony’s trademark face button symbols that your fingers can “tap” while wrapped around the handheld. You can use the rear pad to “shoot” the ball in a Vita game like FIFA Soccer, for instance, or to “zoom” the sniper rifle in a game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Oh, and the unit includes Sony’s six-axis motion-sensing system (a three-axis gyroscope plus a three-axis accelerometer).

In the “standard features” department, the Vita includes both front and rear facing VGA (640 x 480) cameras, stereo speakers, a microphone, a d-pad and four PS-style face buttons, Sony’s classic PlayStation button, “start,” “select” and volume buttons, a rechargeable (non-removable) Lithium-ion battery and built-in Wi-Fi (3G + GPS optional). Slot-wise, you’ve got a place to stick in PS Vita game cards, one for memory cards (the Vita lacks inbuilt storage memory), a SIM card slot (3G, GPS), a headset jack, a multi-use port (mini-USB) and an accessory port.

The Vita also includes dual analog sticks, and by “sticks,” I mean actual raised control columns with convex-shaped grips (contrast with the flush nubs on the PSP and 3DS). While Nintendo plans to sell a cradle-style peripheral for the 3DS that adds a right-hand joystick, the Vita’s the only gaming handheld on the block with dual analog sticks built-in.

What’s Under the Hood?

The Vita employs an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU. To put that in context, Apple’s A5 processor (used in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S) is based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 core architecture, and you’ll also find the dual core version of PowerVR’s SGX543MP technology in those devices (the ’4′ in the Vita’s GPU indicates the quad-core version, and the ‘+’ refers to features designed specifically for Sony).

How powerful is it really? Sony’s made several comparisons to the PlayStation 3. They don’t mean spec-for-spec, of course, just that the Vita’s games are expected to look much like PS3 games, detail-wise.

What Colors Does It Come In?

Sony’s offering the Vita in one color only at launch: “Crystal Black.”

Will My PSP Games Work?

The PS Vita will play PSP games, but won’t take the PSP’s UMD game discs, so if you want to play PSP games, you’ll have to buy and download them from the PlayStation Store. That said, you’ll have the option use the Vita’s second analog stick in select PSP games (to pan the view around in a first-person shooter, say) by simply remapping the controls.

Will It Support My Favorite Social Network?

Probably. While these are all “coming in early 2012,” Sony says the Vita will eventually have access to Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Flickr and Foursquare via freebie app downloads from the PlayStation Store.

What’ll It Cost?

The basic Wi-Fi model runs $249.99, while the version with integrated 3G will set you back $299.99.

How About Games?

While you’ll no doubt be able to buy games for less once developers have bite-sized Vita content up on the PlayStation Store, the average going price for a Vita game is currently $39.99 (a handful are $10 more, others are $10 less).

What Are the Launch-Day Titles?

From Sony Computer Entertainment America: Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational, Super Stardust Delta, Little Deviants, ModNation Racers: Roadtrip, Wipeout 2048, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Escape Plan and Hustle Kings.

From third-party publishers: Army Corps of Hell (Square Enix), Asphalt Injection (Ubisoft), BEN10 GALACTIC RACING (D3), Blazblue: Continuum Shift EXTEND (Aksys Games Localization), Dungeon Hunter Alliance (Gameloft), Dynasty Warriors Next (Tecmo Koei), F1 2011 (Codemasters), FIFA Soccer (Electronic Arts), Lumines Electronic Symphony (Ubisoft), Michael Jackson The Experience (Ubisoft), Rayman Origins (Ubisoft), Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen (Namco Bandai), Tales of Space: Mutant Blobs (Drinkbox Studios), Touch My Katamari (Namco Bandai), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Capcom), Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition (Sega) and just announced — Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus.

What Else Do I (Probably) Have to Buy?

The Vita ships without built-in storage (like the PSP before it), which means you’ll have to buy proprietary memory sticks (from Sony) if you want to save games or download content from the PlayStation Store (some games may let you save to the game card itself, but not all). Sony’s price lineup Vita-brand memory cards is as follows: $20 for 4GB, $30 for 8GB, $60 for 16GB, and $100 for 32GB. Note that it’s possible to backup or transfer data between memory cards, but you’ll need a PC or PS3 (as intermediary) to do so.

If you opt for the pricier $299.99 3G model, you’ll have to pay AT&T for the privilege (AT&T’s the exclusive wireless carrier for the system). An “AT&T Data Connect” plan for the Vita runs $14.99 per month for 250MB and $30 per month for 3GB. Both plans have 30-day recurring opt out options and include complimentary access to about 29,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots in the U.S. Note that the 3G feature is currently touted as a way to socialize with friends, sync news feeds, and play turn-based games — just like using your 3G phone tethered to your PC for Internet access, the connection won’t be fast enough to handle head-to-head racing sessions or first-person shooter square-offs.

You might want to budget $10 to $20 for a carrying case, too — remember that we’re talking a full five inches of OLED screen real estate you’ll want to protect.

Does It Support the PlayStation Network?

Of course, but what’s more (and unlike the PSP), PS Vita games now support PlayStation Trophies — Sony’s version of game achievements — too.

How Much Space Do Saved Games Take Up?

This varies by game, of course, but to give you an idea based on back-of-the-box specs, a game like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 requires 4,096 KB, Uncharted: Golden Abyss needs 64 MB and FIFA Soccer will use a whopping 160 MB.

When Can I Actually Get One?

Both models go on sale in the U.S. on Wednesday, Feb. 22 (the system originally launched in Japan on Dec. 17, 2011).

[This post republished from TIME's Techland.]

It turns out that Path has already made the uploads opt-in for the Android app, and has submitted an iOS update that does the same to Apple’s App Store. Little by little, Morin is addressing the company’s actions–it uses the address-book info to find your friends on Path–and expressing regret for grabbing personal information off phone without permission. But he hasn’t explained himself to the satisfaction of all of Thampi’s commenters, and the Path Blog doesn’t yet cover the kerfuffle. It’s not clear that Path thinks this a particularly big deal.

I don’t doubt Morin’s word that Path was using address-book information for an innocuous, useful purpose. But that doesn’t get it off the hook: That information could be intercepted, or stolen off Path’s servers. Or maybe some Path users would simply prefer that their stuff not leave their phone without explicit permission. Path is, after all, a service that plays up the notion that plays up privacy. As its own site says:

Path should be private by default. Forever. You should always be in control of your information and experience.

I like Path and hope that it thrives–so I’ll be happy if this mini-controversy dies down quickly. A “We screwed up badly and here’s how we’re ensuring it won’t happen again” statement from the company would help.

And if we’re lucky, other developers are watching and making mental notes about the steps they should take to avoid making the news in the way that Path did today. It’s not all that complicated. In cases like this, asking permission is always smarter than asking forgiveness.

Google is using its Google Doodle Tuesday to commemorate the 200th birthday of novelist Charles Dickens. While the Doodles in the past have traditionally linked to search results based on the illustration’s subject, this one does it a bit differently: top billing is given to free e-book results from the Google Books service.

Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 and over his 58 years penned some of the most well known literary works of the 19th Century. Google’s doodle is a collage of some notable characters within his books, including Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

“Our Google Books editorial team curated a collection of free and featured Dickens classics available in the Google eBookstore in Dickens’ native land (United Kingdom) and some Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia) as well as the US”, Google eBooks Associate Ariel Levine writes in a blog post describing the doodle, and its move to promote Google Books.

It’s probably not too far fetched to assume that most Google users — save for tech enthusiasts — are likely unaware that the Mountain View, Calif. company even has a e-book service. That said, you cannot blame Google for wanting to use the Google doodle as an engine to heighten the service’s profile and generate traffic.

Google Doodle stories do extremely well for bloggers and tech news sites alike. This has a lot to do with Google user’s curiosity and clicking on the illustrations to see what it’s about. Oftentimes the news stories covering the doodles themselves make it to the first results page people see, and users do click.

That won’t be happening today: the first page is entirely results from Google Books.

Over at the Atlantic, Robert Wright is being sacrilegious. He says he’s unhappy with the trend–seen in phones, laptops, and other products–to make gadgets as thin as possible:

Remember when Jobs first unveiled the Macbook Air? I do, because I had long been a fan of the small, lightweight computers that had until then been available only on the Windows platform. Jobs brought the machine onstage in a manila envelope, because the thing he wanted to wow the audience with was its thinness.

I thought: Who cares how thin it is? Thickness isn’t the dimension that really matters when you have to fit a computer into a tiny backpack or use it in a coach seat on an airplane. And, anyway, more important than any spatial dimension is weight. Sure, to the extent that thinner means lighter, thinness is good, but if you make thinness an end in itself, you start compromising functionality.

Bob has several specific beefs with whisper-thin gizmos. He points out that all things being equal, a thin case leaves less room for the battery, thereby leading to shorter battery life. He says that overly svelte devices are harder to hold and easier to drop. With laptops, he says, engineering for thinness leads to compromises in keyboard quality.

If you’re down on thin, you could point out other problems which Bob doesn’t mention–for instance, thin laptops and tablets often don’t have room for useful ports. (I might own an 11″ MacBook Air if it had an SD slot, but Apple jettisoned it.)

I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about Bob’s argument, and it’s been surprisingly tough. In some instances, I know I like thin: I’m certainly happier carrying a MacBook Air than a MacBook Pro, and it’s not just because of the weight difference. Skinnier notebooks are easier to hold; that matters to me, because I’m out and about a lot, and have been known to attend cocktail parties with my laptop tucked under an arm that’s also holding a glass of wine.

But am I subconsciously buying into the thinness fetish which Bob derides? If you carry a MacBook Air or a thin Windows machine, you might impress other people who equate thin with good. But nobody ever increased his or her social standing by lugging a particularly chunky notebook. Maybe that unspoken truth influences my purchasing decisions without me even understanding it.

With phones, I don’t feel quite the same impulse to defend thinness. My favorite phone of the pre-iPhone era was my Treo 650, was 23mm thick. The iPhone 4S is 9.3mm thick. And yet, if I made a list of the 20 top ways in which the iPhone 4S improves on the Treo, its dimensions probably wouldn’t make the cut.

At least Apple, through clever engineering and a willingness to postpone 4G, manages to give the iPhone decent battery life by current standards. (Even then, lots of people buy Mophie cases for their iPhones–effectively opting for a portlier, longer-running iPhone.) Numerous makers of 4G Android phones have released skinny phones with dismal battery life; in these cases, it’s painfully obvious that consumers would have been better served if the phones had sported thicker cases that had room for bigger batteries.

The thing is, phone makers are stuck in their usual war of numerical specsmanship. After awhile, it doesn’t matter whether thinner is better or not. Bob heralds the arrival of Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx, a thicker, bigger-battery version of the Droid Razr. I’m glad Motorola is giving it a try, but I also worry that if the Maxx isn’t a hit, it’ll make phone manufacturers even more thick-averse.

And then there are HDTVs, a product category that Bob doesn’t mention. They too are obsessed with thinness as a marketing talking point. That really confuses me: Why should anyone care much about the one dimension you can’t see when you’re watching TV?

(Yes, I speak as someone who owns an aging Vizio LCD set that is, compared to current models, laughably thick. Sorry if I sound defensive.)

The bottom line here is actually pretty straightforward. Every gadget represents a series of design tradeoffs. Every gadget buyer has a different comfort zone when it comes to the balance of thinness-vs.-other-stuff. If Bob doesn’t want a super-thin notebook–and is willing to use Windows–it’s okay, because he still has plenty of choices. But if he doesn’t want a super-thin phone, his options are surprisingly limited. That’s a shame.

Do you think today’s tech products are inappropriately fixated on thinness, not thin enough–or just right?

Everyone knows that certain technology products are endangered species. Film cameras, for instance. Turntables. Payphones. Odds are pretty good that you haven’t used any of them recently. If you’re young enough, you might never have used them.

I never thought of pocket-sized AM/FM radios–the sort with built-in radios and telescoping antennae–as falling into this category of obviously-doomed products. I assumed that any store that sold electronic gadgets of any sort still stocked them.

But last week, my mother, who I’ve been visiting in Boston, asked for one. And boy, was I surprised by how tough it was to find one for sale locally.

Please don’t reflexively mock mom as a Luddite: She owns an iPhone, a BlackBerry, and a Kindle, and was the first person I knew who owned a laptop computer–way back in 1983 or thereabouts. But she wanted to press one button on an affordable, portable device to hear WBUR, her favorite station. For that, a pocket radio still sounded like the best option.

Now, mom already had a fancy portable radio–an Eton that can run on batteries, solar energy, or hand-cranked power, and which doubles as a flashlight and phone recharger. She asked me to help her with it. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to make it play WBUR, which seemed like a bad sign. That’s why I figured she’d be happier with a simple pocket AM/FM model.

And I thought, not unreasonably, that I’d buy it at RadioShack.

Then my father pointed out that my sister, who’d visited earlier, had bought the Eton at Best Buy–because she couldn’t find a garden-variety radio at RadioShack or Best Buy.

I decided to try again. I went to two nearby RadioShacks.

Once upon a time, RadioShack sold gazillions of radio models.

It feels really silly to go into something called “RadioShack” and ask if it carries radios–especially when the answer is no. (One of the locations, in a mall otherwise dominated by stores such as Aeropostale and Victoria’s Secret, had shelf after shelf of diodes and transistors for sale–I wonder when was the last time anyone bought any of those?–but no radios.)

I also tried two Best Buys, and a Target. None of them had a straightforward pocket radio with a built-in speaker.

All of these stores did have related products of several sorts I wasn’t looking for, such as tabletop iPod docks with built-in radios, clock radios, and weather radios. I also saw more hand-cranked Etons in a variety of sizes–radio apparently being something that people think of as an emergency supply rather than an everyday necessity.

At one Best Buy, I even saw a Walkman with a tape player as well as a built-in radio–a classic gadget I didn’t know was still extant.

But I didn’t want a radio that also did other things, or something else that was also a radio. I wanted a radio.

Over on Twitter, folks had lots of advice, all of it interesting:

@harrymccracken Did you try Frys? Also, if your Mom doesn't mind a used version, Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale might have it.—
Kevin Krewell (@Krewell) February 04, 2012

(I’m sure Fry’s has them, and I love the Weird Stuff Warehouse–but they’re both thousands of miles from Boston.)

@harrymccracken try a drug store. Cvs, Walgreens etc—
victor marks (@vmarks) February 04, 2012

(I checked two CVS locations; no joy.)

@harrymccracken Target sells radios.—
lauralou (@bubbaloucious) February 04, 2012

(No they don’t. Or at least the one I visited didn’t have any plain ol’ AM/FM radios–although it did have Sonos music systems and other surprisingly sophisticated stuff.)

@harrymccracken eBay.—
Cynthia Schames (@CynthiaSchames) February 03, 2012

(Thousands of them, I’m sure, but I wanted one right away.)

@harrymccracken Does get much simpler then the PAL from Tivoli Audio. Mother approved. bit.ly/Ao2ZBA—
Adam Belzycki (@Belzycki) February 03, 2012

(Neat! Also $219.99.)

@harrymccracken Perhaps there's something here at C. Crane? ccrane.com—
Scott (@scottgfx) February 03, 2012

(Looks like it would be a good option if I could wait for it to arrive.)

@harrymccracken something like this? amzn.to/yUKXDp—
chuq von rospach (@chuq) February 03, 2012

(Ditto.)

Eventually, when I was flirting with giving up and ordering online, I decided to make one last stop–at the oldest surviving RadioShack, on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. As RadioShacks go, it’s spacious and fairly well-stocked. If the oldest RadioShack of them all no longer sold radios, it would just be sad.

“Good evening,” a staffer jauntily greeted me when I walked in. “What brings you to the Shack tonight?”

When I told him what I was looking for, he said that yes, yes the store did stock radios. In fact, someone else had been in earlier that day looking for one.

He led me to the very back of the store, where two radios were hanging in blister packs: a $14.99 one with a traditional station indicator, and a $29.99 one with digital tuning. I opted for the former–that’s it up at the top of this post–and bought AA batteries for it. (The clerk somehow convinced me to buy a 36-pack of them.)

Mission finally accomplished.

So why was it so hard to find? It’s tempting to assume that the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad killed the classic pocket radio. But as I think about it, I believe that radios of the sort my mom wanted were archaic long before the age of digital music.

Starting in the 1970s, they were done in by two newer, trendier types of radio: the Walkman (and its imitators) and boom boxes. Both provided high-quality sound than a pocket radio. If you wanted to listen privately, you wanted a Walkman; if you wanted everyone else to hear, you wanted a boom box. But you probably didn’t want a dinky monophonic radio with a tinny built-in speaker.

The excellent site Radio Shack Catalogs chronicles the decline of the pocket radio: In 1960s and 1970s catalogs, there was a major section teeming with ‘em. By 2000, the year before the iPod debuted, the selection had already dwindled down to a few perfunctory options. I just didn’t notice until now.

Radio, obviously, isn’t dead; it remains one of the most mass-market forms of mass media. But outside of cars, I wonder how many people listen to it on a device that’s a radio, and nothing else?

The argument that iOS is a much more stable operating system than Android has been repeated on the blogs and even in the comment threads of stories about the two operating systems. There’s a problem, though: the data indicates that is untrue.

Mobile app monitoring company Crittercism released data Friday on crash reports from the period December 1 through December 15, and saying iOS has stability issues is putting it nicely. By a 2-to-1 margin, iOS crashes much more frequently than Android, according to Crittercism’s report. The biggest offender is iOS 5.0.1, accounting for 28.64 percent of all crashes.

By comparison, the most crash-prone Android operating system is 2.3.3, accounting for 3.86 percent of reports. That’s a huge difference and is sure to get the Apple blogosphere in an uproar over the survey’s methodology.

Yes, the firm’s work did have a disproportionate number of iOS devices in the test (162 million to 52 million for Android). However, to blunt that criticism, Crittercism split the data into quartiles, and looked at the crashes as a percentage of app launches.

The story is the same. In the top quartile, iOS apps crashed .51 percent of the time versus .15 percent for Android; in the second quartile 1.47 percent to .73 percent; and in the bottom quartile 3.66 percent to 2.97 percent. The data favors Android once again.

What’s causing the instability in iOS? It’s a good question without an easy answer. Apple’s walled garden approach in the App Store could leave a disproportionate number of users with outdated and buggy apps. Developers must wait to get updates approved by Apple just like the first time they submitted their apps; Android developers can choose to allow for auto-updating without any need for the Android market.

Even Apple’s iAd is at fault: Crittercism received reports that the Cupertino, Calif. company’s advertising platform at times does not play nice with developers’ ads, causing instability.

One caveat: Crittercism’s data period is early enough that Ice Cream Sandwich crash data may not be accurately reflected. The firm says it expects the percentages of crashes on the newest version to increase significantly in future data sets.

Either way, the data puts to bed a misconception over the stability of Android, and raises new questions about iOS. Does Android have better quality developers, then? You might be able to argue yes.

[Hat tip: Forbes]

Honan’s declaration of evil is a riff on Google’s famous unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil,” which was apparently proposed by staffers Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a 2001 meeting. Google continues to saying that not being evil is one of its core principles to this day. So the fact that Honan and others are saying that the company has finally crossed an ethical line into evilhood is a unique, sad moment in Google history.

Except…

People have been accusing Google of being evil–or at least wondering whether it has become so–for almost as long as Google has been claiming that it isn’t evil. I can’t lay my hands on any examples from 2001 or 2002, but it became a hot topic in 2003 and has never let up.

Consider these pieces of evidence (one for each year!).

Josh McHugh in Wired, January 2003:

Andrew Orlowski, The Register, April 2004:

Preston Gralla on Windows DevCenter, August 2005:

Adam Penenberg in Mother Jones, October 2006:

Mike Masnick on Techdirt, April 2007:

Saul Hansell on NYTimes.com, November 2008:

&

Edward Cone on CIO Insight, October 2009:

Adam Green on the The Huffington Post, August 2010:

Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld, August 2011:

At first, back when Google was largely uncontroversial, “Don’t be evil” seemed like it was a marketing masterstroke. If Google said it wasn’t evil, people assumed, it wasn’t evil.

Overall, though, I think it’s been an albatross for the company. By being holier-than-thou, it practically demanded that the world hold it to a higher standard. Maybe a standard that it’s impossible for a large public company to maintain. (If it were Yahoo making these privacy changes, nobody would care.)

Now Google can’t ever backpedal on its promise. Whether it’s tweaking its privacy policies in ways that might bolster advertising, or promoting Google+ in Google search results, it’s going to be on the defensive forever.

No, Google isn’t evil. But it is at least as prone to human frailties as any other entity. And thinking that it would be a good idea to declare itself as more moral than other companies is Exhibit A.