I think our definitions of "service provider" and "walled gardens" are different. There's nothing about Google that prevents me from using any service that I want and even thought they are integrating many things in more tightly, I still have an incredible range of motion for things outside G+, as well as integrated with it.
I know this is a religious argument - I've tangled with it 9,341,759 times over the years. No one ever wins it - time is the grand determinant.
I've been using Google for many years and never had this happen.
I'm not sure what you mean by a different account for each service removes the benefits. At this point all of the services I use are under one account - my main email address. They are all nicely integrated.
My only complaint is that I can't alias all of my other email addresses off the main one, having a "single Google identity". So - if someone else uses one of my other email addresses to share a doc with me, I have to either logout/login or re-request the share using the doc I want (which is the path I use).
As an investor in companies building mobile apps, I get asked this question constantly.
My response depends somewhat on the application and the market, but it's pretty clear at this point that these are two completely separate efforts. It's not quite as bad as developing for Mac vs. Windows, but close (and getting closer all the time.)
So I recommend two separate development efforts. I almost always recommend leading with iOS, but not syncing up the functionality perfectly so that some of the design experiments as you iterate happen on Android.
Tight communication between two separate teams is key. If you only have one dev working on the whole thing, just choose one - and - in most cases, this should be iOS
Totally agree the lawyer should be disbarred. However, many patent lawyers, especially those who work for either (a) big companies, (b) patent trolls, or (c) are independent owners of patents they've purchased from others "live on this concept."
As an engineer from a large software company once told me, "our internal patent lawyers have a simple saying - write the patent to be as broad as possible while obscuring what you are actually doing."
I think this is a very powerful move by Wikipedia against SOPA.
I hope they do something creative - such as take the entire site down for a few days in protest with a message that says something like "this is what your favorite websites could look like post-SOPA. Call your congressman now and tell him / her that SOPA should not be passed."
Google unambiguously opposes SOPA. They have been one of the leaders in rallying opposition. Following is their testimony to the house judiciary committee (Lamar Smith is the chairman)
As an MIT alum, I'm proud that MIT is having a commencement speaker who is working on something fundamentally disruptive to the status quo of education. It's an enlightened point of view - "disrupt yourself before someone else does."
I know this is a religious argument - I've tangled with it 9,341,759 times over the years. No one ever wins it - time is the grand determinant.