Google knows everything about me – and they’ve shown a few times that they’re not afraid to use it. (Ask Chris Campbell about the time Google emailed us when we were working on Netscape 8.)

Microsoft knows very little about me.

As a developer of software, I respect and emulate their business model – they write software, and then they sell it to people. It’s old-fashioned, but it works. And it’s straightforward.

And Google? Google, who makes a living by pimping out a spot in my attention span; Google, who has the moral backbone of a Tadpole – is considered to be the good guy.

Why?

I’m a geek. If you’re reading my blog, you’re probably a geek as well. And one of the defining characteristics of geeks, is that we like to think we’re different from “ordinary” people. One of the places we’re the MOST likely to feel special, is in our belief that advertising doesn’t affect us.

In the strange and emerging economies of ‘freemium‘ business models, commercial open source software, and crowdsourced marketplaces – in a world so backwards we’re giving money away to the producers of the most inefficient vehicles on the planet, while far away our siblings, children and cousins are dying for the oil needed to run those vehicles – well, any company that makes a fortune off of the weaknesses of the gullible Average Joe, is okay in our book. Our digital ‘Robin Hood’ to the Sheriff of Rampant Consumerism.

Except that it’s folly.

Geeks are no more immune to advertising than anyone else. Less, really. Ever heard of Gizmodo? Engadget? Apple Computer?

The long term, nearly-recession-proof success of advertising-based business models simply serves to confirm a simple truth – one that helps to explain (should you wonder) how we’ve ended up in this mess:

People are sheep.

Even geeks.

PS – Please buy something from Amazon for Valentines Days (using my referral code.) Ktnxbye.