Just wanted to share a couple nice links I came across over the weekend:

• Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline
• Criticism of Apple’s handling of the lost iPhone incident:
  • Video: Fanboy Jon Stewart Rips Apple For Gizmodo Search
  • A Lost iPhone Shows Apple’s Churlish Side

For me, here’s the thread connecting these two storylines: Both Apple and Facebook offer very good (or at least, in Facebook’s case, very popular) products/services, and both are positioning themselves to really redefine and control the future of how we operate online. If developments in the past decade in how we find, access, and consume information were dominated by a company whose motto is “Don’t be evil,” will the motto for the power players of the coming decade be “It’s ok to be evil as long as you build a good/popular product”? I’m not saying that Google hasn’t done questionable things (hello, Google Buzz), but I think you have to admit that there’s a bit of a difference between a company that vows to not be evil in its corporate mission statement and companies that give no pretense of aiming for anything other than doing what’s best for their businesses.