I'm quite disappointed in Google. They recently announced that they made a deal with RealNetworks, who will be bundling the Google Chrome browser together with their video software. I find this amazing because I did not expect this from Google. Anyone who's been on the internet for a while can tell you that RealNetworks is a rather disgusting company, and their software is historically known for being crappy and full of spyware. I can't say I tried their software recently, so perhaps it may have improved over the years, but the image of Real has not changed. Their a sleazy company, and their products are disliked by pretty much everyone I know. Not to mention that bundling one piece of software with another, only vaguely related software is a practice that is generally hated by everyone online.
So why did google do it? For the money, of course. Google's main source of revenue is ads. Recently we've been seeing ads on youtube, even inside videos, and I'm sure it won't be long until we start seeing google ads in realplayer too. The move to bundle Chrome with RealPlayer is even more strange when you consider that Google has always been claiming that they're not really in the browser market to compete, but only because they 'want to increase competition in the browser market, to improve innovation'. How in the hell are advertisements and semi-forced usage of a browser innovation!?!
Google is about nice, clean web-pages. Comfort and ease of use. I love the Chrome browser and I could not live without GMail. But it's moves like this that make it more and more clear that Google is turning into a big, evil company, which will eventually have nothing else but profit that drives it. Be careful Google, if you continue down this path much further, then there will be other, younger companies that will take up where you left off, and they will do it better than you.