Slashdot Mirror
Google Rebuffs Microsoft Takeover Bid
Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has posted that Internet search leader Google has rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft in favour of selling its shares directly to the public. According to The New York Times (Login Required), Google wishes to sell only about $US2 billion worth of shares to the public."
It's turns out that Google IS being bought by Nestle!
Here's the link to the story. I guess Nestle just offered too sweet of a deal to pass up.
Only $2 billion dollars....if only i could talk about money like that
Looks like the management at Google understand the situation. Only selling about $2 billion USD will get them the funds they need to expand, but without the risk of a hostile takeover. Let's just hope that the voting shareholders don't defect to Microsoft. Or to anyone else.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Well, looks like Google just throw down the gauntlet against Microsoft. Now, it is time to see whether public support or big money business will win out.
And as a side note, let's buy Google stock when they come out to show our support.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
indeed a good move. if MS had purchased google, google would have lost lots of linux users.
similar to what happened to hotmail.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I can not imagine anything more evil that microsoft + google. Microsoft would be unstoppable.
Fear.
Davak
Those gold covered chocolate coins are pretty good.
"Google wishes to sell only about $US2 billion worth of shares to the public."
Does anyone have 2 Billion I can borrow? I promise I'll pay you back, when I hit it big.
In other words, Buzz Off, Bill! Go find your own sandbox.
It's good to hear that the people running google have as much practical business sense about them as the people running the machines have technical sense. This is how things should be done - don't put your entire worth out there on the market for investors to decide, hold back and prove your company worth through your product.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Damn, if i'd had 2 billion dollar I wouldn't need Google. I'd had some naked petrified girls doing all the searching for me...
Remains to be seen how real the takeover offer was in the first place. Microsoft has thousands of employees and 50 bil in the bank, which pretty much allows them to develop any search technology they want and hire the best people in the industry.
Even the purchases that Microsoft has made usually reflect either small companies with little capital and some interesting technologies (Connectix), or medium-size companies with tons of clients that Microsoft wants access to (Great Plains, Navision). Seeing Microsoft buy Google would also raise all sort of anti-trust concerns due to Google's dominance.
While among the Silicon Valley startups the popular way to get attention is to announce that Microsoft is interested in takeover. Strange to see Google succumb to this tactics of boosting the pre-IPO evaluation price, but perhaps I am wrong on that.
Whats to keep MS from buying all the shares when they go public? From what I've heard, google wanted to do some sort of bid thing to sell shares to people. So if they were to ebay them, MS could just create a few ebay accounts under people's names, billg@microsoft.com, steveb@microsoft.com, etc, and buy up all the shares.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I cannot begin to tell you how horrible that 'merger' sounds to me. Reading one of the articles about the decision by the two Stanford graduates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (who created Google) to have a limited public offering to reward initial investors and company workers once again confirms that Google continues to show why Google is the best.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I can't say I'm suprised :P
I wish rav antivrus had done the same.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
you know, google is the first thing on the internet (not just the web) that i think has actually changed my life is some way. i use google probably 30 to 40 times on a regular business day, searching for certain strings and letting it do the hard part for me. if i didnt have google, or anything exactly like it or better, i would be really grumpy for a very long time. if google ever sold out and became a crap factory, it'd be a dark day on the intarweb. fortunately i didnt get the vibe that's about to happen from the nyt article.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Eat that Microsoft! I'm not sure how long they can hold out, but I tire of every innovation being eaten up by Microsoft. For me, the frustration goes back to PowerPoint, a once fine program.
Google will be an immensely popular stock-selling only 2 billion in shares will create a gigantic demand, with a smaller supply, and thus I'm wondering if Google's going to just open up their shares for trade on an exchange like most companies do...
Something I certainly see as being possible is that Google could put up shares for sale in public auction. Think about it, why wouldn't they? It would make sense-the shares would be worth more because of the supply/demand aspect, and in addition, it would be dually serving eBay, which I believe Google has some ties to(as they do to most web companies).
In addition, Google could put up shares for charity--what a better opportunity for them to showcase themselves, and benefit some organization at the same time?
The most important thing to remember about Google's IPO is that they are worth quite a bit, and they may just sell their shares in a most unusual way.
Besides...it's Google!
Microsoft announced today its plans to purchase $2 billion worth of Google stock.
Nothing. But google isn't offering up enough stock to allow anyone else to get even remotely close to a controlling share. Just because you are offering stock doesn't mean you are selling out your entire company or controlling interest, in this case, google is selling some of it self to the public instead of VCs.
--- I do not moderate.
OK, bad pun alert. If you hate puns, go away. Now. Run.
In other news:
A recent study finds yet one more reason to avoid cheap Chinese food. The study found that in addition to playing hell with the blood pressure of its victims, MSG may restrict people's choice of information, subject people's unprotected browsers to viruses, spam and popups, and kill the user's penguins.
#define DRM chmod 000
I think we should rename Sundays on Slashdot Duplication Day.
This is the same story that was posted on Friday. I know that Sydney is on the other side of the International Date Line from New York, but this is a three-day old story!
..rejected...Microsoft...
Yay!
I didn't even know they buffed them.
to build a giant moon laser. We'll never see it coming..
There's a good piece up over on The Register that talks about how Google and Microsoft would make great partners.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
But their announced ambitions to "reinvent" the IPO market, avoiding classical underwriting and directly auctioning their shares, really is too much. The comments are more than presumptuous and pretentious. They are sophomoric.
Isn't it enough to be the first company since 2000 to mount a successful IPO of an Internet-based business, with enormous multiplies applied to forward revenues, toward a $10 billion plus valuation? The idea that an Internet company, among all the companies out there, will fundamentally reinvent the way that public offerings of this magnitude are done in the U.S. is laughable.
As Google is run (and currently owned) by smart people, I think that the company's discussion of auctioning its shares is a way of making a lot of noise, and heightening speculation -- in the face of obvious interest by the Microsoft Corporation. It is intended to raise the issue of its valuation in a big, very public way, and enhance the prospects of a Microsoft acquisition at the highest possible cash amount.
It is certainly not intended to build good will on Wall Street. It's hilarious to think that the way to exert influence on Wall Street is to suggest ways to fundamentally undermine the revenue streams of the leading investment bank underwriters.
I just thought what a cluster the size of google's would be like running windows... imagine the spread of viruses, worms and spyware... every single person on the planet searching via an engine which is helping to spread the love....
the end of the world would truly be nigh.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Notice the right side of the chart. Yahoo is on an upward trend. Ever heard of the "buy and hold" strategy of equities investing?
I'm guessing that investors will go crazy once again having an Internet stock to bet on. This will push the value of the stock up through the roof as we've seen happen with past companies. By only putting out a small percentage (less than 1/10th of the company) it will also unduly raise the total percieved value of the company exponentially.
The problem is that though most industries have a set valuation on shareholders equity in regards to a multiple of earnings, Google is in a league of their own. This allows investors the opportunity to become speculators and instead of looking at the fundamentals and I predict we will see claims of Google becoming as big as Microsoft on paper.
Early investors will cash out at that point (as the article mentions) and the rest of us are left holding the bag. However those early investors will now have cash to start the process again and we may very well see another albeit smaller run on Internet stocks with the momentum generated by Googles rise to power.
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
Just my belief but, everything I've seen tells me that after they go public the good will is going to be replaced with " We've got to return value to our shareholders or These deciscions are important to give a return to our shareholders equity investments. In short, more weasel words and less unbiased searching. Google's patent on searching with a damping factor(oh yeah now that is specific), could very well start bumping up the paid advertisers a small amount in thier search returns after the company goes public. I hope I am wrong.
There is no goatse.cx link in the grand parent post.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
admittedly i have some strange ideas about our economic/social systems. i'm a fan of debian and spend time every day trying to figure out how to get rid of corporations as legal entities with no real personal liability.
caveats aside, i really think the US Gov should buy google. maybe i'm just a mindless stallman bot, but i regard the google service as a public good. in fact, if google were to go away tomorrow, i'd become immediately unemployable. i've heard the same thing from other techies, non-techies, and even anti-techies.
just the thought/hoax of microsoft buying google would ruin me, and i'd have to make good on my promise after hearing bush won the election and actually leave the country.
i've seen too often on slashdot similar "i can't live without google" commentary so i know i'm not alone.
i'm not here to tell you that the US Gov should entertain buying companies lightly, or that there isn't a good chance that they would ruin google on their own. as i understand it, google isn't really offering itself for sale anyway, buy why screw around? what i am saying is that google has bought itself alot of time with such a great service. however, it will eventually fall prey to abuse on the street if they go that route, or some other bad economic time.
i'm not the only person who was disappointed at redhat's decision to end-of-life their free products after only months (12? i'm sure some slashdotter will correct me). it was the motivator for me to convert hundreds of machines i supported from redhat to debian. i understand the decision by redhat, the _company_, to earn and maintain a profit. if they go away eventually sobeit. if we lose sun, no problem, it will happen anyway.
i'm not so cavalier about google. its a public good and we need to protect it.
thoughts?
Time to start looking for a new search engine.
the only thing microsoft is missing, is a decent OS? (that is, if they -had- bought google)
falxx
Resistance is futile... The history repeats itself, anything that resists M$ signs off its death sentense. Sun's Java, Netscape's Navigator, IBM's OS/2... Now it's Google's turn. Doesn't anybody learn anything from the history???
I wish I had mod points to mod you up you make some very valid points.
... It does highlight the point, that should such a thing happen, do we have an alternative? If not, then the community as a whole should have a back-up plan.
Although, I cant leave America because I dont live there. But the very thought of google being taken over by a big coporation such as redmond are unthinkable. I would have to quit the industry completely as I am not prepared to work in that kind of climate. Search results should never be biased as would happen if this were to occur. I dont think people in the right places realise just how important this is.
However
The internet is the last bastion of freedom in this f**cked up world, and we should fight to keep it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
the government would ruin it (whether liberal, moderate or conservatives in power at the time)..."naughty" searches (by whatever definition) being flagged, "naughty" results being censored, etc.
RedHat is still giving away a "free" (as in gratis) distribution. But maybe Federa seemed too "bleeding edge" for you? I'm giving it a test spin on my home box & it's pretty good so far.
The other search engines are useful, though google is my favorite. It is interesting sometimes to compare the results each give on a topic. The world would not end should something happen to google.
The fact that it's survived along the sides of Amazon who's first profit was not until 1/2002 and E-bay who's a different beast altogether show that the companies that are doing 'the different' are the ones who are setting the pace and maintaining their own quo's without Wall street intervention.
If you recall Wall Street intervention is what built up the tech sector bubble and the same thing that ultimately burst that same bubble.
The fact that google has survived so long is why it's such a hot stock and a hot topic, they didn't need the advice or the help from the Wall Street guru's other than the fact that Wall Streets greed for the company is going to set the price higher than what it would have been. Which is genius from any shareholder viewpoint (supply demand and control). So essentially Google is writing their own history rather than letting the Wall Street vultures write their obituary. If that's not reinventing the IPO market then what is?
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
So we managed to dodge one bullet, forgive me if I am not jumping up and down. Not only could M$ still try to gain controll over google, We all saw problems with google earlier when they fanagle search results for no good reason.
We all love google we use it every day, but it must be replaced. Replacing google has two problems the software and the hardware. The software is by far the easier one, the general techniques that google uses are well known, and the good guys don't have a shortage of good programers.
The Hardware requires money, a lot of it if you want to compete with google. IMO the solution would be to design a system capeable of working efficiently on a google like setup with dedicated linux clusters around the globe, but also capeable of taking advantage of every half stable server someone can donate somewhere on the globe.
Initially search times would be slow, but money can be raised, to add the servers necessary, A free google alternative must and therfor will be produced.
Me.
Think about it -- if M$ owns Google then they will try to make Google run 2000 or worse XP. It is survival...
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Gee, thanks for the tip. Who'da thunk?
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Search: w3c ieee
Search found no results!
You are not the customer.
You heard it here first and it's worth what you paid for it.
In the next "mandatory super ultra-critical security update must install service pack" from MicroSchlock, IE will be made incompatible with Google. Of course, it will all be an "innocent bureaucratic SNAFU."
I can just imagine the .NET nuthouse code added on, for MSN users. Then again think of all the fun the script kiddies would have at the expense of MS users. Might put a whole new meaning to surfing the .NET. It would surf you!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
well, the govt wouldn't _necessarily_ ruin it. its not hard to imagine a google where the engine is run /maintained by engineers, and some right-side text-only realestate is given to the ad-agency-media-broker team, which... i dont know what... i dont know about ad's, agencies, media, or brokers, so someone else could comment on that.
i think the supreme court has ruled that whats naughty is left to the community to decide. the internet community is fairly liberal, so if we're left to decide we'll just choose "no censorship, period"
i'm not saying redhat isn't giving away gratis distros, i'm just saying i can't use them. i need security updates for the duration of the of my use of the os. debian fits me alot better in this regard. i commend the work redhat is doing, its just that they cut me off as a user by having to make "business decisions"
i tend to disagree with you on the "world would not end" comment... it would be ReallyBad, and thats enough of a motivation to do something about it. if smtp stopped working tomorrow the community would work around it, eventually, but gosh wouldn't it suck?
that the article you reference doesn't KNOW how google makes it's money, they GUESS.
Google is a private company, and does not have to disclose where it's profits come from, so it's just speculation based on observation.
It sounds reasonable.. but isn't necessarily true.
What about an immense Non-Profit Corporation that is designed to emulate the best of all the searchengines? It might never replace whatever private company is returning the best results with thier proprietary technology, but could run an eternal close second. And it's nonprofit nature would prevent corporate or government takeover. And all donations to it would be tax-deductable.
Looks good for your age..
Where did this number of $21-$36 billion dollars of worth come from? Alot of tech companies are drastically overvalued because someone is out there trying to hit the jackpot game and make a bundle. However there is no basis for this valuation of Google. For a regular company to have this sort of valuation it would need to be earning $250 MILLION a QUARTER! This would result in a, at best, mediocre company earning 5% a year.
A am not saying that they should not go and run for the dough, but anyone who convinces themselves that this is the next big thing and drastically overpays will at best break even if they are lucky more likely they will just lose their money.
I think what they're trying to do is keep Microsoft away from any sizeable percent of that 15% of the company thats going public. If they can sell their shares to a lot of individual people, preferably techies and other folk that are not interested in making ludicrous amounts of money at the cost of their company, then they will have revolutionized the market. In their own minds anyways...
... the NY Times reports ...
Its like a game of telephone. Problem is that Google hasn't actually rejected the offer, and there is no new news since the original NY TImes article.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
It must have been all the geeks of the world simultaneously exhaling sighs of relief.
Ok, so I guess now that Google has declined the buyout, Microsoft will declare war on them. They'll probably buy one of the lesser search engines, church it up a bit, slap some generic name on it like "Pinpoint" or "Searchlight" or some shit like that, market the hell out of it, and make it the default for every possible search function that exists in Windows.
I actually read the NYT article in the print edition a few days ago (nice scoopin' /.!), and my understanding of the article was that Google planned to do an IPO that would value it at about $15B, and later issue about $2B more of stock that would be sold through alternative means.
The idea being that the $2B issue gets you a lot of individual investors who are passionate about your company, as well as $2B in cash if you're lucky.
The $15B is sought from the IPO because, Google being a hot property, buzzword-compliant Wall Street investors will probably give you more money than the little guys.
Or did I misread TFA on Friday?
This Like That - fun with words!
This guy is making some valid points, and while you might not agree, I dont' see any links to goatse.cx or any "Linus is a stupid mangina" comments thrown in randomly.
Someone please mod the parent up, it's actually an interesting discussion.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Don't forget Torvald's Linux, Apache's web server, Oracle's database, Sony's Playstation, and TiVo's TiVo. All spectacular failures compared to their Microsoft competitors, right?
Then can you explain why Microsoft opted to buy Hotmail instead of developing their own webmail system?
At the time of purchase Microsoft was looking for a search engine and free e-mail. Hotmail was way ahead in the free e-mail rivalry, and since MSFT was going into ISP business to fight AOL, a free e-mail system would boost both Web properties, name recognition and ISP portion of MSN. I think they figured marketing costs into acquiring that many users and figured it was worth it.
If Google was up for sale for 300-500 mil, my suspicion is that MSFT would be there in a jiffy to get a deal. When we're talking billions, you've got to take things into account, like what exactly are you paying for? Google has the largest index, 3.3B pages and good search technologies for Web, images, groups and whatnot. Can you replicate the huge index? Yeah, with some investment in the million-dollar range. Can you replicate the search technologies? More or less yes, with people you already have.
Or why Yahoo! and AOL are still kicking MSN's ass all over the place
Define "kicking ass". MSN was profitable as of last quarter. Yes, took a while to get there with gazillions of dollars spent, but it's in the black now. MSFT has to report to its shareholders on profitability, not market share. I personally use Yahoo! services and prefer them to MSN, but since I don't pay for Yahoo! Mail or Briefcase or Launch videos, I fail to see that MSN is losing money, except some ad revenue.
Other than that I agree with most of the things you've mentioned.
its not hard for me to imagine such an organization.
-- self funded. advertising dollars in their current form could go a long way towards (or completely) paying for pipe and power
-- free expertise. the expertise to run the system already exists in the open source community.
-- free software. it already runs on linux so there aren't any licensing issues that i know of except for continued use of google's magic algorithm.
-- great engine for employing some people who should be employed. its not hard to imagine 1/4 to full time employees who are also maintaining the linux kernel, writing apache, maintaining postgres, or keeping the optimized network drivers smoking.
as an ancillary note, i've thought for awhile that the US Gov should perform some "directed welfare" whereby they offer some paltry salary to a group of (see list above... kernel/apache/etc.) whereby their salary would be rediculously low by even todays market standards, and the developers would be incredibly happy a. not to have to work for a traditional company and b. to be making _any_ money doing what they love.
the recent rampant failures of the power grid makes me wonder the same thing about a similar model being applied to that system. surely there are ReallySmartPeople who have the design/architectural expertise who aren't driven by money and are interested in working on the hard problems. i know a few people who are at the forefront of their industry. one in particular is a biomedical engineer who would keep working on the same problems whether they were in the context of running a business or being involved with a not for profit. i see the same thing in the open source community.
getting back to my earlier comments about getting rid of companies in their current form--- i'm just not convinced they are the best engine for continued technological advancement. especially in the code areas where the hard parts are so cheap.
and as i'm beginning to see in the development of the "World Intelligent Network" (as google is a very early form of) a company in the traditional sense isn't the best vehicle for that either.
Just interested, cause I want to invest some money in it and i want to know when to act on it....
I think it's kind of silly to claim everyone is being dense when they say google is a "search engine bussness". Google only started selling advertizing on other sites a couple months ago!
Before that, they only sold advertizing on their own site. They were advertizing, sure. But that's like saying slashdot is an 'advertizing site', or Law and Order is an "advertizing show" or something.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
arn't you talking about it right now?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Define "kicking ass". MSN was profitable as of last quarter. Yes, took a while to get there with gazillions of dollars spent, but it's in the black now. MSFT has to report to its shareholders on profitability, not market share. I personally use Yahoo! services and prefer them to MSN, but since I don't pay for Yahoo! Mail or Briefcase or Launch videos, I fail to see that MSN is losing money, except some ad revenue.
One, I question your implication that MSFT is accountable to its shareholders on anything. As long as the office and os divisions remain as stupidly successful as they have been, the shareholders will most likely look the other way on MSN's other pet divisions, no matter how much they tend toward being money black holes. The shareholders don't care; they just wish they would get dividends occationally.
Two, re: the MSN profits: that is very very strange, and very surprising. I had not heard about that; I knew their losses had declined over the last few quarters, but I didn't know they ever managed to hit the pont of breaking even. Do you know anything else about this? How big was the profit? Where did it come from? Was the growth because of something they did, or just because web advertising revenue is rebounding, or because of a change in the reporting of their accounting? This was the only reporting on Microsoft's quarter that ended in September I could find, and it did not even give the size of the profit.
("Kicking ass" was meant to mean "they are consistently making money, and msn is not", but this changes things somewhat.)
-- super ugly ultraman
In fact I don't see why Microsoft needs to take over Google at all. Developing their own technology would be far cheaper even including the promotion costs.
Google will be taken ove and made "platform specific" or pay to play ... and an "open source" google does not exist and would be impossible to create.
You do realize that you're talking about the same US government that gave the com domain to VeriSign, right?
google's wits are about them... who in their right technical mind would let someone else take over?! M$ sucks
=^_^= P|-|33R |\/|3
If, for whatever reason, Google becomes crap and no longer worth using, something will come along to replace it, and will most likely be even better.
You suggesting that the United States government should have control over the (currently) most important search engine in the world, is somewhat laughable, and sad. In fact, it is a sure prescription for Google's immediate failure and inability to adapt to the market, as is evidenced by the poor quality of every public service offered by the government when compared to their private sector counterparts.
I'm glad that Google decided to maintain their independence, but what would be so bad if they were taken over by MS? After all, it is the decision of those who currently own Google, not ours. They're going to make a decision based on what they think is good for them and their company.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It was reported just last week, so you might have missed it.
Also available here - Microsoft Says MSN Makes Its First Profit, the exact numbers are somewhere on EDGAR, I am too lazy to dig up.
Hey that's $369,771 dollars in SCO license fees! Think of all the Google shares you could buy with that scratch !!!
Microsoft: Resistance is futile, we will take all that is of google and incorperate it into our own being Google: Yo Billy Boy, resist this asshole!!!!!!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If I buy stock, do you think they'd take my suggestion to offer a torrent search (similar to Google Images, maybe) more seriously?
iceco2 says: "We all love google we use it every day, but it must be replaced."
um, whatever...
use whatever search engine you want, nobody's stopping you - why should google be "replaced"?
See that key on your keyboard just left of 'Z' and just below 'Caps Lock'? Learn to use it, and your posts will be more readable and taken more seriously.
What?
OK, that is interesting. Thank you.
I have no problem with the US Government creating their own search engine for the Internet, but they have no business acquiring privately or publicly owned companies.
Besides, anything they do would be so wrapped up in red tape and bureaucracy that adaptability (something essential to survival in such a fast paced area) would be impossible.
Even large corporations have trouble adapting to changes in technology; how do you possibly expect the government to be able to do so better?
Also, what benefits are given to the public from having the government taking over a business rather than starting their own service?
What?
hotmail was a great service and I had an account when I was in college. I remember the day that I found out that microsoft was taking over hotmail. I signed up for a yahoo account. I held on to my hotmail to see if the quality of the service would drop. It was ok for a while, then I saw rumors of microsoft trying to convert hotmail over to its technology. The service started becoming very unreliable, it sometimes took 3 months to get an email through. To this day, the service still has problems, it took many years for them to get the service to the point that you could rely on it again. Microsoft has never release any information on the hardware required to run hotmail. I would speculate that the cost of the software/hardware to run hotmail most likely would make the service infeasible by anyone but microsoft since hotmail probably either gets the software for free or at a discount. The hotmail switch was made in order to prove microsoft's technology to other people. The amount of $$$ spent getting it to where it is today must have been staggering.
Now look at google. They use about 8000-10000 linux 1u servers to run their software. Imagine how long it will take microsoft to switch google's software over to their technology. And the cost? Will it even be possible with 1u servers? Or will they need huge 32 processor unisys servers running windows datacenter? google will go down the tubes if microsoft takes them over because they will try to port google's software from the linux platform to the windows platform, and money will be no object.
Hopefully, google won't sell out.
On a side note, it makes microsoft look pretty desperate since they were bragging about working on technology to defeat google just the other day. Apparently it must be a much more monumental task than they originally envisioned...
Seriously, if their expected market capitalization is upwards of $20 billion, then maybe they should make a play for Microsoft. This kind of "the little company leverages junk bonds to swallow the big company" was all the rage in the past. Have the poison pills and other defensive measures adopted since the 1980s made this impossible, any MBAs here? If not impossible, then Google, please buy Microsoft, thank you.
All posts are valid XHTML to the point that I can control...
Isn't that sort of like sterilizing your toilet before you flush? Slashdot's solution to the problem of "valid XHTML" is serving up 403 Forbidden responses to validator.w3.org.
I want to be clear on what you're asking for here. You actually desire a situation where you send the government a list of things you happen to be interested in on any particular day?
well , lets say microsoft bought google. 1.Google will be shipped only with Microsoft products.google updates would suck. 2.This will anger open source guys and in turn they would work on a project Freesearchengine. 3.MS will make changes to google glorifying his products and lessening the quality of search 4.Eventually Opensource community will win bringing a better search enginethan google.[google-MS additions] So this is just a passing phase for us !! Lets wish google remain a king as it is !!! Cheers
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
Now who is being naive ... they wont need Wall Street for quite a bit with 2 billion dollars in the bank, and if they proove successfull in making money on the market which actually matters to their bottom line (ie. not the stock market) lack of good will wont stand in the way of investors looking for a buck on a second offering.
... and that is no big loss IMO.
As long as their IPO succeeds the worst thing that can happen to them is that they will have to find something different than option plans to reward employees with in the short term if there is a backlash
The DNS registry worked great under the govt. When it was privatized it went to hell.
War is necrophilia.
This guy is good. Formerly the CTO at Overture. Now with MSN Search.
The AC might be flamebaiting, but it's true. There are not nearly enough Linux users to make Google concerned about whether selling to MS would make a dent on their traffic. I mean, c'mon. Seriously.
Would all linux users even necessarily stop using Google if it was linux? There are plenty of Linux users who still use MS products, because sometimes, MS products are the right ones for the job.
Like when you need a paperweight. Or iridescent frisbees.
------ What's sadder than realizing you've filtered out your own comments?
Somehow, I think that google is less biased than the US government.
The government would "protect" Google the way they "protect" the post office and Amtrak. That is to say, they'd let it grow fat and lazy, immune to the pressures of competition. And we as consumers would suffer as a result.
Anybody with even a basic understanding of economics knows that.
It appears your shift key is broken. You might want to get that fixed.
Google needs to stay clean and as independent as possible until
the grow about 10x. At that point, they've got something that's
-really- interesting.
If they have even the smallest partnership with M$, it will poison
them and they will die, as it has poisoned all of those companies in the past.
M$ involvement would only be good for M$, not for Google's users,
it's customers, or the company itself.
It will be difficult to resist temptation up to the 10x point, but by
then even M$ will be marginalized. Should be fun to watch.
Good luck guys. Keep it pure.
"ok, let's see here, sir. Please enter your search request on three copies of form 1144-EZ and you'll get your results back in 4 to 6 weeks. Neeeext!"
News: The Linux Documentation Project Turns 10 - Slashdot - 31 Oct 2003 Motorola Launches Linux-Based Phone - PC World - 31 Oct 2003 Try Google News: Search news for linux or browse the latest headlines
The Linux Home Page at Linux Online Linux Online, ... Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created
by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. ...
Description: Comprehensive information and resources about the Linux Operating System.
Category: Computers > Software > Operating Systems > Linux > Directories
www.linux.org/ - Similar pages
Linux.com: Linux news, information, software, documentation, and ...
Linux.com, New to Linux? Start Here. October 31st, 2003, ... Click Here. Linux News,
section sponsor. IBM eServer xSeries + Linux: get IDC report. - Latest News -. ...
Description: A Linux portal and directory.
Category: Computers > Software > Operating Systems > Linux
www.linux.com/ - 58k - 1 Nov 2003 - Cached - Similar pages
Red Hat -- Linux, Embedded Linux and Open Source Solutions Red Hat is the destination for Linux, Embedded Linux, and open source solutions. We provide Linux-based support, documentation, downloads, training. ...
Description: Official site; news, support, documentation, whitepapers, downloads, consulting, training, embedded...
Category: Computers > Software > ... > Linux > Distributions > Red Hat
www.redhat.com/ - 29k - 1 Nov 2003 - Cached - Similar pages - Stock quotes: RHAT
Debian GNU/Linux -- The Universal Operating System Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many ...
Description: Official site. One of the most important distributions, uses only Free Software as defined by FSF....
Category: Computers > Software > ... > Linux > Distributions > Debian
www.debian.org/ - 17k - 1 Nov 2003 - Cached - Similar pages
The Linux Documentation Project is now on tldp.org The Linux Documentation Project is working towards developing free, high quality documentation for the Linux operating system. The ...
www.linuxdoc.org/ - 16k - 1 Nov 2003 - Cached - Similar pages
The Linux Kernel Archives The Linux Kernel Archives. Welcome to the Linux Kernel Archives. ... Many
thanks for your support! The Linux Kernel Archives Mirror System. ...
Description: This is the primary site for the Linux kernel source.
Category: Computers > Software > Operating Systems > Linux > Kernel
www.kernel.org/ - 18k - 1 Nov 2003 - Cached - Similar pages
Then I searched MSN
RESULTS (TOP 6)
FEATURED SITES - ABOUT # Amazon.com Buy Linux software at the Amazon.com software store. www.amazon.com
# eBay Find great deals on Linux software and accessories. Also find millions of other items in over 18,000 categories. www.ebay.com
# Introducing Linux Find the latest news and information on this operating system. tech.msn.com
# Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products. www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/migration
WEB DIRECTORY SITES - ABOUT # Linux Online Provides support, advice on getting started, a bookstore and sections for downloading applications, hardware, and distributions. www.linux.org
# Linux Journal Previews the upcoming issue and presents selected articles from past issues. Includes subscription details and related links. www.linuxjournal.com
If you follow the google links you can actually easily find out linux distros and learn about lots about linux. All and all it goes to show how a search engine can slant results in favour of a company. To alow MS to take over internet search is like sending the mouse to see the cat.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
How about all those other search engines that work reasonably well? Would it be fair to these other companies to have a government subsidized search engine?
-jq
that depends. If they're the owners, then it's not a "bribe", but a business transaction. If it's an executive who's offered $50-million and he makes a decision that doesn't benefit the owners of Google, then he's just committed a criminal action, and violated his contract. In the first case, there's no problem, because the owners can do whatever the hell they want: they're the owners -- it's theirs. In the second, the executive has committed a crime and violated contract.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
... Is if this story is accurate, and gets the same sort of coverage in the mainstream US press as all the SCO coverage has so far. It'll never happen, but just imagine a bunch of slashdotters taking advantage of an IPO that catches most of the investment community by surprise.
Who is John Cabal?
You mean the back quote/pipe key? That's what I see on my keyboard ;-)
"There's no other easy software package out there expect that produced by microsoft that allows them to do it"
.... but to say that you hate microsoft and simultaneously say that there is no alternative is both moronic and beyond infuriating.
??????
Obviously this exactly the kind of incomprehensible statement that turns us mac users into the annoying, screaming lunatic extremists that we are. Anyone who buys a peecee for their parents might as well put sand in their folk's hemeroid cream while they're at it. For 20 years I have worked with both macs and PC's every single day and their is absolutely no question in my mind that the mac is better, easier to use and cheaper in the long run because of their longevity. If you happen to like PC's that's fine
clusters!
if google were to go away tomorrow, i'd become immediately unemployable. i've heard the same thing from other techies, non-techies, and even anti-techies.
:)
That's no way to be a geek. Write your own web crawler / search engine in perl before you give up, at least, man.
I think it's not worth buying Google shares. I also don't think there was a takeover bid. Building something like google from scratch would cost a lot less than the insane money everyone on this thread is talking about, especially considering there's a whole group working on this in MS Research. As always, V1 will not kill anyone, but V2 (which may be 2 to 3 years away) coupled with integration into Longhorn/MSN/Whatever will sure send google's stock price into tailspin. If you think MS doesn't have enough smart people or technology - think again. Heck, there are at least two search engines on the web already that do pretty much the same thing as google - alltheweb.com and teoma.com. The word is, teoma.com indexes more pages. If MS is serious about search (and it sounds like they are), I'd suggest Google to diversify their business somewhat before it's too late.
Who cares about the goodwill of investment bank underwriters? Their goodwill and fifty cents won't buy you a cup of coffee in Starbuck's, in Google's position.
If you don't need a huge chunk of cash now, then who cares what the bankers think? Especially if, like Google, your stock is going to be in high demand however you release it? You're not doing this to play on the Street. You're doing it since you've spread your stock around so much that you'll have to start reporting financials anyway, and so your employees will now have an actual value for that stock you gave them.
It's especially nice since you want to retain control. One type of Dutch auction is the perfect way to spread the shares around -- the form that charges only the lowest winning per-share bid price to the winners, but doles out the shares to highest bidders first. The result is small investors who definitely want a few shares will bid insanely high prices, in the almost-certain knowledge that the institutional bidders that will ultimately make up most of the winners won't bid nearly that much.
So, maybe you don't make as much cash with the offering as you would have through a traditional venue. BFD. You brought in some money in a way that only adds obligations you already were going to wind up with, you made your employees' stock worth something, and you did your best to immunize yourself from Wall Street. What's not to love, and who cares what the Street thinks of you in the morning?
Just feedin' the troll.
everyone knows that google is a crime ring making money by illegally selling crack to middle school students. :)
-HaDAk
Yes, but that would be a good thing for MS if they are trying to get rid of those embarassing Usenet archives. even now, a lot of newbies never learn about Usenet. Blocking them altogether will even hide those old discussions about anti-competitive behaviour or history of abyssmal security problems.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Best bit would be if Google goes with doing its own share offering, then uses the software to provide similar services to other companies.
:-)
Hey presto, Google now takes business from Saloman, JP Morgan, CSFB etc. Now _that_ would be an interesting market development. I've always thought that the IPO business was a bit archaic.
So there's my prediction: Google uses its own IPO as a way of developing / testing share offering software to allow it to enter the market and compete with the big investment banks.
but i regard the google service as a public good
I'll leave aside the fact that there shouldn't be corporations -- government owned or not -- and ask just a simple question:
What in the Constitution gives the U.S. government the authority to buy and run Google?
Even if it were a "public good," it is not the U.S. government's responsibility to make that kind of determination. I know, I know -- hasn't stopped them in the past, but precedence doesn't make something right.
Remember that things like Social Security and Welfare were created for the "public good." Now, I watch 7.5% of every paycheck (matched by another 7.5% from my employer) go into a sub-standard savings black hole that'll be bankrupt before I retire. Now, we see families who've been accepting the "hand up" of Welfare for generations. How much more "public good" do you want from the government?
Want Google to remain free from the corruption of corporate greed? Buy a share and attend every annual share-holder meeting. Make it clear that while profit is ok, it must never compromise the service being provided. Google has tremendous good will with Internet users, they should make profit building on that good will instead of selling it like the search engines that have gone before.
Just my two cents, keep the change.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Internet search leader Google has rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft in favour of selling its shares directly to the public, The New York Times has reported.
Meanwhile, neighbors of Mr. William Gates III were privy to the multi-billionaire's announced response to the news:
Gates: Fuck, FUCK, FUUUUUUUUCK!!!!
Illiad is right on top of things again: :))
click
You probably have never invested in the stock market if you think the following: "The result is small investors who definitely want a few shares will bid insanely high prices"
I yet have to find a sane person who knows a thing or two about finances who would willingly offer more for a share than its asking price.
What guarantee do 'small investors' have that the stock would appreciate to the point where they bought it in any reasonable amount of time.
Blind love for a company should be the reason to just throw out your money for nothing. There are charities for that!
Your keyboard sucks. =]
What about those of us who do not live in the states? I would not like that all this power goes to a country. US is not better to me than MS. What about a more neutral entity, which is supposed to care about us, and not only about you?
What about the UN? What about the UNESCO? If it is a public good, then why shoud it be public=US, and not public=humanity?
(Just a thought).
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
Oh, I had the exact same idea as you! Except the year was 1996 and the site was Altavista. Couldn't live without it. Thank Goodness the government didn't nationalize and subsidize them making the emergence of Google as a successful, profitable, private, limited liability corporation next to impossible. But now that we have Google maybe we should reconsider your plan, I mean, nothing could ever get better than this, right?
Sure, Google may have come from nowhere to become profitable while providing a huge amount of value not only to the people who risked piles of time and money on the enterprise, but also to the public at large and their customers. But of course mutual benefit through voluntary association and private property just usually isn't possible in a capitalist system, this is an anomaly and it must be protected.
I also rely on Debian daily for job related activities; I know a lot of people who do. Maybe final decision making power for Debian should be removed from the technical committee and developers and transfered to an appropriations committee of the US Dept of Commerce. I mean, can we really risk such an important piece of technology to a bunch of private individuals. I even heard that one of the former DPLs played a major role at a major corporation in the motion picture industry, while he was involved with Debian!. We all know how greedy and untrustworthy that type is; there is no way of telling how he may have subverted Debian when he had control of it.
Ok now that I've pulled my tongue out of my cheek, could I ask you to put down the Adbusters and spend time every day really thinking about these wonderful things that we rely on and where they came from? Also think about the real freedom to innovate and how that could start to be lost.
And if you do the honourable thing and keep your emigration pact with Alec Baldwin, please don't come to Canada.
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
cmon. i'm shorting sco stock, aren't you?
Up here in Western Canada, we have a fairly new (less than 1 year old) search engine starting up (www.reveal.ca) designed specifically for searching for businesses. One of their sales guys came by our store the other day, and in his pitch he had mentioned that they were starting their expansion throughout the rest of Canada and the into the US. He also said they expected to be big enough in a year to buy Google. I was polite enough not to laugh in his face, but I wonder if I should forward him a copy of this article so he acutally has some concept of what he is telling people.
I'd look for parallels with the attacks against Quicken. The borg has encountered this kind of resistance before. Going IPO would allow hostile take over and reduce the ability to resist. Not such a clever idea unless they really are interested in throwing in the towel.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I agree that anyone who gets in on the Google IPO is dumb unless they are somehow able to sell within the first five minutes. That means day traders will (potentially) make a killing while Joe Main Street will be taken to the cleaners.
So, your primary argument about why Google is foolish (nay, 'sophomoric') to consider auctioning off IPO shares via eBay is... that investment bank underwriters will be pissed off that they don't get a cut. That's all? Fine with me.
Are you a leading investment bank underwriter, by any chance? And if so, how do you manage to post to Slashdot between your 120-hour work week and your cocaine habit?
Don't you mean "walkie-talkie grade plutonium"?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
No way. Handing google over to the government provide it with a very powerful tool that could be used to further its agenda in the spying and profiling business. Just send in a copy of your house key, and a written invitation to "drop by any time" while you're at it.
> if we're left to decide we'll just choose "no censorship, period"
As much as I love to be a U.S. Government apologist, I have to argue this point. They would definitely censor some things. They may not tell you they are, but there will be (if there isn't already) some kind of legislation to make sure you can't get certain things.
> how do you possibly expect the government to be able to do so better?
A sort-of nitpick, but the government DOES have the ability to do better. Unfortunately, the inefficiency is what keeps them in control (anyone; not just Reps or Dems). Create the illusion that everything takes years to do (and make it so by using stupid laws & regulations -- red tape) and congratulate yourself and your supporters publicly for passing some things in only a year, but say your "enemies" are horrible people slowing progress when they can't do something insanely complex in a few months.
Just a big shuffle of illusion.
> What about a more neutral entity, which is supposed to care about us
What, like ICANN? They're such a great, honest, and impartial group...
There's kind of a big difference between a privatized industry and a government-granted monopoly. With the latter, they have all the disinterest of the government in providing new and better solutions to best their competition, with none of the public oversight come election time.
Run by an organization with "Inc." at the end of their name != Free Market Privatization
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
what do you think about dividing google into two entities... a not for profit to run the engine/service and the company to sell the right-side realestate?
i dont agree with your comments, just because if those factions really wanted what you claim, the legislation would already be written and the current google would already be complying, and we would already be up in arms about it.
as far as i know, the only neg on google so far is selling ranking, not censorship.
Please define 'good piece'.
It should be noted that the article's author, Andrew Orlowski, has repeatedly written articles about how awful Google is, citing spurious examples and anecdotal evidence. He's also one of the leading opponents of weblogs, going so far as to deriding weblog-related conferenced he hasn't attended or haven't even taken place yet.
I wouldn't trust anything he has to say about the wisdom of a Google/Microsoft merger.
Eloquence should never be confused with insight.
Kevin Fox
I think a lot of Russian casualties can be explained by genocidal invaders, and genocidal defenders. The earlier post about sending unarmed soldiers into battle is one point. Russian POWs did not get great treatment once they got home. They went into russian prison camps when they got home.
Cannon fodder. Lemmings. It must have really sucked to be them.
i dont really feel compelled by a straw man argument holding up one public good--our specific implementation of social security--as a reason to avoid govt provided/maintained public goods.
,leaving the engineers to run the service.
.gov sites is just a precursor to that. google is a little farther along the evolution. at some point, some minimum level of computational availability just might should be provided for in the constition. just like i look to them to certify that my air is clean enough, and roads safe enough.
i happen to like things like highways, clean air, police protection *cough*damntheman*cough* etc.
heck, in the spirit of the works powers act, i could see a ton of techies get employed as the entrepeneurs at google take flight to their next venture
regarding your question--i'm no legal/legislative/constitutional expert, but it seems to me that if someone figured out a way to--say, kill all the people on the planet with a satchel based invention made of commodity parts, the govt would step in, thru whatever means necessary to take control of this new invention for the "public good".
so my answer is that i'm not so convinced that the constition shouldn't be amended such that it starts to provide for things like the right to compute in an uncensored way. i know the govt isn't the best group to bring me innovation, but damn if i dont want microsoft doing it either.
at some level, there will eventually be a government computer. the information we get out of the
i dont know if the US Govt really needs to buy the company Google, but i sure think it should attempt to preserve the service underlying the company. i'll leave the implementation to people who can figure out how to get us there from here politically and legislatively.
the government already has my housekey. they can walk into my apartment complex and say, we need into #424. i'm not sure they will be able to access my encrypted filesystems though.
or maybe they can. heck, in industry i'm regarded as a ReallySmartGuy. that doesn't mean the govt doesn't already have a way to make road runner let them see all my unencrypted internet traffic.
i get upset about invasions of privacy just as much as the next guy, but come on people--the loss of privacy in today's contexts is happening. its getting to the point where the only thing thats private is that which is encrypted on my hard drive with the strongest algorithms, and current sized keys, etc.
do you guys really think the US Gov doesn't already have the ability to go get usage information from google? i think they do. if i were the US Gov (with their agenda) i'd have direct query access to their databases, and reporting engines... but i'm a control/security freak. even if they dont, its not hard to imagine them getting this kind of access.
if people are really scared of a government which can keep close tabs on them, they should be especially scared of a situation where other organizations are developing this ability while the organization we have the biggest say in sits idly by as technology races ahead.
its not hard for me to imagine citibank knowing more about individuals on this forum than they'd prefer.
lol. well, i guess my lack of capitalization except in certain situations when i want to add THAT _kind_ --of-- **emphasis** is an area where i'm vulnerable to criticism.
:)
call me wacky, but i see some parallels in the following, do you?:
-- i'm pretty convinced that i never want to work in an evironment where certifications matter. i'm looking for a meritocracy where i'm judged on what i know.
-- i'd hope the content of my posts is what gets attention, not my spelling or lack of capitalization.
-- i spent 8 years in college, but dont hold any degrees.
besides, managing carpal tunnel is a serious problem for me, and i'm all about minimizing key strokes. aren't you? what would e.e. cummings say?
you are right about how my posts were originally perceived. the first post called me a douchebag. maybe he was referring to my inferior grammar or lack of appropriate punctuation?
i dont frankly care about the market for google's services. i care about providing the service to the people of the world, and focusing on what is involved technically and funding wise.
i'm looking for a way to _specifically remove_ market forces from the implementation of the service. right?
painting in such broad strokes is dangerous though. i think you have to balance quality and cost. i live in texas and i think the roads here are awesome. are you saying that there is another organization which should be receiving federal highway dollars to implement roads? if so, who?
i look forward to the day when something comes along to replace google. what if its implemented by microsoft? does that scare you more or less then google being run by a government agency or (as some posters have noted) as a not-for-profit?
i've given this a little thought.
at first i thought maybe they just need to license google. but then i got to thinking about it and realized that they would need to have their own dataset, their own crawlers, just using the same algorithms.
i'm not so interested in seeing google continue as a company. i think some organization, for the purposes of this topic the US Gov, then basically shut down the business side of it and just run the service. the old deja stuff, new crawls, and at that point it would become a separate entity from google the business. if the engineers that run it decicde that there's a better way to do it, then they can develop it in parallel with google the company, if it still exists after the magic deal i'm proposing.
i wouldn't be averse to the company continuing to exist, where it just sold the right most 20% of the real estate similar to paid rankings today. my main focus, however, is that the service be implemented by engineers, free from market forces.
i hold up debian as an example. they are a self governing organization doing quality work and worked on by thousands of people. i imagine a vaguely similar structure for running the new google.
the benefits are obvious. people are learning about the internet every day. as technology becomes more advanced it becomes less accessible. i want google to be aroudn for 10 years at least in its current implementation so that new internet users can marvel at whats possible before advancing to the next system that replaces google.
i'm a star trek fan, i know we are moving to a world where computers are just "with us" and we will be able to talk to them withotu keyboards or dragon, but we're not there yet. google is just an important step along the way that i dont want to get disrupted just because it stops being profitable for some reason or another.
sure. if they find my searches for kernel log messages and goat sex interesting then great.
i see too many people sending their credit cards via email, and have seen too many instances of social engineering to think that the entire notion of privacy is just a thin veneer we interested liberals lay across our daily lives.
the reality is that privacy as we knew it pre-internet just doesn't exist anymore.
the US Gov might not be interested in maintaining internationalized service, but the engineers that the site will get run/managed/modified by certainly would.
:)
note that i'm emphasizing the separation of google the company (marketing, brokering, etc.) from google the search engine service/algorithm.
well, some people are in the business of making roads. the govt ends up choosing some companies to make the national highways. and in other cases employs the entire crews to make the national highways. is that fair to other companies that might be in the road business? i dont know.
i do think some things are just that important. like the emergence of our global network brain even in its infancy. thats what i think google is.
in germany i think they have a "national" television station which competes with a "private" television station for viewers. at least in '94 when i learned about this from one of the executives on the national station it wasn't such a bad thing.
frankly, i'm not so concerned with whats "fair" to companies anyway. these are the same entities which abuse their employees, consumers, and in some cases the public at large just to turn a larger profit.
heck, if google went off the "search engine market" such that it didn't sell anything to anyone that would be fine by me, but then funding for the datacneters, hardware, people, etc. would have to come from somewhere. of course linux is free.
heh.
i hate perl.
i love python.
but i hear you. if i could work out the funding requirements, i'd just start an "opengoogle" implementation and we'd be off in sourceforge fashion.
i certainly appreciate your perspective/concern.
however, i dont have a great answer for you. as long as the u.s. has amongts the best engineers, datacenters, entrepeneurial environments, etc. it seems like a natural place for it to be.
havnen't given it much thought since frankly i see it as a non-issue. do you really care where the servers are that are serving your queries? caching servers aside, its one of the thigs that should be abstracted away from you.
i have to admit, if google were a british company, my first thought would have been "why not have the british govt buy them?"
if you refer to my other posts on this thread, you'll note that i'm specifically advocating control of the service be put directly in the hands of the engineers/developers very much like the debian system so most of your tongue-in-cheek comments are non-starters.
i'm almost certain that if altavista had been turned over to an organization which functioned alot like the debian group, that the simple epiphany of link-ranking would still have come about. probably sooner.
given that i spend alot of time evaluating startup ideas/projects and that my wife is a principal in a venture firm, i'm knee deep in the primordial ooze that provides creative, risk-taking people the freedom to innovate. i dont see how separating the "business of selling prioritized billboard space" and the "implementation of this novel way to maintain www search databases" is really limiting to anyone. assuming the US Gov does thru some miracle decide to buy google, setup an organization to run and maintain the site (and do whatever with the "sell adspace" part) i dont see how anyone's freedom to innovate has been impacted.
what i do see is the original entrepeneurs and current shareholders get compensated for their investment, the "ad space" business might continue, and the underlying service gets protected from market forces.
if in 5 years we decide google is irrelevant even for the multitudes who are still finding the internet then we shut it down. i doubt that will be the case, however.
thoughts?
I don't care a bit about where the servers are, nor about the nationality of the engeneers caring about them.
I do care about the legislation applicable to the servers. If China were in charge, we all would suffer from the same restrictions that the chinese citizens do. That would be a Bad Thing(TM).
As much as I appreciate that the US government cares more for civil liberties than Chinese government, something bigger and more neutral than US (or Europe, or Japan, or India or China) seems more appropiate to me.
Any country may suffer from a heavy blow to civil liberties, as post 11/9 US shows us. (Here in Spain we are going the same way, unfortunately!).
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
makes sense.
i dont really know of any ethically/technically successful candidate organizations. i welcome their introduction to this forum.
> the legislation would already be written and the current google would already be complying
Not necessarily. I admit my interpretation may be a bit far-fetched, but as Google is a private entity, the government has very limited control over it. If U.S. Fed tried forcing censorship, everyone would cry foul, because it is a private company. If Google was under U.S. oversight, however, it would be much easier to do.
I suppose both a supporting and counter-argument would be the whole deal with "forcing" libraries to censor (keep traffic off unapproved sites) their public Internet connections. The Gov tried to use their might (or if you believe them, morality) to censor content in a public library. You are correct, however, that people were up in arms about it. Any idea where that currently stands? I haven't heard much on it lately.
Your comment is, like, so 1986. .
The point is, search engines seem to be becoming a commodity. MS can easily get a hundred million users to use their search engine right after its release. If this search engine is good enough, they'll stay there generating revenue. If their engine is significantly better than google, they'll talk their friends into using it. And I've heard they plan on indexing twice as many pages twice as fast as google. Wait for V2 though. Google still has time to diversify, but they won't. They think they're invincible.