Slashdot Mirror
Dvorak on Google and Wikipedia
cryptoluddite writes "PC Magazine has an article by John C. Dvorak expanding on the community discussion of Google's offer for free web hosting of Wikipedia. Those against the deal point out that Google may be planning to co-opt the encyclopedia as Googlepedia (by restricting access to the complete database). In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.' Should public domain information be free?" It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days. Update: 02/16 20:16 GMT by T : This story links inadvertently to the second page of the column; here's a link to the first page.
Google wouldn't be like msn and only show certain articles, plus that wouldn't work with wikipeida since it's user made/edited
Signatures are so 90s
Wow --
"It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days."
That's horrible.
Wouldn't Wikipedia take measures to ensure nothing bad happened? I mean, that's what contracts are for...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Great, more giant monopolies. Google seem to be attempting to become the Microsoft of the internet. At least they're being open about it I guess.
In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.'
For a company that claims they are endevouring to never be evil, this strikes me as a pretty evil bait-and-switch type scheme to me.
I think I'm going to start checking out Yahoo's search engine. Not because I think I'll ever prefer it, but because I think I'd better start getting used to it, just in case.
Just hosting Wikipedia would work with google's already profitable model. Why would they bother creating a fee based model for a community product?
This is something that will be very interesting. The information in wikipedia should be available to everyone for free. There could be an interesting situation where people could subscribe to a service to have no advertising. That way it would pay for the wikipedia services to continue running, while still providing the benefit to the community. I know I use online services reguarly and its something that I would pay a nominal fee for without complaining to much.
However it must have both free and subscription based services for it to be a viable system.
Lots of people know that Wikipedia hasn't had the server power to keep up, but a pay-for-service model isn't the answer. A free web-based encyclopedia is what makes wikipedia so great.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I thought the content on Wikipedia was licensed under a free, open license? How can Google "revoke" that to do this?
Whether Wikipedia should accept is another matter. I don't think that they should. It's much easier to appear independent if you have to pay your way, and for an encyclopedia, appearing independent is really pretty important.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Yes, yes it should indeed be free. Information is the essential ingredient to the advancement of society. This is why public libraries, schools, and lectures were created, so that information could be dissemenated to all individuals who actively sought it out for themselves and for their children. Charging $20 a month for access to information is an outrageous idea and is particularly frightening when uttered by an individual whose company holds the key to so much of the electronic information on the web. I think if they continue with his "vision" of the future, Google's usage will plummet quite rapidly.
Hasn't the Open Source community taught anyone the value of free information exchange??
As opposed to private businesses which have no interest in maximizing profits?
What?
The submitter obviously drew a paralell between a speech given 4 years ago and Google's actions today. Just because Google once want to charge people $20 for some webservice, dosen't mean that they're robbing us of Wikipedia! Sometimes, goodness is just goodness, and charity is charity, even (Shudders) with Big Business. Maybe, just MAYBE, Google is trying to help them out?
First, if the relationship between the Wikipedia and Google can be properly maintained, and boundaries established, I think this is a good thing for the Wikipedia.
People are fearful that Google will attempt to co-opt the Wikipedia. That's what is apparent in the Dvorak article. However, what Wikipedia needs is a slick lawyer to write a contract between Google and Wikipedia. (IANASL)
1. Google will host the Wikipedia as a donation.
2. Google will not restrict access to the Wikipedia except as mutually agreed upon by both parties, and a public page to explain what restrictions and why. At no time will restrictions be based upon subscriptions or charges.
3. Wikipedia will put a slick Google icon somewhere on the page to say "thanks Google for hosting us."
4. This agreement may be terminated with fair notice to the other party at any time.
If Wikipedia is able to maintain its autonomy, and the relationship is clearly labelled a donation of server space, then I think the Wikipedia could be hosted on Google.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Second, Google may just want to be in on the ground floor if and when Wikipedia decides to allow Adsense-type ads.
Third, companies do often do charitable things. It's a tax write-off.
Given those three things, I recommend that some commenters pay attention to the big, friendly letters in the subject line.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
You are a hippie idiot. Any company is a company to make MONEY, not to serve some general good. Guess what, even Kaiser and Cancer treatment places are there to MAKE MONEY, not for any other purpose. Maybe the people working there do so out of the "kindness of their heart," but that is not the intent of the organization as a whole. Same with Google. Same with Slashdot. And same with anything else.
A blog like any other.
Public domain information is already free (free as in speech), but that doesn't mean that somebody can't also charge for it.
It's no different than the GPL -- also free as in speech, but not necessarily free as in beer.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
It seems obvious enough to me that DejaNews/Google Groups has kept Usenet far more prominent than it would have been otherwise (Dvorak doesn't seem to get that the archive isn't ownership of Usenet itself), but given that he's claiming that Groups isn't linked off the Google front page at all, why bother arguing details.
Whatever. If dumbasses who have seen Star Wars too many times enjoy droning on about how Google used to be Good and Not Evil, but is now Evil, who am I to argue? At any rate, Wikipedia isn't going anywhere.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
15 or so years ago Dvorak had some insightful articles, even if they didn't always come 100% true. Nowadays he's another has-been from a past era trying to pimp his FUD and general tech conspiracy theories. IMO, if you steadily bet AGAINST Dvorak you'll come out ahead over the long run.
In the days of 10Mhz 286's I used to really enjoy John's columns. Now, I don't know if I've just gotten smarter, or he's gotten dumber (heh), but I can't remember the last time he didn't seem like a technology lunatic to me.
-This sig intentionally left blank
I don't particularly understand your reasoning. Are you saying that since the founder of Wikipedia also has a pornography business, Wikipedia is thusly tainted and cannot be recommended by you or others to information seekers?
...
If so, why? I've never been browsing Wikipedia and stumbled upon pornography. I'd been using Wikipedia for about a year or so before I even found out its founder has an adult business.
But, if you're going to make that judgement for a community resource such as Wikipedia, do you do it with other businesses as well? It's been said recently that the consumer electronics industry is driven largely by what the adult industry needs in such devices (camcorders, DVD standards, etc.). Do you hold these companies to the same standard and refuse to purchase or recommend their products if they have any ties to adult oriented business?
Just sayin'
Books that are in the public domain still cost money. Anyone has rights to publish them, but publishing them is still a business enterprise and still costs money. If google hosts Wikipedia, they ought to be able to attempt to make money off of it, but NOT by leveraging IP ownership or DRM. As long as the information can still be freely distributed as a public domain resource, mirrored by other interested parties, etc., then I don't see a problem with google hosting and charging for access.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Dvorak's doing much the same thing for the tech industry that your paper's sports columnists do for the local teams. His role isn't "provide a balanced picture of such-and-so," it's more like "provoke a reaction by pushing every subject to distorted extremes."
Every sports section has at least one writer like that. Their job is to generate traffic, or responses, by staking out polemical opinions. Usually the one writer who pulls this duty paints a bleak picture of the local teams' moves, so as to get the loyalists to write in. It helps circulation. The same people work extra shifts on call-in shows, pretty often.
In this case, our sage has consistently been on the wrong side of basically every technology he's commented on in my book. He's a sort of gadfly to all things Apple, for example. (His reaction to the idea of the mouse was as spectacularly wrong as anything ever written on computers.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
PC Magazine is zombie, it's empire crumbled, aside from it's regular product comparison charts (which are widely blamed for much of today's feature-bloat) nobody would still be aware of it's continued existence. From that sad little bailiwick Dvorak bleats for attention and worse yet the gullible wanna-be defenders rush to dispute him.
This week he's on a smear against Google & Wikipedia. It could as well been another (willfully) know-nothing Linux FUD article, or another Mac-troll, or whatever. They're all trash and only PHB's struck in the 80's still pay the slightest attention to his "opinions" (quotes because I don't think be means a bit of what he says himself.)
The folks who run Wikipedia are notably honest. To date the folks at Google have done pretty well by their "No Evil" credo. Everything on Wikipedia is open so if need be it could be quickly reconstituted elsewhere. Thus, whatever the negotiations between Wikipedia & Google there's nothing to fear.
If the current Wikipedia administration does something heinously stupid the project will route around them. Besides which the best guesses are Google is talking bandwidth & caching, perhaps prioritized ranking, not ownership.
Dvorak, he's taking an old quote out of context and trying to create a scare. That's not reporting, or even editorializing, that's just baiting, pure & simple. Don't play into his game, he's the SCO of journalism.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Need I remind everyone about CDDB? I contribute my time and effort into uploading track descriptions, etc., only to have my contributions co-opted by the guy running the database. I don't plan on letting this happen again.
The CDDB thing comes to mind, obviously, but it's a very different situation.
All the contributions to CDDB were merely info copied from liner notes and CD cases by fans with some free time. GraceNote was a bastard when they went closed, but it's hard to argue that the information was owned by anyone (except perhaps the original artists).
With Wikipedia, you've got original works. These are things that are copyrightable, and as far as I know, the original authors of all the articles still retain their copyrights. The Wikipedia license doesn't seem to say anything about surrendering that. So if Google were to try and close this and charge for redistribution, they'd be violating the license under which these thousands of original authors released their work and opening themselves up to a very valid lawsuit.
Similarly, there are two ways to stop people from reading a library book: you can remove the book from the shelf, or you can just remove it's entry in the card catalog.
We should all keep in mind that Google is becomming the "card catalog" for much of the on-line world. Many would argue that if it doesn't exist on the from page of a Google search, then for most of the world, it just doesn't exist.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
What does Google have a monopoly on? How about the original Usenet archives? You know, the ones from the 1980's, where the only copy was kept on a single tape at a University, that a former sysadmin went back and stole?
He then gave it to Google.
It's funny - I never heard about google ever offering to share THAT with anybody. And Google has made a lot of money off of it.
And, come to think of it, I don't recall Google ever offering to pay the University that originally had it.