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Google's Impact on the Internet
Kierkegaard writes "The Globe & Mail and Fortune Magazine both wrote a piece on Google, arguably one of the most important companies in the world, and its influence and impact on the Internet. In particular, they mention the effects of Google's recent new services, like Blogger and Maps, as well as their take on how Google threatens the Microsoft Corporation. "If Sergey and Larry stick to their corporate mantra -- Don't be evil -- and are able to stem degeneration into the typically corrupt corporate ethos, who knows, they may just succeed in assuming the fair and honourable dominion over the world's information they so naively set out to achieve eight years ago in their garage.""
I'm curious to hear from people that have bad experiences with Google, or wish they did something another way, or even any examples of "corporate evilness" from them.
I'm not trying to be trollish, just curious if anybody has any perspective other than the very good experiences most of us have had with Google.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Unless you reject cookies from google outright, they can learn a lot about you. The colour of shirts you like to wear, what cpu manufacturer you prefer, what ideas you had for mother's day presents, everything concerning your sexuality, your political leanings (left, right, fascist, communist.)
Give them a few years and their database of profiles will be awsome.. I just hope their not working in concert with any covert u.s. government institutions.
I know I will be modded down for this but still need to say it.
Google has had very little real impact on the "Internet". For those of us who used it before Google, before the web, P2P, bittorrent, and the hordes of stupid people who populate it, the internet is about the same.
I think that if Google has had any effect it is largely negative. Google Groups has done more harm then good, Usenet used to be a place you could go for real information. Now it is nothing but complete crap.
As for searching, Altavista was acceptable before google was on the scenes. Google really offers nothing new. They simple consolidate what can be found elsewhere by any savvy user.
Don't get me wrong. I think they are a great company and I use their products every day but I also think they are just another internet company and eventually they will be replaced. Companies like these (Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves) tend to have a boom followed by a period of dwindling interest as it finds its niche. Google is just another niche company that happens to be in the boom stage at the moment.
MSN is used by many people who won't change their home pages in IE. Yahoo is used by many others, evidenced by its high level of registered users, who are more familiar with that site.
Google may be a verb, but it doesn't control the WWW or what can and cannot be found on it.
If Google tried to censor or in any way hamper what could and could not be found on the web, there will be others who take over, and Google knows this. They'd lose ad revenue, consequently, and that's the end of them. That is why they have extended support to the open-source community, and stuck to their "Do no evil" policy.
It's in their best personal, moral and business interest.
What it comes down to me is the fact that Google seems to actually care about pushing new ideas and new technologies. Microsoft has always been about giving the user as little as possible until someone else innovates, and then sinking cash into bringing it to the popular market.
Microsoft's impact on the Internet exists because most people are browsing from a Microsoft platform. If Google can introduce a platform to browse to all their services easily (Google branded Knoppix, perhaps) they might just remove the element of: "I'll use Microsoft Internet services because it must work smoothly with my OS".
It's amazing to think that 8 years ago some of the greatest minds in the world were saying "How will we organize and access the far reaches of the web". Two college students took it upon themselves to figure it out and deploy that solution to the world.
Sergey and Brin take their job very serious. Organizing and delivering a whole world's information/thoughts/opinions is a HUGE responsibility, yet they've carried it and with dignity. I see little if any abuses of the power they hold. How many other companies could do what google does and resist the temptation to abuse their audience or subject them to slanted views/opinions or worse.
Google's only agenda is to get you where you want to be.
The philosophy behind "maximize shareholder value" is one that I have never been able to understand. A corporation will certainly want its stock to maintain some value - otherwise they will not be able get new capital through issuing new stock - but in the end it's not the stockholders that keep the company in business. It's the customers who keep the company in business. (And in the case of Google, the "customers" I'm referring to aren't the people giving Google money, they're the people using Google to search - although in Google's case some concessions must be made to advertisers.) A company that has customers who are happy with its products will probably maintain or increase the value of its stock (not to mention customer loyalty and word-of-mouth's affect on profit margins). A company that is increasing the value of its stock artificially (by stock buy-backs, for example), is probably not a company that is keeping its customers happy.
I'm not trying to say companies that are trying to maximize shareholder value are evil. I'm trying to say that I think the belief that maximizing shareholder value is a good business practice is misguided, as it's something that will happen naturally if the company is being run properly.
I know I'm probably talking out my ass and will be flamed for it, but that's the way I feel.
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
An enhanced version of Firefox freely downloadable from Google for all operating systems would be their own platform which, besides being able to view standard web pages, would enable then to distribute richer applications in a brand (Firefox) that has mindshare and user buy in.
Think! Mac applications are cool because of the contained environment that is OS X (except Apple did not create enough of their own native applications). Microsoft is successfull with their applications because they built a container that is at least perfect for them -- Windows. The same will apply to Google with what I am convinced will be the enhanced browser environment based on Firefox.
Why is Linux not gaining on the desktop? Because there is no "perfect Linux desktop container". The properties of such a container is that it should be standardized, easy to accept new client programs, have easy to use services and a well known API that is well documented and defined so that programmers can easily write to it.
Instead we have a bunch of fragmented containers (KDE, Gnome, lots of lesser known desktop environments) that are incomplete and immature. Heck, its a pain the ass sometimes to get simple brain-dead stuff such as printing and mounting a drive working. So you have projects like OpenOffice having to write their own container!!! And Miguel (bless his heart) making a version of Microsoft's .NET container (Mono) for Linux that is still incomplete and sits with an incomplete container -- Gnome, which is sitting on top of an incomplete desktop container -- Linux.
I know this is a rant, but my shop recently switched back to Windows from Linux desktops (about 40 people), why? Because the new CEO (and me too), were sick and tired of people trying to get things to work together properly. We were sick of not having an Exchange replacement (don't get me started on the open source once now "available"). And new hires and our clients were just plain used to using the dominant containers out there (windows/mac).
So Google is moving in the direction of best of all worlds. They are creating their own perfect container for their applications, that can run on imperfect operating systems. Genius! I don't even have to wish them luck, because its a great idea which has to work -- unless they get Evil.
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