Slashdot Mirror
Google Blacklists CNet Reporters
An anonymous reader writes "Cnet News.com is reporting that Google is no longer talking to Cnet reporters. In an article about the search company looking for new executive chefs, the article states: 'Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.' Apparently, Google was angered by an article published earlier by Cnet where all sorts of personal information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt was included. The information was obtained from Google searches."
Google was angered by an article published earlier by Cnet where all sorts of personal information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt was included.
You put it on the Internet and its fair game.
Of course, there is a lot of our information on the Internet that we didn't put there, which is why we need better laws regarding dissemination of personal information.
Only two balls, but Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech are awfully hard to juggle..
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
That's true.. but just because the info is there and avl does not mean it needs to be published..
It gives me the creepy vibe of a tabloid mag..
Just feels immature that thay would do that...
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
Okay, we all enjoy the self-righteous feeling of anger we get when we see the little man with his mouth taped over. But this doesn't qualify as "censorship" - it's a business decision taken by a publicly-held company, not Big Brother cracking down on what you can or cannot say.
The government telling you you're not allowed to say certain things, under penalty of law: censorship.
A company deciding it's not going to do business with another (in this case, a press) company: not censorship.
I can only agree.
There is private information, and there is public information - and everything that has been ever published is public, no matter how personal it may seem.
You can't unspill water, and you should have no expection of everyone else hiding what already is public - Cnet cannot be faulted at all.
Hey Google - what about your 'do no evil' ? Don't become so hypocritical - it won't benefit you.
Well, the end of Google as a "do no evil" company, anyway. With that many damn cooks in the kitchen, it's only a matter of time (IMNSHO) before someone spoils the recipe.
Yes, you can use Google to track down a distressing amount of personal information about some people, but this is a function of the information being made available by third parties. Google just makes it easier to find all these sources quickly.
People that gripe about (or sue) Google based on their indexing "bad" things, need to step back and think of the Web as more of a library, with each page as a book. Google serves as a card catalog, helping you find the books that have the information you are interested in. If somebody goes to the library and looks up a bunch of personal information on you (which is possible, just slower) you don't get mad at the makers of the card catalog. Your anger should be directed first at the person who singled you out. Next, if the books contain something which shouldn't be public (unlike major stock sales, and other things from the article, which should be public) you ought to take it up with the author/publisher of the books.
cNet took a cheap shot at Google, and did it in a fairly childish way. The point they were trying to make is both obvious, and better made in a more mature fashion. That being said, I don't exactly think Google's response is "mature", but if they want to respond in kind, I don't blame them.
There are a great number of things one can do, that are not necessarily what one should do. There are even many both easy and legal things one can do that are ethically reprehensible.
I see no hypocrisy in Google's actions. Why deal with a group of people who have demonstrated they have no scruples?
That's why journos have codes of conduct. Because it may not be illegal and it may not be that hard to do, but it can still be wrong.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Can't agree there. There's public, obscure information that wouldn't occur to anyone to search for, and then there's nicely packaged, published information. Prior to publication, few people knew, and after, many did.
Yes it's security through obscurity - but since it's absolutely impossible to get actual identity security, that's all we have these days.
Also note that the slashdot crowd went nuts when O'Gara did this to Pamela Jones.
Also, Google's not suing - they're punishing cNet for playing dirty. If CNet expected a different response from the article, they're retarded. If they don't want to talk to someone since they did something that wasn't nice, that's their right.
It already _was_ published, on the Intarweb! The fact that they spent the time to gather it doesn't make them immature. Nor a tabloid.
"No one has any obligation to talk with any member of the press, period."
Maybe with one notable exeption: governments. If governments would start to favor certain newspapers and blacklisting others, it would be highly inappropriate.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
So, I guess Google is really being the asshole here.
The thing that the article is pointing out -- rightly -- is that Google appears to be on the road toward becoming a major information clearinghouse. And the information is, rather than most similar things, information about everything. They have manifested a desire to aggregate this knowledge and use it in certain ways (i.e., targeted ads by reading the content of your email), and for now they are behaving as a 'good netizen'.
The thing is, as soon as these two idealistic PhD guys get fed up and cash in and decide to buy an island in the South Pacific and go live there, I fear that so will go Google's ethos of being the good guy, and the marketing weasels and fucking lawyers schmucks will pervert Google amazing technology to do some Seriously Evil Shit (tm).
It's really just a matter of time...
gameDB
seriously folks, most people on slashdot have such a congnitive dissonance going with regards to Google that there would be 500 posts defending Google if somehow the corporation itself were caught in bed with a dead, 14 year old hooker and a bag full of colombian flake.
just because Google isn't microsoft is no reason to automatically assume Google is some sort of deity.
in fact, why do you people have this innate longing to fall in love with ANY company? they sell TEXT ADS, PEOPLE. none of their other products has ever made a dime. those "geek" products are nothing more than the mafia boss giving large donations to the local little league team or fireman's retirement fund. it's called public relations.
The information has already been published on the WWW; this is how Google indexed it.
Have you read their IPO filing with SEC? They specifically state following 'do no evil' will lead to long term gains. They will not be influenced by near-term shareholder value.
So not only do they plan on doing no evil in search, they also plan on doing no evil financially (i.e. maximizing current profit over long term). Certainly, it would NOT maximize shareholder value in the long run to 'do evil'.
The most successful companies in history have had similiar policies. For example, Wal-Mart has always advocated continually dropping prices, regardless of current profit maximization. In the long term, this maximizes profits by keeping their market penetration and fostering a culture of cost-cutting.
It *is* the point. Yeah, no one is going to point a gun at Google execs and force them to interview, but no one is claiming that.
The point is, Google is throwing a hissy-fit after someone demonstrated how their own service "invaded" their CEO's privacy. It's an excellent article, and an excellent example. Google is being completely asinine about it, which is very amusing.
FTA:
And it's not as though Google is the only company asking Web surfers to make that leap, said Danny Sullivan editor of Search Engine Watch. "Overall, the issues with Google are not any different from the issues you have with Yahoo, Microsoft and others. They tend to get singled out, and unfairly, in my view," Sullivan said. "They're the biggest, and they make a big target for someone to take a swing at. It's not that the issues are not important. It's that they are applicable to the search industry" as a whole.
This is, I think, the crux of the article. The real worry is not that Google's "innovative" search engine somehow has the monopoly on invading people's private information -- Microsoft, Yahoo, et al. all have a vast amount of users' information. The real worry is that Google, along with having a lot of different services now that users are using in conjunction with one another, is just so damn popular. The fact of the matter is that it is Google's popularity that is causing users to flock to it, and as a result, more of the users' information is out there on Google. If Yahoo were as popular as Google, the CNet article would be about them, considering that Yahoo offers pretty much all the same services as Google.
Still, I consider it a problem when large corporations use their power to control what the media writes.