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Google's Rasmussen on Google Maps
jbp1337 writes "During a presentation at Sydney University last week, the lead engineer behind Google Maps, Lars Rasmussen offered an interesting insight into how it all came together. Rasmussen is working on a number of AJAX applications that provide a rich desktop-like interface to the end-user from within the Web browser. Other interesting things include a Linux port of Google Earth, the company is opening a new engineering center in Sydney, and Google's design philosophy is based on end-user loyalty - not money. On the rumor of a Web-based office suite from Google, Rasmussen said he is unaware of one 'but there are 3000 people that work for Google'."
Google's design philosophy is based on end-user loyalty - not money.
When you sell ad space alongside your applications, end-user loyalty is money.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Yeh, and half the time I'm doing an address search, it does a local search instead of a map search. So when I type in 12345 Street, Town, ST it brings up a local search of pizza houses or something ...
and clicking on their ads
Which makes them money. Google is "all about" making money, just like every other for-profit company on Earth. They choose to do so by creating loyalty in the users of their products, which drives ad sales. In the case of Google, much like television networks, their "customers" are the advertisers, not the actual end users of their products.
Google Earth for Linux!
How can you fail to miss that? Finally! GE for linux! Rock on! Wheeeeee!!!
Google have the one thing almost no other advertiser have. User loyalty and brand identity. Who the hell *loves* ClearChannel? No one. I bet even most people that use their services would say they loved them. People never stop saying how much they love Google.
*Everything* Google do is a way to make people look at more adverts. Providing services for users just makes more users look at them. Perhaps this is why they are the largest advertising agency in the world?
Terminal computing is here to stay! It's cheaper and safer. The data is centralized, where it can be backed up by people smarter than me. Applications are updated, added, and managed for me!!! I can sit down at any computer in the lab and instantly, get everything I worked on. I mean, like, wow!
Terminal computing ain't going anywhere, not for a long time.
End user loyalty isn't charity at all. It's a long term profit tactic.
-Derick
What about ethicists? How many of the people at Google are in charge of considering the impact of what they do, or do they all just assume the spread of knowledge is unconditionally good? (It hasn't necessarily worked out that way in atomic energy, for example. And even less auspicious technological advances like reverse-indexing the phone book have had mixed results sociologically. Not to mention search engines themselves, which haven't been 100% positive in their privacy impact.)
Knowledge is not Wisdom. The Ability to do something is not the Right to do it. Were it so, terrorism would be utterly defensible because it pretty uniformly involves the use of knowledge and ability to take some action that serves the selfish or thoughtless need of the person doing it. What stands between terrorism and righteous/respected power is not ability but ethics--not the knowledge of how to do something, but the wisdom to know when not to do something.
Note that I have not called the Google folks terrorists nor said they shouldn't do what they do. I'm just tired of seeing stories about what Google can do, and I'm interested in seeing more stories about how Google itself decides what is good and bad for it to actually do. Is it really mere lack of engineers that is holding them back from doing arbitrary things? Or do they factor in issues of privacy, security, morality, etc. into their basic design. I'd love to see some stories about that because in stories like this one here, it always seems to be a lacking element. Is profit motive and national law all that the world needs to adjust in order to assure that our collective sensibilities are not violated? If something is not illegal, is that an invitation for Google to do it (ready supply of engineers permitting, of course)?
I don't think they only need engineers. I think they also need ethicists. What I don't know is whether they think that.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Some might say that allowing a corporation to store your files forever is a bad thing.
^^
For those of us using reliable hardware, that's not a real benefit. I could've written this reply in any of a dozen text editors or word processors on my system, spell checked it, and saved it to my hard drive, a CD, a flash drive, a floppy disk, my work's network or my hosting company's servers. All of which I trust more than google's servers.
Possibly. Or they can cancel your account and delete all your data at their whim. From gmail Terms of Use: Google may at any time and for any reason terminate the Services, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system.