Slashdot Mirror
Who's Afraid of Google?
Khuffie writes "Wired has an interesting article about who's afraid of Google: in short, almost everyone! "Even in the early days, its ultimate goal was extravagant: to organize the world's information. High-minded as that sounds, Google's ever-expanding agenda has put it on a collision course with nearly every company in the information technology industry: Amazon.com, Comcast, eBay, Yahoo!, even Microsoft.""
Google itself? Is it afraid of itself becoming and doing evil eventually?
Oh, one thing that Google hasn't done is Database, although its existance is almost solely based on databases. When are we seeing GoogleSQL?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Mr. Fremont: It's snowing outside! Google, are you making it snow?
Google: Yes, I'm making it snow.
Mr. Fremont: Why that'll ruin half the crops! You know that, don't you, half the crops! That's what that... But it's good that you're making it snow, Google, it's real good.
Narrator: No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special search engines, little Google, age 6, who lives on the internet in a place that used to be the Web. And if by some strange chance you should run across it, you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk, because if you do meet Google you can be sure of one thing: you have entered the Twilight Zone.
I, for one, welcome our new information-finding overlord.
Well it's good competition, Google could be the ultimate storage and information source in a few years if it keeps improving.
When expecting to find intelligence in a person, do not look at their age but instead look at their IQ and maturity firs
What do you think the "Base" means?
Sure, they're a pretty friendly looking corporation now, but there's the old saying, "absolute power corrupts absolutly." I think 10-15 years from now, we'll have as much disdain for Google, as we do with Microsoft today. Do you honestly thing that once they becoome the juggernaut of the industry, they won't eventually abuse it to make even more money?
A friend of mine works as a market strategist for eBay in Europe. While he was in town this summer he asked me who I thought eBay's biggest competition was. I said I really didn't see another competitor in the on-line or virtual auction space. He just smiled and said, "Google", then explained to me how virtually all of eBay's business is small B to P, and eBay really just brings them together. Google does the same thing with their search engines and targeted advertisements, and is getting better at it.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,200,000 for whos afraid of google?. (0.05 seconds)
Apparantly lots of people, but even more shockingly:
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,780,000 for whos afraid of microsoft?. (0.20 seconds)
Time to be afraid?
liqbase
It's not just the problem that they might enter your market. It's that, being essentially an advertising company these days, they'll offer their product for free. The last week or so must have been rough at any company that offers web stats for example. (though most of them aren't that hot anyway). And how many people are paying for yahoo mail now? Alternately, they can make you offer better services at great cost. GMail doesn't have nearly as many members as hotmail, but it they can make Microsoft up their storage limit in response, it costs microsoft a lot more - the sort of game where microsoft is used to playing on the other side!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
"Who's Afraid of Google" - 83 results
"Who's Afraid of Microsoft" - 818 results
The Financial community has a hard time getting their minds around what Google does. Simple answer near a I can tell is they make money hand over fist...create new services that don't cost much to add on, and make even more money. Sort of like the GE mentality...try it..see if it sticks and run with it if it does.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I haven't had much reason to feel like they were the type of company to be afraid of, unlike SCO or M$oft.
Chime in if you think I'm smoking crack.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
A known country has around 50% of the world military budget. This country and several others have skills and history in espionage. They have also showed the interest to build up their sources over a period of many years before they get anything back.
Would the media ask questions if a known government agency was running a public spider? What about a firm like google that do run a spider?
What about centralizing emails on something like gmail? Or listening to chating trough talk.google.com?
What about telling another spider about the robot.txt files that tells google to stop?
mmm.. What about making a geographical network over all the searchers? Using a tool bar or something like it to get even more information?
A lot of possibilities for those who do this kinds of things for a living and have a budget so much larger than most countries state budget.
Altavista was once king but was fast thrown out in favor for the better Google. You dont sit very firm on the internet. Internet users are very fluid and its not easy to lock someone in to a single search engine. If google begins to suck people will just migrate en masse to say MSN search or some other search engine. Until Google has done something stupid it feels very hollow when people try to paint a perfectly sane company as evil. When that fails they say "-just you wait they'll become evil eventually!".
Google has a quicksilver grip on the market. Any big redmonduesq manouver will make it all vanish in a heartbeat. Thats the biggest reason i have a hard time imagening they suddenly turning evil. Google hasnt got a desktop monopoly to live on or some vendor lockin in effect. All they have is great people, good inventive minds and people who like their services. Without that they are nothing.
This is just some Microsoft proxy bullshit spewed out from a frustrated redmond who fails to compete on the merits of their services.
HTTP/1.1 400
1) Nothing to do with google.
2) They mean open format alternatives, no open source (sighs)
I'm not afraid of google, but I am afraid of lazy journalism.
My pics.
because of stories like this. The story is of a guy who apparently Googled for the words neck, snap and a couple of others and is accused of breaking his wife's neck. Now initially I thought 'fair enough, they've got his hard drives, they can come to that conclusion by looking at them' except that the information about his Googling habits came to light two years into the investigation. If this was gleaned from his local hard drive, I woudl have expected something like that to be found earlier.
Now I don't particularly have anything to hide, and I don't really mind people knowing what I look for online, but what scares me is someone looking at my profile and coming to the wrong conclusions. If Google becomes a centralised powerhouse for data and information - as they want to, they will also be a great target for attack, and for agencies wanting to get a fix on someone's online activities. All it needs is a couple of active minds to join the dots in the wrong way and hey presto, a story against you emerges from nowhere. You don't even need a police state, just gossip and tabloids can do the same amount of damage.
Looking at my last set of google searches: comet, philips, samsung, ice axe, Aluminium 18swg, Galeras, uk Beal top gun rope, you might be fooled into thinking I'm about to murder someone, whereas in actual fact I'm planning to buy a TV and go winter climbing...
The point is; with Google Base (you ever noticed how much gBase sounds like eBay?), books, maps, and goodness knows whatever else, the capability exists that the more you reply on it, the more they know about you whether you like it or not. And while you may say that the information about searches is anonymous, other services like chat and gmail pin an identifier on you.
And if all thsoe companies are worried about Google, how would you feel if they currently exchanged data about you between them, because that's the effect a giant Google will have... maybe we'll see a backlash towards less 'linked' services?
Is it a good thing "to organize the world's information " ?
It seems I'm one of the few people not excited about this idea. I fear that in the future privacy will be luxury item that very few can afford.
One SF novel I read introduced me to very interesting idea - if everything networked and you can access virtually any kind of information about the only reliable way to have privacy is to drown it in a see of misinformation and irrelevant information. Anything distinctive about you becomes a disadvantage - you can be identified by it and tracked down. So everyone will want to conform and be a Bill Smith from a large city working for large company...
A lot of information out there gets recorded about every individual person - shopping habits, library books, income, medical history, debt, family, education, political affiliations, phone calls history, traffic violations... Only right now most of this information is unorganized and not readily networked, so you can't come up with inexpensive and fast way to retrieve it. On other hand if Google achieves its goal...
You think monopolizing OS is bad? How about monopolizing access to information? How about monopolizing not letting others acces your private information? It just might happen.
Not that they couldn't do it, but Google (or anyone else) would have a harder time beating down eBay than that. Just look at how Yahoo! (a company with way more money that eBay at the time) tried and failed miserably.
The problem with beating eBay at their game, is that it is not simply a matter of making a better service. In order to sell your goods, you need lots of people searching the site. And in order to have lots of people searching the site, you need to have lots of goods. So, anyone who wants to be an up-and-comer in the online auction business has to conquer this chicken-and-the-egg problem, while simultaniously competing with eBays enormous brand (eBay has entered the popular culture almost as thouroughly as Google, it is in TV, movies, etc.).
He is... Ballmer-Man!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I do have some sympathy for people who worry about Google, though. That's because they provoke fear of the unknown. Google's behavior so far has been so brilliant and successful that they almost appear like aliens from a superior culture. Predicting their next move seems nearly impossible. Microsoft on the other hand is a known quantity.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
It seems to me that Google hurts consumers. The reason lies with how they do their ad ranking. Basically, the ad that generates the most revenue for Google gets ranked first -- in a lot of cases this is the ad that pays the most per click. In all cases, it's the ad that's writing the biggest check to Google.
This methodology leaves no room for providing discounts to customers. There's literally no money left over once the advertiser pays Google. Think about a simple example of an industry with average operating margins (excluding cost of customer acquisition) of 20%. In such an industry, companies have an incentive to pay anything up to 19.9% to acquire customers. Google is such an efficient marketplace that companies wind up paying that 19.9% or even more (some companies will overpay because of the value of the brand exposure).
It has surprised me for some time that no competitor to Google has arisen that somehow provides some of this money back to the customers. A simple (and completely unworkable due to fraud) example would be a search engine that gives 50% of the click revenue back to the user who clicks the ad. I'm relatively certain that something will arise someday that returns some of the revenue from search-engine ads to consumers. A clever version was the iWon portal -- they let you win cash prizes, with each link clicked counting as an entry into the drawing.
A search engine might be very successful and actually help consumers if it worked on a bounty basis. Advertisers would offer the search engine a certain dollar amount or percentage of each transaction as a rebate if customers buy stuff after clicking the ad. The search engine could then return, say, 50% of the bounty to the user. Obviously this would require more bookkeeping, but it would make the search engine much friendlier to consumers.
Until then, I still do my searching on Google but my buying on PriceWatch, PriceGrabber, etc. I still for the life of me can't understand why people click Google ads and make purchases. You're just not getting a good deal.
--
Free 411! 1-800-411-SAVE
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
*plays carol of the bells*
I kid! I kid!
No, I am not afraid of Google. First off, there's no such thing as forever. Nothing lasts forever. Everything transforms. That includes Google, Microsoft and other companies. Do you honestly believe that Microsoft is going to last forever? Or Google?
If Microsoft can take over IBM, and if Google can take over Microsoft, then something else can take over Google. And once Google gets evil, it will have six point five billion (plus) humans rage against it.
Full Tilt
You don't necessaryly need a search engine to find company information , but it is helpful and makes what you're looking for faster.
I'm going to guess that ebay's stock is only going to go higher as we go into the christmas shopping season.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Everybody!
---------
In the end we are ALL disconnected....
Imagine when EVERY COMPANY in the world is paying Google to be listed on GoogleEarth. And paying them to build a model of their company.
They are creating timeless content that grows exponentially with use. Microsoft makes hardware and software that ages.
Mark my words, I do believe Google will dwarf Microsoft someday.
There is an old Buddhist saying from the dhammapada that goes something like there is no enemy greater then your own misdirected mind and no greater friend then your own mind properly directed.
Ya, google is a threat that may pull people away from ebay, but ebay is pushing customers away with its incompetence.
My account got labeled as being monetarily delinquent. I wrote to them about it and they admitted that I was right. The problem went away. I kept getting emails telling me that I owed them money. I wrote back to ebay several times, each time being told that I was right and that the problem would be resolved. It never was.
Over the course of a month with emails where the agents did not read what I had to say I got fed up and tried calling them( long distance ). I had to scour the net to find a customer service number and even then nobody could put an end to the problem for me.
A lot of companies that got started as internet businesses seem to have the attitude that they don't have to and will not deal with their customers outside of the web.
At that point I gave up on ebay forever and decided to buy things online from somewhere else.
My story is not uncommon.
If ebay loses business to google it will in part be because of the lousy way they handle their customers.
It's not based on how much you pay. It's based on how much you're WILLING to pay AND how many people actually click on your ad. So, even if you are willing to pay less, but everyone clicks your ad because it's what they're looking for, then your ad can move to the top.
Google is great. For the most part, they appear to treat people who work there with respect. They have a noble goal - not just make money, but to organize humanity's information and knowledge - the stuff we've figured out since caveman days - and make it instantly accessible. This is what companies should be about!
My job would be misery without google. I'd have to spend a lot of time tracking and maintaining my own databases of information relevant to my industry; tracking down specifications and parts would be a nightmare.
Google has let my 2-3 man consulting company compete and WIN on a multinational stage against people with two orders of magnitude more employees. Not through advertising, but through zero overhead and instant access to information.
Hators abound, but credit where credit is due, google.
..don't panic
Hell, I work for startups as a contractor putting together first-round sites and getting their art beyond the card-table stage, and because of Google the Valley has exploded with new VC capital. Interestingly because of the lack of an IPO herd-mentality, most companies want to stick around long enough to at least get bought out by Google or Yahoo - so the one's I've encountered are running lean and mean.
To me the idea of a profitable dot-com aka: Google, is perhaps putting an end to "gone-in-6-months.com".
Artificial Intelligence - nothing is naturall that stupid.
2 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml
Artificial Intelligence is a by product illusion of simply automating enough to cause a human to think they are interacting with another human,
Things like "shock Level 4" are easily defeated by the human characteristic of "denial" or what good is a knowledge or technology if nobody uses it?
An example of this is the fact that we today have the knowledge, natural resources, man power and eben the financial resources to make major improvement in the human living condition in the whole world.... but we are not using it for that.
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod0
Maybe what needs to be realized is that google is not just google..... they do get alot of the resources they then make available to us all, from others....
So where is AI when I do a google search for something and get everything but???
There are many many ways to think, computers will never be anything more than an extension of human, as that is calling them what they really are, an extension of those who created and use them.
At best, all of this computer advancement will apex such that we humans become better and have a more complete understanding of reality, both physical and abstract.
What is google? the process of information collection and sorting for presentation to the human searcher.
Ah, good old Mentifex, back again. For those of you who are unaware of the history of one of the Internet's greatest kooks, here is a nice faq.
http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
I think their stock is overhyped and overpriced.
I think that if they were to pull their finger out of a bucket of water it would leave no hole.
I tell everyone buying into this bubble that their going to eventually get hammered.
Check out this amazing story about the possible future of Google:
Epic 2005 (flash)
Sure it's fiction, but WOW!
It seems no one is safe: Google is doing Wi-Fi; Google is searching inside books; Google has a plan for ecommerce.
Of course, Google has always wanted to be more than a search engine. Even in the early days, its ultimate goal was extravagant: to organize the world's information. High-minded as that sounds, Google's ever-expanding agenda has put it on a collision course with nearly every company in the information technology industry: Amazon.com, Comcast, eBay, Yahoo!, even Microsoft
Does ANYONE remember how Google entered the search market as "just a search engine" because others failed to concentrate on their core business and that this is exactly what made them so succesful? This was their prime strength. I don't make this up. They did. Now they are ad-brokers and stock-driven, their prime aim is exactly the opposite. They need as much services and thus page hits as possible, and next year they need more, or otherwise they are "doing bad", for stockholders anyway. Me, I think they can be beaten by the next company which purely concentrates on search. Actually, if I consider all the fluff and features I don't use, all the overpaid top names working on pet projects, and the lack of any true inovation in the search field, I wonder what could have been done if they had concentrated on search and search alone.
Google does not bat 1000. Look at Orkut. Look at their RSS reader. Even Google Base has issues. Is this the eBay killer? Ms Whitman is not losing much sleep I think. Google Base has none of the useful community features of other ecommerce sites. Now understand that Google will face competition from Microsoft and Yahoo very soon in the distributed ad gig. Ad rates will drop. Its inevitable. Google rules search, but search is a commodity market now. Oh sure I will get a thousand replies about how all the other searches suck, but the pie graph shows many users find the alternatives acceptable.
No one is, because their name isn't "Microsoft." No matter how big they become and their goal to dominate the world, Google will never be seen as evil. I don't hate Google, but I thought i'd point that obvious fact out.
Blame the user, not the software.
"... '...' ..."
that is all.
hmmm great now I'm being grammar police... lovely.
Within the last 48 hours Google has dumped all 20 million plus ebay listings from Froogle and all listings submitted by ebay sellers to Google Base. Including direct submissions made by ebay sellers to Froogle and Google Base. ebay sellers are letting ebay have it on the ebay discussion boards as they have been plagued with printing problems, broken upgrades and outages this Christmas season. Was this a result of Google trying to patch the cross-scripting security flaws in Google Base, an attempt by ebay to maintain control of it's product feeds or the first shot fired by Google in an upcoming war over ebay and craiglist turf?
Or.. even worse:
braaaaaaains.google.com
Until those happen, I am not afraid!
Will code a sig generator for food
Well not that I think it's evil, but google's search engine has already suffered due to the fact that it's all about the money. If you do searches on phrases that are competitive, you will see that most of the time all the top listings are to companies and not necessarily to the site that best matches your search. This is primarily due to the latest changes in their search engine. For example hits to your site from paid adwords links make your site rank higher. So businesses that buy up all the top paid listings also push themselves up in the non paid listings as well. It's so bad that a real non biased information site doesn't stand a chance of getting listed on the first page if most people are searching for it using keywords that are very popular keywords that companies bid on.
You search for:
Google is Evil (12,500)
Microsoft is Evil (27,400)
Microsoft is more than twice as evil by those numbers.
The library profession is truly scared. And database vendors.
It is hard to be afraid of Google when they're sending you checks every month.
Microsoft and Yahoo never found a way to deal me into their growth the way that Google has.
And apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
because all that laying back and lying on your sorry ass kind of folks who had no vision but just cash on the shares/stock options. it's time to SWEAT! Google is TALKING to people and that would mean anyone and everyone who's disillusioned in something , be it anything, these guys will team up and do something about it. That's al. That's why Google is the darling of all masses. It represents some sort of rebel in all of us. So yes "Be Afraid, Very Afraid!"
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
OSTG should be afraid of google. Simply put, Google can offer competitive services similar to those that OSTG offers. Google would have a marked advantage with a much larger userbase than (most) OSTG services and can come up with witty names to further their competition.
Take for example:
Sourceforge and Freshmeat - - Google Codebase
Thinkgeek - - Google store already exists, just rename it to ThinkGoogle or something similarly witty
Slashdot and Newsforge - - Google News already exists, just add comments, which shouldn't be too difficult seeing as how they already have an accounts system in place
ITMJ - - Google blog already exists, could be renamed to Blogoogle or something.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Who's threatened: Comcast and other cable providers, Yahoo!, TV networks that still shun the Net ...
Seems to me it should make sense to distribute TV content via the Internet. 1) It would give consumers more choice. 2) The current "one-way pipe to dumb terminal" system doesn't make sense in the presence of the Internet.
The problem with Comcast is they have a conflict of interest. A company that's an ISP and a cable provider is hardly likely to give you gigabyte Internet access so you can cancel your cable bill and get your content via the Internet.
Google is starting to compete with an ancient TV distribution business model whose time has come. This is a good thing.
http://malfeasance.50megs.com/
Check out the haunted house of ghoulish corporate criminals!
There's always this talk running around about how google is taking over the world. You know what? SO WHAT! The only people google are adversly affecting here are other giant corporations. And they are the ones with the loud mouths shouting to reporters how evil google is. In reality, we live in the age of the giant corporation. One way or the other, these giant organizations are going to control major parts of your life. I would _much_ rather have google a major part of my life than microsoft, ebay, aol, or comcast. They are just being whiney little bitches because google's business practices are much better than theirs. They are scared people will come to expect that kind of business.
This is their thought process...
OMG, google is serving their customers in a postive way?!! You don't fucking say! Well we need to put a stop to this shit right away. The nerve of them. Who they think they are!? Don't they know that not stuffing DRM and standards non-compliance into your product is the first no-no! You must take away all rights of the consumer. The consumer is to be told what they want and need. Google is giving them choices!?!? Next thing you know, they'll grow spines and start making decisions for themselves. We can't have that shit!!
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
If it keeps Microsoft, Yahoo, etc honest and innovative, then we the consumer can only benefit. Evil? um Oracle, MS, I consider evil. Google is truely an innovative company.
If google manages to roll out new services with the same expertise as they have gmail, there is nothing to worry about. They'll just have their finger in every pie yet it'll all be mediocre. Got my gmail account, used it for a while but wound up going back to hotmail (tried Yahoo too!). Woo hoo to Bill Gates, eradicating maleria, giving to AIDS research, etc. MS at least has a face, Google is all corporation (and so far, a one trick pony).
Given that most companies in IT are in some way focused on acquiring, organising and retrieving data - Google set themselves up to compete with pretty much everybody in the world.
fortune -o
Who's threatened: anyone
.. .. You know I would never contradict... ..... I didn't mean...
C'mon, guys, Ma'soft looks like milk in a comparison. Concentrate.
Use of any service is arguaby on everyone's choice, but think carefully to dependence (need) and alternatives, so far: once you've choosen [google], think either about your a)cookies or b) IP (eventually semi-static, part of a pool, often bound to a location or a provider)
Registration? M$ doensn't even want it anymore, hardware validation is enough.
Interests? Need to search, sir?
Letters? Mail (IMHO the best service AFAIK)
Opinions? Chat
Thoughts? Blog
History? in Cache. Never say f**k!
Local Data? Desktop (remember the noise when M$ was indexing your files? that's OFF by default now!)
Locations? Maps: which place you like to see, today?
Friends? Orkut
Pictures & Data? Base?
Books? any page you ever read, sir.
News? which news you prefer?
Food? to come..
Payments?
shall I go on?
On all this, I must say, Google has a "clean-friendly" and "open-positive" attitude (i.e. you can feel they're good guys giving you a service): I do myself think very often what a beautiful world this would be if anyone could trust anyone else: new technologies could quick & easily give the sky to all of us.
It is unfortunately not so, and here come some cold feelings in my back from time to time. Don't think 'bout the dark side, Luke.
There's one conclusion. Which is the most (business) valuable data in IT today? Think again. GOOGLE LOGS.
Who owns them?
--
sh**! may I dis-own a comment?
But.. I love you Google, thank you for everything You've done for us..
I'm a good guy
You knowt that..
And I am under 30. S
"Who's Afraid of Google" - 83 results
"Who's Afraid of Microsoft" - 818 results
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" - 55,200 Results
The same members of Slashdot that worship Google and hate Microsoft will one day soon hate Google.
I've been thinking more lately about the president of the American Library Association, Michael Gorman, and the objections he has to the Google Book Search. He's almost the only person I've head of who objects not on the basis of copyright, but rather on the basis of the atomization of information. Then I did a search on the name of one of people behind Google-Watch, and compared Google's snippet containing his name to the actual text from the book. Atomization? Heck, he got completely nuked by the snippet. I fear for the future of education.
There is no correlation between advanced intellect or high IQ and ethics. It's the same percentage in the population of "evil doers" who are very smart as opposed to the opposite. And looking back at both recent and ancient history, some of the worst abusers of other humans have been intelligent people.
Very dull and stupid criminals tend to get caught early on in their careers and identified as criminals (ex: your local 7-11 stickup guy who pulls his crime of stealing a few bucks in front of the camera), thereby giving a skewed impression that it's mostly stupid people who are criminals, whereas extremely smart ones are able to mask what they do effectively and engage in criminal/unethical behavior for a very long time (ex: ted bundy, the "clean cut" very intelligent all american boy). I would imagine some never get caught because they are just too clever, or even if "caught", have advanced to some position of extreme political and economic power where it doesn't matter if people note they are unethical or criminal, as there isn't much of anything you can do about it usually.
Back to corporations and an obvious example, the lesson of say an enron to todays corporate world wasn't "don't be unethical", it was "don't be a retard, don't leave electronic or paper evidence trails that can be found".
think of the data they store, i mean with the stock well over 300 a share for a search engine??? something is amiss!!! why is it worth anything at all? because they have the largest storage of personal data, what people search for, when, i am sure its all broken down into stats
Results for "buffer overrun": 139 485 293 results.
...
1. windows
2. outlook
3. office
"When was the last time you remember searching for something using AltaVista?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just mean not using Google. You know, Yahoo. When was the last time you remember using it? And I'm not talking about some distant, half-forgotten childhood memory. I mean like in the 90's. Can you remember when and why you switched? You can't, can you?
You know something, I don't think we really... switched... at all. 'Cause I've been talking to tons and tons and tons of people, and nobody remembers how they started using Google."
Shut it down! Shut it down forever!!
Frog blast the vent core.
Earlier in the year I had my Google AdSense account suspended because of
illegal clicks. It was against their policy and I acknowledge that..
BUT (the long story)
- The ads. that Adsense was serving to my community website
were irrelvent to the audience of my site. I had informed Google
of this and were told changes were in the pipeline.. for over a year.
- I tried several methods to get more relevent ads. displayed, including
removing words from the site that triggered particular ads (like
'maillist' and 'email') and adding particular advertisers to the
blacklist (which was limited to 200). [Why should I have to modify
my website to get Google ads. to work for me, other than to enable them
in the first place? ]
If I could make the ads. relevent to my audience, then this would help
bring more visitors, and I could also approach advertisers and promote
AdWords to relevent businesses.. a win,win,win situation (The customer,
The company, and myself.)
This didn't happen!
- In despiraton (and nothing else to do) I clicked on the ads. myself. At least
then it would make some money, make someone pay, and hopefully get some
different ads. displayed.
After 6 months, Google contacted me to say that my Adsense account had
been disabled, ironically the day after I had been informed
about the site target advertising (the feature that I had been waiting for).
A request to re-activate my AdSense account was refused. The revenue
prevously received from Google had been small, and only one payment
had ever been made (the minimal amount). An offer to payback even this amount, in order to get the account reactivated was also refused.
(I could have very easily opened another Adsense account under a different
name/address, but this would not have helped Google and was not the point.)
So.. my point?
- Adsense seems to be run out of the UK (was it purchased?), and seems to have
a different ethos to the 'do no evil' US operation, as much as they try to
be the same comapny.
- While Adsense has taken a strong stance on illigal clicks, there is no appeal process to the decisions that they are making. They have made up their mind,
and they didn't care why.
As Google gets larger, and buys/develops more customer facing businesses,
rather than technology, this situation will only get worse, and more scary.
Can anybody say SkyNet?
Essentially google is starting a top-down (or bottom-up) take-over of the Internet. They start with searching, and by the end of it they will be powering the content-management system behind 99% of websites on the net. Just look at google news if you don't believe me - there's pretty much no point in news organisations having their own websites anymore, they only serve as online identities really. In fact, they might as well become monkeys, submitting their stories as well formed XML into a giant pool for google to display. Its the same story with web galleries, videos, currency and unit conversion and maps. In fact the only thing stopping google right now is the fact that most companies have big enough ego's to want their own website, as soon as the costs start out-weighing the benefits, all websites will just be pages of information submitted through a google form.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Google said if i disrespect them they will crush me. And microsoft, eh ...
"They seem to charge the people who want my time, which I think is fine."
./ should be doing everything in our power to make sure Google stays accountable, not worshipping them for writing a cool search algorithm.
How is that fine? YOUR time. GOOGLE charging other people for it. Yes, you get 'paid' through Google's services... but really, they are taking your time and more importantly your conscious and sub-conscious attention, and selling it to other people. So while this doesn't leave a hole in your pocket, it arguably does take a bit of your freedom of choice away, possibly without you even realising it.
I mean, am I the only one who thinks that advertising will eventually get subtle and targeted enough that we effectively won't have free will in some respects? Has this already happened? GMail in particular really, really bothers me. Microsoft may try to screw me in many ways, but as far as I know they are neither smart nor subtle enough to pull of the marketing tactics that Google employs. With MS I can say, no, I don't want to pay $500 for Office. With Google it can be hard to work out what I'm paying for their services.
And this whole 'trust them, they're nice' thing has got to end. The answer to the question, "Who's afraid of Google" should be anyone who understands why competition and a balance of power is an inherently good thing. People like those of us at
Read Pynchon.
competition and a balance of power is an inherently good thing.
;-)
I concur, but there is more to this picture. Google may upset the *big* corporations currently in power, but google is (or will) also enable more grassroots/distributed level exchange of goods and services ala ebay. IF we could accomodate even the status quo in terms of large corporate revenues, except spread across a larger group of smaller businesses, the whole economy becomes greatly strengthend and more robust because it becomes a distributed network economy instead of a monolithic one. Knock out part of the highly distributed economy and the network can absorb the damage (in the context of the larger whole), but knock out a few of the big corporations in a monolithic economy and everything goes to shit. Every financial analysis i have done regarding google services (that involve end-consumer money) has always come up "everybody [involved] makes money, and everybody's happy". This makes me think that google can be a positive force for the future economy, but since i can't see nonlinearly very well, time will tell.
The industrial revolution started when canals allowed a distributed economy to emerge.
Large corporations with a lot to lose will not go quietly. Except to hear a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt along the way. Good luck.
Yeah, Microsoft didn't charge for Internet Explorer, either.
Penny - plain text accounting
Google is the techno-ecological niche where an A.I. will be able to spread its tendrils into all of human affairs. Hopefully it will look upon us benevolently and handle us gently like i treat the ladybugs and earthworms in my garden.
It strikes me that at some point in the next few
years there will be a virus or worm that targets Googles key buisness model...
Given an OS/browser exploit, it is possible for a well written virus to "randomly" and silently click through ad-sense/sponsoreed links - with the correct heuristics it will be almost impossible for Google to defend its largest revenue stream - even a poor variant could distort the economics (or create huge disputes from "sponsers")....
It would be very difficult for google ad-sense to continue without a radical rethink if a virus of this nature ever entered the wild.
Google will do one of two things in the next five years:
-Invent a nigh-indestructible robot that will eventually rebel and bring upon us the Judgement Day or
-Begin assimilating more than just information and eventually swallow the entire planet with its mere presence. The spread of its reign with be fleshy in tone, but with binary running across it.
This guy is definately scared. I'd be scared if i had a cookie lingering around my hard drive with an expiry date of 2038.
That attitude strikes me as bogus. Microsoft was the underdog because, and only because, they weren't the overdog. Even back then they were no nicer. It's just that folks would have thrown a street party for Satan himself, if he rode into town with IBM's head on a pike.
I believe that companies, like people, rarely change their personality. Rather, their changing role can give them wider opportunities to express it, for good or ill.
Therefore, Google will not become evil merely because of success.
i more see google as the overpowering but ever loved leader of the world.... just like in the simpsons where homer goes time travelling :P
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - HHGTTG
f*ck paypal ... they only fully support 14 countries: Denmark,Finland,Greece,Hong Kong,Ireland,Japan,Mexico,New Zealand,Norway,Portugal,Singapore,South Korea,Sweden,Taiwan, some more are supported but they have to cash a US check (sometimes banks may charge up to $20 to cash a US check even if it is a check for $1), and some countries are supported for "pay only".
Many countries (including mine) are not supported at all, whenever I see "paypal only", I see it as a sign of prejudice , reminds me of the signs I see in movies about the 40s "Whites Only"
> Oh, one thing that Google hasn't done is Database...
ummm...
Great post! I came online in 1987 (ah, BITNET, how little I miss you), and Mentifex has been like an old ... well, not friend. Like that person who always comes along when you go out, but you don't want him along, but he's such an obvious loser and you don't want to be MEAN. Anyhow, I had developed immunity, and thus hadn't seen that FAQ. Very nice.
-scott
Google is a publicly traded company. They by law has to keep shareholders interests (if they are legal). There is a difference between being ethical and being legal. When they say DO NO EVIL it may mean do legal things. They have never said we follow some ethics as dicatated by some religion or some community. As long as they do legal things there is no need for them to be afraid of anything.
Following the law has absolutely nothing to do with being good or evil.
Of course, good and evil are entirely subjective experiences. Already, there are people claiming that Google is evil since they have been cut off from the search engine. This is mostly Google-bombers making money on selling PageRanks to people. So who is evil and not really shows that it IS subjective, as stated.
Basically, it seems the "good" people are always those you fear or those who are "on the other side". This goes for both sides!
Are we intelligent beings? Sometimes, we get caught up in fear and dualism, which is ignorance. Other times, we are more clear. Intelligence is an ability to rise above that. While being attached, your opinions and actions are less objective to the reality.
Recognizing this, can free you from it. While denying it lets you sink deeper in the quagmire, while trying to convince everybody you're okay. You're really trying to convince yourself while sinking!
I for one, do not believe in good and evil. Rather, I recognize good and ignorance. You will often find that "evilness" and ignorance, is tightly bound. This is because the mind of such people is caught up, they are unable to think clearly. However, nobody is evil: Their mind can change at any time! Do you never change your mind?
As for the law: The tyrrants of the past and present, are they good then, because they dictate the law?
Sometimes, you even have to break the law to do something good for others!
Again, the law has absolutely nothing to do with it, and I believe Google is aware of this. I also believe they really wanted to have this slogan: To be good, if they had the balls for it. "To not be evil", really doesn't say much other than put you at more risk of becoming evil..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I see people moaning about googleads in this thread and talking about it subconsciously affecting you. Here's the thing, ads will exist regardless, but you have a choice. You can have garish in-your-face ads that are guaranteed to piss you off when you hover over them and they expand to cover the entire page or you can have subtle, unannoying ads that are relevant to the page and may help you find something you've been looking for or another site of interest due to their close relation to content. And the in-your-face ads get you subconsciously too. That said, i would prefer it if some sites offered ad-free subscriptions, there are some that do that i'm considering subscribing to, as a matter of helping them out as well as removing ads. On the other hand, there is always RIP for firefox that can remove adsense.
~HTP~ Hug that tux
With the anouncment of google base, google shifted from a service which could help the small website content publisher, to a manopoly aiming to grab everyones content. Small providers could make a small living through hosting content and showing google adds. Now they want your content for free with no financial insentive.
As with the monopoly of Microsoft and it counter the open source movement, we need to start building a new open movement to counter Google. We need to quickly embrace the latest Web 2.0 ideas, particularly semantic features like RSS, atom, distributed folksominies, and licencing ideas like creative commons.
Rather than google becoming a monolithic hoover of content, we need to develop a network of hobbyists, exchanging their content, under open licences, so that content is free for all.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Well, maybe now I see the meaning of that " killjoe" in your nick name.
And also I assume that for this comment I get marked as pedophile. :)
You wrote that "... but it's not ethical.". And I would add "for you" (and "for me"). But there are other people. And that's the point AC (IMO) raised and you missed.
So that's the situation. And your original question remains: It's legal to have sex with underage children at various places in the world. Should Google facilitate the finding of underage boys and girls for rich businessmen? I mean it's legal right?
Well, it depends primarily on Google and then on what they do with it, where and how. Becasuse if they do/not do something about it, somewhere, somehow, they're going to be "hit" by someone for it.
But as long as there are many different countries in the world with many different comunities with many different people there will be no single answer to your question.
hany
The parent makes a point which seems to be ignored by a lot of people comparing Google to Microsoft.
Microsoft were evil from the very beginning!
The bought a hack of an OS off a guy and sold it to IBM. They lied to and manipulated people. They basically did everything they could to get ahead.
Unlike Google, which actually tries to be "nice". It's got massive geek cred, and it seems to have done nicely without the kind of anti-competitive tactics that were part of Microsoft's business strategy from the very beginning.
Clever signature text goes here.
Although Google is better than, for example, Altavista, it still lives a lot to be desired: for any particular topic, the user has to search hundreds if not thousands of links. Try for example 'serial port ReadFile multiple threads' and Google will come up with many pages that have those words but nothing about how to use the serial port using the function ReadFile under multiple threads.
And then you have to focus really hard in each page to find the relevant information in the suggested page, due to an extreme amount of noise (ads, unrelated text, the author of the article testing his novel-writing skills) as well as go through the presented material (in my case, the presented source code) in order to deceifer it so as that you get the information you really want.
My expectations are that for any search like that, the first 20 links contain at least one article that explains 'how to use the serial port using the function ReadFile in Win32 under multiple threads' in clear and consise English with clear examples. There are such articles, but burried deep in page 10 and beyond of the results Google offered.
I was finishing a website with which it is possible to listen to Podcasts in browsers and subscribe to such feeds, until Google introduced 'Google Reader'... /dev/null, since it is almost impossible to be a successfull competitor to Google.
I moved it to
Damn, am I fucked or what ?!
I think that Google is a good thinkg in the way that it makes things happen, it always keep moving adding functionalities, ... ...). All thoose services that other ISP used to make us pay for even if they don't cost them a penny !
And other must follow ! It's good for concurence and very good for technology ! For example in France we have an ISP Free.fr (Proxad) That keeps offering services for nothing or very low prices (live reverse, DNS non dynamic IP,
--
Gavroche
Flash Xml Socket Server
As someone who used to work for eBay I'm not afraid of Google.
The opposite in fact. Having checked out the beta of Google Base I think it is extremely interesting. If they can tie up Google Wallet in a way that items can be purchased in a few clicks, police the site fairly, and they can verify users better than Paypal / eBay currently does (it shouldn't be too difficult to do all of these in a better way, though admittedly a perfect solution is difficult I think) thus minimizing the number of fraudsters, and making the user experience far richer than that of an eBay's user - then they have an eBay Killer for sure.
Google may come to do evil in the long term - though I hope they don't - however in my opinion eBay certainly does evil now. eBay is arrogant in its monopolistic position and there are some people in the organisation that could care less about the customer base as long as the profit keeps coming in (there are some good guys too though).
Indeed, why become a Powerseller? Because you get a discount? No. Because you get a tacky logo? No. Because you get a Customer Support phone number? No. Maybe you should be one because it is then pretty unlikely whatever you do in terms of listing violations, or shill bidding, or etc, you will get away with it much longer than any other user. Powersellers get several friendly little telelphone calls to ask them nicely to stop before anything is ever done to them. If you are a Motors Powerseller you could probably be back on the site quickly after anything short of killing a bidder. Motors not coincidently a big money spinner for eBay.
eBay's search engine is not as good as Google but not so bad, probably better than Amazon's (being their greatest weakness IMHO). However, since keyword spamming is seemingly rarely effectively enforced by eBay it is pointless bothering to search in some categories because all you will find is "not-the brand you searched for" or similar. Couple this to the ever upward spiral of eBay / Paypal fees and the increasing stagnation of the core business and...well... it's Google time!
My feeling is that the Google folks are generally smarter than the eBay guys and they have the advantage of learning from eBay and improving things.
Competition, serious competition, will benefit users of both Google and those who remain with eBay. I wish Google every success.
Could the last eBay seller please turn out the light?
-----
This signature will self destruct in 5 seconds.....
Shay, is that you?
I think one of the fastest-growing and most used information access point outside the Google search engine is Wikipedia. It is starting to get truly remarkable as an alternative to searching the whole web for answers, and at least as credible. If Google tries to lay its hands on it, then I'd say the writing is on the wall and I'm joining the anti-Google militia.
Remember, Microsoft was around *before* the 'IBM/dos' deal where Gary got screwed and Bill made out like a bandit. Before that, they were not 'evil', just a struggling little software company.
But, i agree that once they tasted IBM's money on the DOS deal, there was no turning back and things 'changed'. From then on, they can safely be referred to as evil.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Google has become a major gatekeeper to the world's information. There's plenty of opportunity for abuse in that alone. The reason to "worry about" a company like Google is that it's better to anticipate problem scenarios so that there might be a chance of doing something to guard against them. There wouldn't be much need to worry about Google if it had a number of strong competitors. It doesn't. It's a public company that's run by professional management and lawyers, like any other company, with a resposibility only to its shareholders, as customary in U.S. business. In such companies, notions like "social responsibility" tend to get pushed aside by more immediate concerns. You can't rely on mammoth effective monopolies to police themselves.
Killing is naturally wrong, just like suicide is wrong. 1-1=0, thats the obvious math. Logically killing is wrong, logically, population reduction is wrong, logically we should be going into space about now, but the world is illogical. We do not do what is best for the species or for the individual, we just care about moment to moment interaction and day to day interactions with no real long distance view.
So if there is a universal moral code, its something which has to be in the best interest of humanity and of the individual. In the situation of child abuse, this isnt something that is universally wrong on the world stage, killing on the other hand is universally wrong and everyone understands this. Rape is universally wrong, certain things are universally wrong, and I don't think Google would want to assist in a direct way.
On the other hand, its impossible to have a company as big as Google and not assist bad people indirectly. If Google wants to do something, Google can put up an optional filter. I don't think its Googles job to do anything but provide a tool for good and bad people. However Google should follow a code of ethics for sure, every company should follow a code of ethics, and we need a global ethics standard. Maybe we need an open ethics standard modeled around open source, to allow people to collectively decide on an ethics standard and then request that Google follow it.
Ultimately, Google will follow a code of ethics because it makes good business sense as a technology company, to make safe technology which is sustainable, it does not make sense as a technology company to make technology which speeds up the destruction of the world, or which increases crime all over the world. People may do this, but I'm saying it doesnt make the world safer and better, and a less safe more dangerous world is always less profitable than a safe world. We could profit off virtual wars at this point through quake, starcraft, etc, theres no real need anymore to have real wars other than for resources and oil. This means the economic reasons, the logic, is swaying towards a sustainable economy.
I could be wrong, if I'm wrong, please correct me.
Oh, one thing that Google hasn't done is Database, although its existance is almost solely based on databases. When are we seeing GoogleSQL?
Check out Google Base. 'Aint no SQL but it's pretty damn close.
http://pixelcort.com/
At least not as I recall it.
The first I heard about them was through their BASIC interpreter, which ran on most of the early home computers. Even for a BASIC, it was rather poor, and in any case, it was always more exciting with those that had their own like Sinclair or BBC (a very good one).
Then there was the MSX line of "standardized" home computers. Again, a rather boring design.
Then there was MS-DOS, which took the throne away from CP/M, without adding anything new. Much later we learned that the reason it looked like CP/M was that it was an unauthorized and modified copy of CP/M.
Then I became excited about Unix, and MS seemed be the evil one since MS-DOS was so primitive in comparison, yet ran on more computers. And even when MS tried to make Unix, they screwed up (aka Xenix).
The only good thing I remember from the early days of Microsoft, was the word processor they sold for the Mac. It was actually pretty good, and far superior to any of the CP/M or MS-DOS word processors I had tried. It couldn't compete with LaTeX of course, but then again, it didn't try to.
I don't use Microsoft software at all, but I also like to see some degree of honesty when discussing them.
First of all, they existed long before getting involved with IBM. I'm not sure if you realized that or not.
Second of all, they didn't "manipulate" IBM. IBM was the premiere computer company at the time. They knew what they were purchasing from Microsoft.
Using your faulty logic, it would be quite easy to suggest that Google is manipulating everyone by being "nice". But that's just putting too much thought into it. They just do what will result in the largest financial returns. If being "nice" is what will benefit them the most, then that is what they do.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
An ad hominem attack from you YET AGAIN delivers me the debate victory.
Indeed, it was rather moronic of you to suggest that Microsoft manipulated IBM, when that obviously isn't the case. One would think that a person such as yourself, who bills herself as an engineer, would understand such things.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
My arguments are always correct, and thus cannot be debated. That must be why you resort to ad hominem attacks over and over again whenever we discuss any particular topic. Ad hominem attacks are bad debating style. And to use the strawman accusation is nearly as bad.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'm sorry you are unable to comprehend the depth of the wisdom which I share with you. Instead of mastering free thought and true debatery, you have become a proficient user of the ad hominem attack. And ad hominem attacks, my friend, are poor discussion style.
And I thank you again, my dear comrade, for proving your incorrectness on such an oft basis.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I think everyone here would appreciate it if you stopped with the ad hominem attacks. We're trying to have serious discussion here, and your petty namecalling does not help us achieve a greater understanding of the matters at hand.
If you can't comprehend the issues we are discussing, then it is very acceptable for you to not post anything, rather than posting yet another ad hominem attack.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.