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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.""
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
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.
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!
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"Who's Afraid of Google" - 83 results
"Who's Afraid of Microsoft" - 818 results
I'm not sure Google needs a traditional database, it's more about generating a huge set of data (the index) then making it available as read only. So really easy to scale, compared to say clustering database servers, as there's no need for updates between the nodes, you just replace busted nodes without worrying about lost data etc. While I'm sure there would be some useful snippets in there if Google release the code, most of it just wouldn't be relevant to most other applications, and the crossover with SQL databases would be quite small.
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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
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?
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.
Is Google thinking about the long term ethical consequences of their business?
Although it is nice to think that maybe they are, the cynical me says they are not.
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
Well it's good competition
No, it's better competition. Google does 2 things that scare the shit out of everyone else. The first is that their first goal isn't to see how much profit they can squeeze from a product. Profits take a back seat to making a better product. The second thing they do is they don't try to manipulate the markets for what they're selling. Their pricing on advertising is essentially pure free market capitalism. Compare this to, say, airlines, which have convoluted pricing structures which are designed to abuse their customers as much as is possible. Those 2 things are very contrary to typical business practices, and they're working. More than just being a better technology company, they've embraced free market economics with a success that is unprecedented. That's what's scaring people.
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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.
Not true. It's in a company's best interest to follow a standard of ethics, which avoids alienating the majority of stakeholders. A publicly traded company wants to return value to their shareholders, if to many of the stakeholders(consumers, employees, unions, or society) deems their actions as unethical the company will have reduced profits. This statement holds true for any company selling products with elastic demand.
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.
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..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA
http://www.fas.org/irp/commission/budget.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
This is just one of several agencies around the world with a nice budget and the hands on experience. What happened with everyone that worked for the agencies when the cold war ended? Did they unlearn their skills? Did the world countries kick out everyone? If they didn`t kick out everyone: What did they work on during the 90s and until now?
"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.
The first is that their first goal isn't to see how much profit they can squeeze from a product. Profits take a back seat to making a better product.
God, why do Slashdotters fall over themselves in love with Google and say goofy things like this? You don't know Google's motives. You just love them so much that you think this. Everything Google does is driven by whether or not they can sell advertising--it's ALL ABOUT how much profit they can squeeze from a product.
Profits take a back seat? Hahahahaha...in a business, profit is front seat. You make products to make profit.
"Sufferin' succotash."