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Who's Afraid of Google?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the in-the-end-there-can-be-only-one dept.

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.""

4 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. What about... by fembots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. I'm not afraid by ninjagin · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ... mostly because google hasn't charged me for anything. They seem to charge the people who want my time, which I think is fine.

    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
  3. Who is Google anyway? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Huh? by tpgp · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From the article:
    Signs of panic: Microsoft launched its own toolbar and protested the decision of the Massachusetts Information Technology Department to dump Office for open source alternatives.
    Huh?

    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.
    --
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