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.
What do you think the "Base" means?
Does it mean that it are belong to us?
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.).
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
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
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
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.
Or.. even worse:
braaaaaaains.google.com
Until those happen, I am not afraid!
Will code a sig generator for food
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.
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.
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..
In alot of ways this is a smarter business model than the 'squeeze' tactic. When you look at companies, it's the ones that apply the 'squeeze' model that fail left and right.
Places that concentrate on good product do fail, but they usually do so before they can establish themselves, or they attempt to expand too fast and overreach themselves. Either that or they're just plain out-competed. The trick is to produce a good product(so you keep selling units), while still turning a profit so you don't go bankrupt, and to justify the investment the investors made.
In today's world, it shouldn't be about the 5 year profit margins, it should be about the 20 year margins. More people than ever are investing for retirement, and they're in it for the long term.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
"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."
Yeah, Microsoft didn't charge for Internet Explorer, either.
Penny - plain text accounting
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.