Slashdot Mirror
The World According to Google
Ant writes "BBC News has an interesting article and a streaming video documentary on Google. It has interviews with Google staff and people who dislike the company. From the article: 'In the 18 months since its stock market flotation, Google has been transformed from a company that prided itself on being simple and effective, into a multi-headed high tech beast which wants to get involved in everything.'"
Those who rule the Internet rule the world.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
...they're getting involved in everything because they've been good at everything*? When they start failing, I guarantee you they'll stick to what they're good at.
*except Google Earth. I still can't find the Sydney Opera House, no matter what keywords I use.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
And so we should leave it in the hands of an organization susceptible to political pressure from the United States of America?
Just throwing that idea out there.
For example: I wanted to register Slashdot.xxx, but someone kicked up a fuss and now that isn't going to happen.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The thing with Google is that they went to the stock market and received insane amounts of money.
Then the stock has risen to insane levels. To prevent the stock from crashing, they need to materialise and be more than just a bunch of IP. So now they are trying to jump at all markets at the same time and just wait for something that will work. When they have viable bussiness in different markets, they have something to fall back on when something else suddenly fails or temporarely performs badly. Also, investors won't freak out as easily when something goes wrong, which would cause the stock price to collapse.
It's all very interesting to see how things wil evolve!
Google was the last place where I would expect to find a champion of privacy rights.
Google would not exist if it lost our trust.
In my eyes, they have to do everything possible to not break that trust.
Remember without us, google are nothing.
If they eventually cave in and supply identifiable information (ip addresses and search histories) then they have lost at least one customer.
liqbase
Don't kid yourself google isn't fighting for your human rights, they're doing what costs them the least amount of money and makes them less responsible.
;)
The last thing they want to do is to have to filter results to "prevent" child porn from being distributed on the internet.
If it were more cost effective they'd have just turned over the results. They know that any fuel they give to the DOJ will lead to Google having to spend more money then fighting to not turn the results over.
I love google just as much as the next guy, but if you think for a minute they really care about anything more then increasing share holder value... Well then maybe it's time you left the university.
They have slightly different views on the world... Microsoft wants you to run their software with seamless integration and make you pay for most pieces.
Google on the other hand gives most of their software and products away as nothing more than mechanisms to display ads.
Both companies motivations are clear... make money, they just go about it differently.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Google's first and only real responsibility is producing a profit for it's shareholders; "Make money for our shareholders, Don't be Evil.". Making money is not a bad thing, and when you make a good product, money is the tangible reward, that's capitalism in a nutshell.
Google claimed the thrown of search engines, but they know someone might one day build a better search engine technology. It's best not to have all your eggs in one basket. It's the responsibilty to the shareholders to ensure Google doesn't lose big one day.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
to an idealist, especially the type of idealist employed at google pre-IPO, no amount of money would belay their concerns. this happens with any growing company though. the early employees rightfully miss the earlier environment. growth just makes everything seem blah-y and it's extremely difficult to maintain the same atmosphere as the early days.
and even then, peoples perceptions of the "early days" are more often than not incorrect. i once heard it called happy sappy delusion syndrome, and the same thing happens to old video games you used to play when you were a kid.
but getting back on track, regarding the money issue.. personally, i think it's a bit short sighted to say that any amount of money would placate me from my other concerns.
Google was entering every tech market they could (remember, those 10% projects? they're not limited to search) and buying up all sorts of companies even before the IPO. This sounds like the BBC trying to massage unrelated facts to fit a plot they don't particularly.
"Google has been transformed... into a multi-headed high tech beast which wants to get involved in everything"
And this is where it needs to be really careful, otherwise it will - by definition - start being the next Microsoft. Up until now they haven't done anything that I'd particularly object to, but as soon as they start using their gmail account system like a Microsoft Passport system for all their apps, I'll be outta there.
Google have already stated their world information-dominating objectives, and on its own that's something to be worried about, regardless of which company decides it'd be a nice mantra to have...
It occurs to me that stuff like this that appears at Slashdot and elsewhere on a regular basis, it's just exactly like all the entertainment industry dish that goes on out there. It seems that geeks are really no different than all the other hoi polloi out there, their soap operas just have different characters...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Who says large computer companies can't be both competent and not evil sleazebags.
As has been said before, power tends to corrupt. Microsoft didn't seem very evil at all when they were a "little guy" up against big bad IBM, back in the day.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
I think people are quick to call anything a documentary these days, this is opinionated hidden agenda drivel. Someone always enjoys to hate the successful.
Google labs existed long before Google became a behemoth and they were always striving to corner every market (even ones that didn't exist yet); google talk, google desktop, the google cache blade, gmail, google news, picasa, etc. Most of these technologies were released before or were already in the works before they hit it big with wall street. And, they've been hiring bright minds since day one, this is nothing new. Also, they purchased the leading usenet (dejanews) company before they became a behemoth.
This company always had their eyes on the prize, and although unspoken, it was always understood their solutions would be free and minimalist. Too minimalist sometimes, google talk for example could use a more cluttered interface and some actual features. However, their focus was on using open source and widely available technologies (jabber, instead of inventing YET another) and keeping their product as simple as possible (see k.i.s.s.) as they always do.
Google is the most noble and innovative companies to exist today, they fight for human privacy, and they're always willing to push the bar and defy the status quo. The reason you have more space in most popular webmails, along with simpler faster loading interfaces with fewer or no banners is because of Google being a force of nature. The same is true of other websites, where companies have cut back on the amount of flash ads or banners that they used, following Google's lead. But, no one does it like Google.
There was a section that went out of the way to highlight what appeared to br one womans unease about the privacy problems caused by Google's ability to store the results of a users searches - with no mention of the fact that in most cases all Gooogle will have is an IP address, or even that using Google isn't compulsory.
Two points.
First, I'd like to say that any search engine (or website, or whatever) is likely to do this. I recognize that it's kind of spooky to consider what kind of a profile someone like Google could build up on you, given how pervasive Google is -- which is why I wholeheartedly support Google giving the finger to the feds in general when it comes to their users' privacy. This may be a problem, but it's a search engine problem, not a Google problem.
Frankly, I think that we need tougher restrictions present on law enforcement obtaining search engine data. There are obviously practical problems inherent in defining what a "search engine" is, but hear me out. Traditionally, law enforcement could maybe get a warrant to start tapping a phone or search a house (and, incidently, they have to notify people that they *searched* the house, if they do so). I believe that LE can request phone records (though I don't know how far back, and in any event, this is at least somewhat limited information).
On the other hand, search engine data contains an entire history of what people have done on their computer for maybe years. This is absolutely unprecedented. It can be a snapshot spanning *years*. I think that there is too much incentive to grab data for some other claimed purpose and then abuse it -- it would clearly be very useful for political reasons.
I also worry about the chilling effects on thought -- it is as objectionable to me as feds being able to obtain library reading lists (worse, secretly). I want people to be able to read and educate themselves on things without worrying about whether or not that reading might be used against them at some time in the future -- if a lawyer wants to read about communist ideology, I don't think that that should eventually be used to prohibit him from becoming a Supreme Court Justice, for example.
I could see restrictions where LE cannot request data older than $N years, and possibly must go through a more substantial review process than a typical tap or search warrant (in which a judge determines that seizing search engine records is not only *useful* to an investigation, but that there is no other, less invasive, way to perform the request). Furthermore, I think that there should be a requirement to notify the person whose data was seized (in much the same way that house searches currently require notification). This provides some disincentive for "fishing trips".
Second, the woman being concerned was on BBC -- I'm guessing that she's European. European data privacy generally differs from US data privacy in that in the US, the government is often more limited in the personal data that they can obtain, but in Europe, corporations are often more limited in how they can handle personal data. Her concerns were probably about what Google (or someone buying the information from Google, or someone buying the information from them) could do, not with the government.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Despite Google's supporting Beijing in its attempt to suppress human rights and democracy, the company has taken a courageous stand in supporting human rights in the USA. Google was the last place where I would expect to find a champion of privacy rights.
How quickly people forget the tracking Google cookie and the indefinite archiving of your search phrases and Gmail archives.
And what does human rights have to do with the DoJ request?
"Sufferin' succotash."
"Who says large computer companies can't be both competent and not evil sleazebags."
Because when a company goes IPO, the shareholders become the owners. By law, the primary goal of the company becomes maximising shareholder value. If the company does not make use of any opportunity to do so, as long as it's legal, they are open to a lawsuit from the shareholders.
Since a public company has the legal rights of a person, but is totally devoid of moral or ethical principles (by law), it must of necessity become evil. Since going public, this is the state of Google. Current behavior is compliant with expectations. Expect it to get worse, at least from a non-shareholder perspective.
Google has to do something in order to grow, and searching won't sustain them forever. While they're fabulous for finding random websites, I've noticed that I use Wikipedia now if I want to find information about something, since I know there'll always be something useful there. I'm not talking about vital stuff, but if I'm curious about a band, or a model, or an animal or who Winston Churchill was, I no longer resort to Google.
It's also my opinion that it's a good thing Google is doing this. They have the resources to produce some awesome stuff now, and that's what they seem to be trying. Perhaps I'm also slightly charmed by the idea of collecting the world's greatest engineers in one spot.
Mind you, I'm not too fond of all the stuff they're putting out at the moment, but they're bound to strike genius eventually.
What man? Both of the examples I used (IBM, MS) have been scrutinized by the Feds here in the USA for their business practices. That's a far cry from "hating brand-name anything".
Heck I didn't even say I personally thought Microsoft was evil; I've used their various OS offerings since at least 1988. I just think it's overly optimistic to assume that our friends at Google will always keep their "don't be evil" philosophy. Companies change hands, stockholders intervene. I'm not "hating" anything; just being realistic. It doesn't mean Google *will* be evil, it means that their current non-evil stance doesn't make them the "good guys" either. In the end, they have to make a buck just like the rest of us do.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
I'm rather doubtful that platform matters when doing Google searches. Are you aware that Google has several different data centres around the world that do not always return exactly the same results? Also Google *does* show different results depending on whether you are using a localised Google or not, what preferences you have set (e.g. only return English pages) or whether you are using a themed Google (e.g. Google Linux).
You never know though. Do you have any solid repeatable data (e.g. using proxies and ensuring your searches are going to the same data centre) to prove that the platform does affect results?
I doubt it. Google is a colossal index of information. Google News can tell you what has happened recently in the world, but it only does so by linking the user to stories posted on other news sites.
This is where the BBC scores; they're a huge news provider, and a lot of those Google links will come straight to them.
Indeed, the threat Google might be said to pose is the same threat that the likes of AP or Reuters pose. Google can provide links to stories, in the same kind of way that the wire services just pump out terse reports. The BBC's role, in common with the other major news providers, is to flesh those out with analysis and commentary and consideration of the wider implications.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Had they followed your advice, Larry Page and Sergey Brin would not be multibillionaires as they currently are.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10