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Google's CEO Clears the Air
prostoalex writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with PC Magazine to discuss some of the current issues swirling around Google, such as China and censorship, growth of the video content on the Internet, Microsoft's planned move into online ads, working with AOL and Internet neutrality." From the article: "Schmidt was quick to say that the acquisition of Writely was not meant to create a competitor to Microsoft Office, which he said solves a complicated and important problem of work productivity. Writely is a server-based editing system where you can move your files around, he said, and there are places where a rich text editor is useful in Google."
from tfa: "He said Google ads are very targetable, because Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail."
not to mention possibly what crimes you've committed. i find myself suddenly not wanting to ever search on the word 'torrent' again.
-- build a man a fire and he'll be warm all day. set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Google keeps acquiring lots of small companies. Who wants to bet that these things are all inteneded for a much larger product that we all assume? Looks like they could eventually captalize on many different markets. Search will probably eventually become what they're least known for.
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Am I the only one who does not like Google collecting surfing habits or using email to decide what ads to send my way. What other ways can this information be used? Will Google one day sell this information to employers? Will there be enough data that Google can link surfing habits to a real person, not a virtual internet user?
Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?
Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person? Can that data, when taken as a whole, be used to predict things like how much a person will cost in health insurance, and that data be used to not hire a person?
I trust any company less than the identical company with 100 fewer employees, so my answer to that question would have to be "yes". However, I'd also have to point out that when compared to ANY OTHER FOR-PROFIT COMPANY OF ITS SIZE, I trust Google far, far more. This relative trust is highly significant to Google's business, and until they do something to violate that trust (no, censoring Chinese content doesn't violate that trust because it provides more information to the Chinese than they would have had if Google had refused), I will continue to use their products over Microsoft's, Yahoo's and their other competitors'.
Yes, I trust Google a little less today than a year ago, but only slightly. Overall, I trust Google far more than any other company of decent size.
The reason I trust them less, is because they have grown larger, and are expanding. It is easier to "not be evil" when you have a smaller number of employees and a smaller number of projects. As Google grows, they will inevitably hire some people who are willing to take greater liberties with their user's trust than they have in the past. Usually these people are MBA-type weenies who believe that making money is the only reason to do something. I'm sure Google isn't very receptive to this type of attitude presently, but as they grow it becomes easier for little factions to develop within the organization undetected. Couple this with the pressure on the bright developers to not have their latest spin-off fail, and things might get interesting. The idealists can't watch everyone all the time (and nor do they want to)...
As I said, it's not that I don't trust Google, it's just that I worry their size and increasing outside pressure may lead to some slippage of their internal culture and ethics.
I trust Google more now than a year ago. Why? Evidence. We've gone another year without them screwing me over. We all do business with many corporations every day (banks, phone companies, etc.). Sometimes they screw us over, sometimes they "play fair."
Google has never done anything to bother me. They offer me quality products (search, Gmail) at a reasonable price (I look at a few ads). The evidence so far is that they treat me well... so my trust in them has grown. (As compared to, say, Sony.)
I would say that over the last year, I have seen Google put in some interesting situations. They've made those situations fairly public prior to deciding what to do about them, taken time to make a choice, chosen what could arguably be the lesser of evils, and made that public, too.
Examples: Google gets beat up all the time for tailoring its web searches to suit the Chinese gov't on google.cn. What about Yahoo and MSN? I'm sure that they tailor search results at teir China sites, too. Google gets beat up for having to turn over data to the Justice Dept, and yet they're the only ones who made any noise about it. I'm sure those same requests were made of other search engines, and that those engines happily turned over the requested data without informing the public at all.
Do I trust Google more now than I did a year ago? Yes, I do. Because they are public about situations of which the public should be aware, while their competitors are uncannily silent.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Actually, it changes Google's mission statement to, "To index the world's information and serve portions of it up to you depending on your culture, locale and in some cases, restrictions imposed by local government."
... it just makes the foolishness and stupidity of their prejudice all the more poignant.
Google doesn't care about the color of your skin, they care about the language you speak and the laws governing your usage of the Internet. In both cases, they care about these things because it lets them continue to deliver pertinent information. If they run afoul of Chinese government's censorship policies, China will cut off access to their servers plain and simple.
While we're on the subject, let's all take a moment to remind ourselves that race is a cultural construct rather than a biological fact. Consider, for instance, that black natives of the West Indies and black natives of Australia share NO common ancestry going back 100,000 years, yet they are both labeled as being of the "black" race.
Of course, that doesn't keep people from discriminating based on race
Maybe a key line in the interview is this: "One of the things about the Internet is that every experiment is tried," he [Schmidt] said. Maybe Google doesn't have a grand masterplan, which so many folks assume it has. Maybe they take that line about the internet at face value. They try lots of things, and if one works they go for it. Most outfits don't have the resources to scale a success very quickly, but Google do with their truly huge computer farms. And if it doesn't work, no big deal, they run it down or can it. I've no idea whether this is the case, but looking at Google in this way makes it easier to understand, a little less of a mystery. They are opportunists and they pride themselves on not being a big fat corporation that like an oil tanker takes five miles to change course by ten degrees.
The emphasis on trust is very sticky for them now, though. Google's pitch that it was the company that dealt (or could be trusted to deal) with the world's information has been blown out of the water by the China venture and the recent court stuff about handing over records. I suspect this is going to come back and bite their ass bigtime. Once perhaps Google was the natural "information company"; now they are just another corporation angling for your dollars. Better than plenty, but no longer unique.
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