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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."
I suspect that this BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4816848.stm
was made based on the same meeting....
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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"The technology we have is incredibly empowering to citizens," he said. For all the countries we don't like, he suggested we might their change behavior more by giving their citizens PCs, fast connections, and access.
It doesn't empower citizens of countries that do everything they can to proxy out that information. While I 99% agree with what Google did in China, I don't agree that giving citizens PCs, connections, and access will stop their governments from doing what they do.
Fuck, the USA is supposedly "free" and "open" and we have quite a bit of the population with access and yet we just let our leaders take FAT SHITS in front of our faces and then smile when they waft the stentch towards us.
Do you trust Google less today than one year ago?
Feel free to explain why. My point of the "survey" is that I think people trust Google less now than in the past. It is taking more and more effort for Google to keep the hearts and minds of the world. There is more speculation. There are more conspiracy theories.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Also from the article: Schmidt said he saw Writely and other server-based tools as another way to collect and organize the world's data. "All the world's information includes personal information," he noted.
I was a little surprised to not see anything else in there really about privacy concerns, except that users "need to trust that the information won't be abused by Google or by governments".
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?
Torrents are not illegal.
The bittorrent protocol is not illegal.
The bittorrent method of distribution is not illegal.
Torrent websites are not illegal.
The distribution, without permission, of files that fall under current copyright is illegal in most, but not all, places in the world.
Furthermore, searching for torrents of files that fall under copyright is not illegal. Downloading the torrents themselves might be illegal, I'm not sure. Downloading the copyrighted material itself, without permission, is always illegal. This has nothing to do with it being a torrent.
I'd say you can safely search for "torrent"...
To those who talk about embargoing filtering technology to China or other regimes that restrict political information, Schmidt said that personally (not as a Google executive) he was instructed by the example of Cuba. He said the embargo there hasn't worked, with Castro still in power, and with the Cuban people living with technology form the 1950s.
This is a tad self-serving. The Cuba embargo has failed to bring down Casto because domestic Cuban opposition has been crushed. It is non-existant due to fear, just like China. The Cuban standard of living continues to slouch to the 19th century because their economy is subject to the manipulations of one man! What is the US, as home to 10's of thousands of Cuban refugees, supposed to do? Prop Casto up? At least the US government has the guts to treat Castro like the pariah he is.
Mr. Schmidt's high thinking solution is nothing more than to act as the Maoists information jailer, or worse, be their stool pigeon. Hard to see how that leads to a better future in China. But ofcourse we know Google is not operating will the goal of higher ethics. They are making a buck. Do no evil?
an ill wind that blows no good
This is how they denied the Gmail in the first place. They even denied working on Google video at first...what haven't they denied in the past and then lived to defend when products came to the market?
This is one situation where I do not belive what the CEO says.
They (Google), could sell a Google Appliance (with Writely installed), that wirelessly allows users to access Writely and other services. This can be a very useful thing for medium sized companies in that they will not have to install any software on their individual systems. Now, when it comes to Writely, I wish there was a way I could move a table to anywhere in the document being edited. Google should improve on this and solve other bugs too.
This CEO is trying to have it both ways- support the stock holders desire to grow the company by putting the company foot in China (hoping for future business opportunities) while trying to not tick-off the Western world user-base.
It's quite Ferengi of him- and I respect that.
Plus watching him juggle all these balls at the same time is quite entertaining.
Cogito Ergo Sum
"He said the decision of how to act in China was "one of the most controversial decisions the company has ever made," and it took over a year of internal arguments before the company came out with its policies. "It is a hard call, but it is a clear call" to do business in China, he said, and do as the Chinese government requires it to."
And again, greed wins out over morality. Do business, no matter what the cost. What a sad fucking state of affairs.
ah.clem
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
Is Eric Schmidt still around? I thought that Steve Ballmer was going to f*cking bury him!
Apparently, he did it once before...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Your argument (if you can call it an argument) doesn't make sense, and here's why:
Other companies (hereafter, content providers) supply video and whatnot for Google to display on Google Video. Content providers own this content, but don't want to pay for a distribution system when one (Google Video) is already in place. At the same time, content providers don't want to give their stuff away for free (a la your typical Google Video clip). Like any company they want to make a profit and protect *THEIR* content.
So Google has a choice: They can either 1) Accept the content providers content with the provision that
they include DRM to protect said content, or 2) Not offer the content at all. Period.
Since Google would probably like to turn a profit on things like Google video (duh), they choose option #1. Sadly the software is XP/2000 only (which makes me sad), but their *requirement* to protect the content is understandable.
I don't see how you connect this to a trust issue. It's not Google's content to trust you with. It is the content provider's content and their decision of wether or not to trust you. So if you have a trust issue with anyone, it's with the people who own the content. In this case, don't shoot the messenger.
Now, with Gmail on the other hand...
Why do companies absolutely insist on keeping records of everything? (I make (temporary) exceptions for the following: backups, absolutely non-identifable data for site monitoring and traffic flow, and security logs).
If I ran an ISP/Service provider and a customer clicked the delete button I'd make sure that stuff was either erased immediately or very very soon (such as a cron job which expunges selected emails every half hour). I can understand logging something like, safe, people trying to telnet or SSH into a system of mine, but not every page view of my site. Why bother? Is it a legal requirement? Are they just trying to cover their collective asses? Sounds like a shitload of work for absolutely zero payoff (other than pissing your customers off...which really isn't a payoff at all.)
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
Google does not want to comply with that?
You fall into the trap of using one extreme example while ignoring all the likely abuses that could occur (and have occurred in the past) when the government gets their hands on information they shouldn't have. It's one thing to cooperate with an investigation, but quite another to turn over everyone's search information for a government fishing expedition.
So not only do they roll out a magnificent search engine, help research in Africa to clean water, help illiterate kids learn to read/write, fight poverty, etc .. but now they are also fighting pollution?!
[alk]
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.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
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..."
Schmidt went on to say "When we create something meant to compete with Microsoft Office, you'll know it."