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Firefox Creator No Longer Trusts Google
watashi writes "Blake Ross the man whose scratched itch became the Firefox browser explains on his blog why he has a problem with Google's policy of promoting their own products over competitors' in search results. His main gripe is that the tips (e.g. "Want to share pictures? Try Google Picasa") result in an inability for other products (perhaps even Parakey?) to compete for the top slot on Google."
Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.
Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.
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> I didn't see Yahoo, MSN, or Ask pushing Firefox the way Google did.
:) wouldn't similarly support Firefox if *they* were the default? We made Google the default in Firefox long before Firefox was popular because we believed Google provided the best service to our users. Perhaps that's why I'm upset with the company now. It was only once Firefox started getting big and driving significant traffic to Google that a deal was cut.
And you believe those engines (with the exception of MSN, perhaps
> Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I criticize Google because I want to see them improve.
"Doing evil" as you put it isn't something that is going to magically happen one fine day.
/tinfoil hat
:)
It is something that creeps up, a little at a time.
Google had promised not to do evil, and it always starts small. Remember that there was a time when MS was the underdog. Google starts with corrupting ads and results now, and of course such things as revealing the search information of someone:
Google has confirmed that it can provide search terms if given an Internet address or Web cookie, but has steadfastly refused to say how often such requests arrive. (Microsoft, on the other hand, told us that it has never received such queries for MSN Search, and AOL says it could not provide the information if asked.)
Of course, I will not even mention what happened with Google China etc.
The thing is, most people will not notice if Google was turning evil because it's not like one fine day they decide to do evil things. Remember that they are a publicly traded company, and sooner or later the desire for profit will win out over everything else.
They have already decided not to provide search results in a nation where such things as massacres by the government occured, and they have provided data to government agencies and refused to disclose how often they do this.
The thing about "evil" is not that it happens, it's that you would not know if it did. Who knows what else Google does with all that information?
That is the scary part.
Just my two cents and all that!
...as long as their ad results are clearly distinguishable from the real results. I don't have a problem with the ads of a different background color at the top or side... it's the ad results injected into the middle of the real results with only a faint horizontal line to separate them, that I find objectionable. What's worse is Google doesn't do it all the time, so they tend to catch people off guard.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
My post does not claim it's trademark infringement, which you must know, since quoted it. The post says that Kodak could not create an ad containing "Picasa".
Yes.
That's exactly the point here. Google's tips are not subject to the same policies as AdWords ads, so irrespective of whether Kodak blocks ads from using its trademark, a tip could do it anyways. That wasn't the case when Google was using its own network.