Slashdot Mirror
The In-Progress Plot To Kill Google
twitter writes "Four years after Steve Ballmer vowed to kill Google, Wired details Microsoft's, AT&T's, and big publishers' ongoing slog. The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy. Their greatest coup to date was preventing Google from rescuing Yahoo."
Summary omits any references to chair throwing :(
Man, that blurb couldn't have been more paranoid-delusional if Oliver Stone directed it. Where do you get the idea that Google really wanted to "rescue" Yahoo? A solid company buys a failing company because the benefits and assets out-value the price.
[
But you can win with public opinion. Shame on Microsoft, AT&T and the rest of these companies that cannot compete and resort to political bullying.
obligatory for Twitter stories...
Google keeps every search you or I ever make in their database.
They have my e-mail address, my calendar, my documents, my spreadsheets, my bookmarks, my address (Google maps), pictures of my house (Google streetview), my list of friends (Orkut), my blog (Blogger), my pictures (Picasa), my videos (Youtube), my website (Googlepages), my mailing lists (Google groups), my sales history (Google checkout), my local files (Google desktop), my medical records (Google Health), my Cell number (Google SMS), my chat history (Google talk), my RSS feeds list (Google news reader), my open source project collaboration (Google code), my notes (Google notebook)
They own the database, they could sell or outsource every bit of it to third parties at will.
If they let an untrusted party access to their DB, privacy is severely compromised for users of their services.
"Their greatest coup to date was preventing Google from rescuing Yahoo."
Poor Google. Selflessly throwing a lifeline to troubled Yahoo without a thought for their own safety or position. And do people thank them for it? Noooo. You'd think they were doing it for their own benefit.
I see no sense in mistrusting one large organization that keeps your virtual goods, while trusting another organization with your material wealth. If you mistrust Google, shouldn't you keep all your money under the mattress or buried in the garden?
i must be dreaming...
it would have taken a few years to integrate everything of worth of yahoo into google, let yahoo inc by services fron the mother, and then split of the rest of yahoo.... In the end a only the domain name would have been left.
Whether or not Microsoft or anyone else is trying to "kill Google" doesn't change whether or not Google is trampling on privacy.
I for one don't trust ANY company to do anything except look out for its own interests.
The idea that Microsoft is bad, therefore Google is good is silly. They are both large corporations. Both want to find ways to get you to send them your money. Heck, I would love to find a way to convince you to send me your money. I find it disturbing that so many people seem to trust Google to the extent they seem to trust them.
Hate on Microsoft all you want, but don't make the dangerous assumption that "if MS is bad, then Google is good". Evaluate the actions of each company on its own merits, not in comparison to one another.
The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly
Um...they don't need to manufacture. There are serious privacy and internet coherency issues. Google has already become a major, slim-but-possible single-point-of-failure.
It's so bad, I see people enter domain names for popular sites into the search bar and then click on the search results.
Please help metamoderate.
Let them all use fears of, and laws against, monopoly and privacy abuse to try to kill each other. Let's have a business atmosphere of damnation and recriminations for any raised evidence of monopoly and privacy abuse, brought on by experienced, rich, aggressive and well funded competitors. That's how our system is supposed to harness competition to drive enforcement of open access to a fairly competitive market governed by rules that protect us from unfair competition.
I'm not worried about Google. It's at least as smart, rich and connected as is Microsoft, and nearly as connected as AT&T. Let it slam them for their monopolies and abuses. It's got a lot more material to use than they do. Every move they make against each other along those lines is a move in the public service, against monopoly and privacy abuse.
And I'm not worried about Yahoo, either. It got a $half-billion in that original IPO, and $billions since. If it couldn't use its early lead, vast riches, top brand and huge audience to make it, it should die. And if Yahoo + Google is more monopolistic and worse for privacy, then dead Yahoo is better.
--
make install -not war
Whos to say google didn't submit this story?
Anyhow, google is what most non-technical users consider the internet to be. Infact the way people browse after watching an advert for car insurance proved it to me. Instead of going to the url which the advert mentioned, they just google "car insurence". To us that seems strange as we are good at remembering or working out urls, but to people who dont understand the net, or dont care about various tlds google is the perfect answer.
Its game over,
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
it's absolutely appalling to see people feel they have to tie every move which happens on top of the business world to some 'logical and rational market move' or some darwinian bullshit.
excuse me guys, but, people on top of business world, board of directors, ceos, executives are ALL people. they have various emotions like anyone else. remember how a number of executives had totally crashed u.s. and world economy out of pure simple greed, letting go of all reasonable precautions and moves with the hedge fund gig.
the fact that up to this date many of the moves on top of business world have been done through selfish, negative interests does NOT mean that it has to be like that forever into the future.
they are people. yes, a board of directors, executives CAN feel positive emotions, and CAN move out of goodwill, or a sense of honor, or any other similar emotion.
none of them are exempt from being homo sapiens sapiens, after all, which is what we all exactly are.
Read radical news here
Microsoft Creed :: If we can't do it no one should be allowed to try.
Google is Microsoft 2.0.
Look at Google's shares of the search & search advertising markets, domestically and internationally. They are clearly a monopoly. The question is whether or not they go so far as to be an ILLEGAL monopoly. It is pretty straightforward that they are using their market dominance in one market (search/search advertising) to attempt to leverage entry into other markets (Google Analytics being one of the most striking examples). This is one true test of abuse of monopoly power.
There is no question that they Yahoo deal needed to be blocked. They didn't even pretend that customer pricing wouldn't rise - they just lamely tried to argue "but you'll get more for your money". They would have had > 90% share in the US and closer to 100% in many parts of the Western world had that deal been allowed.
As to privacy - Google's data retention policies are outright consumer-hostile. If any of you are old enough to remember Microsoft's abortive Hailstorm initiative, Google's policies on data retention are worse than anything that would have happened with Hailstorm. Where's the uproar?
People trust Google far too much for their own good.
Google has a different model for making money, they don't want YOU to send them money.
They want your personal information so they can target ads and possibly sell it to other companies.
I read here or somewhere else that google earns about $400/yr off each of us using our personal data, surfing habits and whatever they can gleam from all the data we give them freely (use gmail, google docs, maps, visit a site with analytics, etc....... )
Google knows almost everything about your internet use and communications.
I think folks are forgetting one important point. The reason why I like Google is that their search engine works extremely well. In fact, how often does google search find what you're looking for? Plus the fact that the service is "free" and paid for by relevant advertising is great. I don't see Microsoft giving you free software now do I? Nor does Microsoft's software always work as well as they claim it does. Sure Google probably collects a huge amount of information but so does the government. You have to trust someone and so far Google has shown that it hasn't breached that trust. A standard rule in life is to initially trust someone until it's been broken once. Then it's an all out war. You can't be paranoid of everyone that's new. It just stops changes.
If anything I think this is just proof that companies that would force the money out of you and steal everything you have are afraid of Google just because it's not doing the same and winning the hearts of the public. Nice try but I don't think this will work.
I thought it was Googles coup to prevent Microsoft from aquiring Yahoo.
A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as "charlot chirch sex tape" produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.
"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. "Instead, you should use Windows Live Search - to be renamed Windows Love Search - which produces butterflies and baby seals. That's instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey - it's for the planet."
Google is "secretive" about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. "Or at least, they told us to 'fuck off' when we asked how many endangered species they'd killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft."
A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. "Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder."
The Home Office welcomed the findings. "This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists," said Jacqui Smith, "and so we'll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences."
Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. "All new and yet ... old," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. "Save the planet with Windows 7! (Requires4coreprocessor2gigabytesmemory500gigabyteharddiskandbasement nuclearpowerplant. Powerplantsoldseparately.)"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Shame on you for for believe the collection of shit that is this article. Yessir, a multi billion dollar company is getting bullied around by those mean ol' lobbyists :-(
I'm an advertiser with Google, and allow me to say that those companies do not need to "politically bully". There's plenty of grassroots hatred to go around.
Everyone still has this misguided notion that Google is out there helping them out despite all evidence to the opposite.
I advertise on Google, and I'm saying right now they've pretty much got a monopoly. They have no serious competition. MSN lacks an algorithm, and Yahoo lacks competence in the PPC department. Google doesn't have to 'crush' competitors in the same way MS has in the past because their fanatical userbase keeps the competition forever in obscurity. Beyond that, they're terribly difficult to deal with. They often selectively enforce irrational rules, have support staff that flat out lie, gouging margins where they can, etc.
So far the closer people I've met are to the big G, the more paranoid about it they are.
They're not a victim. They're the godamn boogeyman. And yes, they probably have your credit card.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
Yes top execs can be emotional and irrational, but that's just another factor in the darwinian equation. If their irrational behavior benefits their company (and it can) so much the better. Yes, even chair hurling gorillas can occasionally find the mark. If the behavior hurts the company, another entity will step in to reap the benefits.
As for self-interest, it can and does serve society. That's the whole point of the invisible hand.
Yeah, I know this was a simplified view.
Who's to say twitter (the obsessive-compulsive (and thereby consistently entertaining-for-all-the-wrong-reasons) Microsoft-hater who contributed this story) isn't a sock-puppet of some Google Marketing Coordinator?
Back in the 80's and 90's, MS took the same approach. Under W they have found that if they buy politicians, they can buy the DOJ. If Google wants to survive the onslaught by ATT, Verizon, MS, France, Germany, Russia, China, and many others, they will have to start cozying up to politicians. They do not have to be evil like MS (outright buys pols; uses astroturfers, etc), but they will have to play on the same field. After all, they are there already.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Let them all kill themselves... BTW, I have a new fine idea for a web-based company...
this is evidently a lobbyist article. it seems like google has already "learned it's lessons".
frankly, i got bored with google. i've been using it for ages + it hasn't got any better.
i'd like to see some p2p engines like www.edgios.com or www.faroo.com , in open source versions.
Don't make Google out to be some put upon victims; victims would be the people in China who can't access online material about Tienanmen Square. "Don't be evil" my arse.
I am no fan of Microsoft (haven't used windows in years), but neither am I a fan of the Chinese government nor those who collude with them against freedom.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
a corporation is a group of people. just like any other 'construct' that exists in social life is.
Read radical news here
folder are inferior to tag, period.
If you want "folder" in GMail juste use one tag.
But you can be more flexible with multi-tag
my 2 cent
Seem's like Google were the one's who were the most clever in that mess, not MS. They prevented their biggest rivals (MS and Yahoo) from merging without spending a dime. That's WAY more a win for them than for MS (since Google was never really serious about buying Yahoo anyway, just serious about stopping MS from doing so).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When did competitive business practices turn into "a plot to kill Google" ? People desperately looking for conspiracies should look somewhere else, like their government. What happens at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo is their business and not ours.
If Google goes tits up, someone else will fill the void, quite possibly with ex-Google people in the seats. People are just as quick to defend the free market as they are to accuse it of corruption. :P
I've heard that said several times now.... "Yahoo has the next best search engine to Google". Is this a proven fact, based on studies? Or is it something decided by the fact that it's the "second most commonly used search engine" out there?
And for that matter, is it possible it's as good as it is because they put the resources into feeding it comparatively more data to filter than competitors? (In other words, could a supposedly "inferior" search engine really be superior, if it wasn't underperforming because of a lack of resources allocated to it?)
I guess I'm thinking of "once greats" here like Altavista, which are still around, but appear to return far fewer useful results on a search these days than Yahoo or Google. I always get the idea they might be bandwidth or CPU starved, comparatively, so they don't index as much raw web site material. But hosted by the same people on the same servers, I wonder how they'd do today?
It's the advertisers who are unhappy with Google. Google is approaching a monopoly in targeted online advertising; they bought DoubleClick, which got them up to 70%, and if they picked up Yahoo, they'd hit 90%. Advertisers are not happy about that. It's as if there were only one TV station or one newspaper nationally. (RCA, in the 1930s, once proposed a system by which the entire US would have one nationwide radio station, broadcast over three giant AM transmitters. That ran into antitrust problems.)
Remember, Google is an ad agency. That's where the money comes from. Search is just a traffic builder for the ads.
The population of /. are prone to skepticim. They're mostly young libertarian geek males, and respond well to rebellion against 1) authority, 2) anything "irrational," and 3) invasion of privacy. They also love to expose contradiction, whether real or otherwise. FUD astroturfers understand this. They know that /. is a good place to plant the seed of their message: "Google is an evil behemoth, and wants to invade your life. They're like the next Microsoft, but worse."
What makes you think Google is somehow better than Microsoft (or IBM, or any other evil-corporate-giant-of-the-week)? Take a look at Stallman's story, "The Right to Read" and then ask yourself whose side Google is on. The reader's?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
bloated, broken and doomed to failure
As long as it isn't Microsoft.
Corporations are primarily in business to make money for their shareholders.
That shows a huge degree of naiveté.
Corporations *answer* to the shareholders, and to the board. But while that is a consideration, corporations serve very much at the will of the company leader.
After all, how exactly does a company decide WHAT makes money. If what you said was true, a company would only ever make one thing and they'd be done.
The fact is that there are many avenues toward "making money", not all of them readily apparent except in hindsight. So a strong leader can justify any action by telling a board "it will make money eventually for this or that reason" but the reality is they can take the company where they want - and sometimes (read: almost always) the motives of strong leaders are not purely based on profit.
It doesn't matter if the stock holders simply "want to make money", after all these days you are investing more to make money from people buying the stock later than the actual company itself (dividends being so rare and all) so they don't even care if the company makes more or less money, as long as the stock goes up (hello strategic mergers).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Step 2) Make search engine accessible on the Internet.
Step 3) There is no step three.
If you manage Step 1, you'll "kill" Google in the same way Google killed Yahoo!.
Hello Astroturfer! This isn't about "who's good" or "who's bad", this is about "what are the consequences".
What are the consequences of Google's actions? What are the consequences of Microsoft's actions?
What have they done in the past?
What would Google do to Yahoo's products like Yahoo Widgets or del.icio.us if they bought it? What would Microsoft do?
What did Google do to YouTube, or anything else they've bought?
What did Microsoft do to Hotmail? Well, they spent three years trying to convert a working UNIX-based environment over to Windows and finally declared victory using a UNIX hosted on Windows. Then they used it as a platform to push their proprietary "Passport" scheme.
As for Stallman, he's pulled enough dodgy stuff himself. GCC pulled a classic "embrace and extend" attack on competing open source C compilers (yes, there used to be several). He decided he didn't like Tcl and created a scheme to kill Tcl based on a scheme interpreter called "Guile". Take anything he says with a grain of salt.
To "kill" or at least wound Google, Microsoft (or Yahoo) needs a viable alternative to AdSense. Yahoo has been a terrible alternative with a closed beta for years. While Google has signed up millions of web sites, YPN screwed around without allowing publishers to sign up. YPN through Overture had pretty good ad depth. YPN had poor content matching and lost the chance to sign up new web sites.
Microsoft seems to have good ad depth and is now letting more publishers in to the beta and is not repeating YPN's mistakes.
Alternatives to AdSense will benefit everyone except Google in the short term and maybe even help Google in the long term to keep them from getting more "evil." This is what will keep Google honest.
From this perspective, Google "rescuing" Yahoo would have been bad for everyone. Three big players in the contextual ad market is much better than two.
Hopefully YPN and Microsoft will succeed.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/
... the Hydra. Evey time you try to kill it, it just grows two more 'O's.
Have gnu, will travel.
...TFS already has enough wrong that I have no desire to read an entire article full of that shit.
The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly
How is it FUD?
Google does, in fact, collect and retain entirely too much data about their users. They also have enough marketshare on Search to be entered into the dictionary as a verb.
in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy.
Look, I've got no love for Microsoft, or AT&T, or big publishers. I've got a lot of love for Google -- Summer of Code is awesome, I also like net neutrality, and their products are actually useful. (I use Google Search, and my work email address is Gmail.)
However, being against people I don't like doesn't automatically make you the "good guy", nor is stating obvious and true facts a conspiracy of FUD.
No, it's not paranoia when people are out to get you. Yes, I'm sure Microsoft would like to see Google die -- I'm not sure any business likes its competitors. But that doesn't mean you have to invent things to be afraid of.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Of course they are. They have to be.
- Google Streets is caught in several *countries* employing photomappers so zealous that they ignore 'No Trespassing' signs, drive up into peoples' back yards, and generally trample on privacy in an alarming and unacceptable way.
- Got a problem with GMail, or even your Google home page? Quick, call Google Customer Service. 'nuff said.
- Heck, I own a G-Phone. Last week Google enforced the user agent redirection and I can only get the Mobile page when I ask for my iGoogle home page. Their reasoning included wanting all phone browser users to have a consistent experience. And I bought this phone because it had a more capable browser. I DON'T WANT THE SAME EXPERIENCE A LAMER MOTO RAZR USER HAS, I WANT THE EXPERIENCE I PAID FOR ON MY MORE CAPABLE PHONE DAMMIT!!! Whew. That felt good. I won't get this fixed for a while though, so I use Steel for my browser now - set the user agent to 'Desktop'. I have to 'hack' Google? Anyways, nuff of that rant.
- Google keeps most everything in 'beta'. Sure makes it easier to excuse downtime. Wait, since much isn't a paid service, most users may not get the idea that they have very little leverage when downtime occurs.
- Got a problem with your AdWords? Who ya gonna call?
Google is failing to deliver on their 'do no evil' pledge, and it was inevitable.
Now, let's keep at them.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Fanboy? check. Paranoid delusional? check. Assert lots of absurdities with no basis? check. Good to see the Slashdot editors are maintaining their standards high here.
Speaking of high...
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
I remember the political war with Yahoo where Google and MS portrayed each other as "evil".
Turned out anti-trust law is fundamentally flawed:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9991447-38.html
Read The Fine Article.
It's all about a massive astroturf campaign against Google by AT&T, Microsoft, and others. It names names, quotes papers, cites campaign contributions.
Or should you have written "Hello, I post on Slashdot, so I think actually reading the article is lame"?