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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.
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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?
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.
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.
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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
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.
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
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."
And yet at about the same time Google was the only holdout against the US government when they demanded private information on search-engine users. (link)
Making ethical decisions like that is hard. What's better for the Chinese public: a search engine that omits results due to censorship (and says so) or no search engine at all? I don't know, but I'm tempted to say the former.
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.
Google is a single point of failure because of it's enormous logs of user activity. If Google was to one day say: "Yeah, we're done with the 'don't be evil' thing. It's everyone for themselves!!!" we have an awful lot of data to sell (I work for Google). Every suspicious sequence of things goes to the DOJ. Everything of interest to marketers gets sold off to them... etc.
The problem with that scenario is that that would be it for Google's future. That's the fire sale. Nobody is going to trust Google with anything after that. But it would be a big hit to privacy during the fallout from that one event and that's why Google represents a theoretical "single point of failure".
Now, do I think anything like that is likely? No. Google's employees are at least as fearful of Google's potential as the general public. You wouldn't believe the ration of shit that Google management would get if something like that were afoot. The existing protections around user data are pretty impressive and they're getting stronger every day. If there was a hint that user data protections were being subverted to make a buck, employee morale would be destroyed. Many employees (including me) work here contingent on "Don't be evil." The day Google loses "Don't be evil." is the day 20,000 employees go after that startup they were thinking about or at least warm up their resume.
There are real risks associated with the amount of data that Google has. But if I had to come up with a list of companies/organizations that I might trust with that data, based on past behavior and stated principles, it's a very short list and Google is at the top. I believed this last year (before working for Google) and I am even more confident about it now that I work here.
... the Hydra. Evey time you try to kill it, it just grows two more 'O's.
Have gnu, will travel.