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Google Secret Privacy Document Leaked
siliconbits writes "A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. 'vision statement' shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities? Should it tap more of what it knows about Gmail users? Should it build a vast 'trading platform' for buying and selling Web data? Should it let people pay to not see any ads at all?"
What shall we use to fill the empty spaces
Where waves of hunger roar?
Shall we set out across the sea of faces
In search of more and more applause?
Shall we buy a new guitar?
Shall we drive a more powerful car?
Shall we work straight through the night?
Shall we get into fights?
Leave the lights on?
Drop bombs?
Do tours of the east?
contract diseases?
Bury bones?
Break up homes?
Send flowers by phone?
Take to drink?
Go to shrinks?
Give up meat?
Rarely sleep?
Keep people as pets?
Train dogs?
Race rats?
Fill the attic with cash?
Bury treasure?
Store up leisure?
But never relax at all
With our backs to the wall.
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Eh, Pink Floyd deserves the sacrifice of some karma points...
The good thing is that they are actually asking these questions in the first place. We all know other companies (not all) that wouldn't give some of these balancing ideals even a moment of reflection.
and no I'm not a Google fanboy
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
There's a sensible point hiding under the hyperbole about slavery though; sometimes a company can turn a better profit by doing something unethical, so commitment purely to the bottom line will fail to produce businesses that do good things.
Doing something unethical (of the type that your customers care about) then getting publicly busted for it... that's where ethical behaviour is a more attractive option for the profit-chaser. But too often companies are able to slide along despite unethical practice by being so big (and the bad stuff so remote) that people just buy from them out of habit, without giving a lot of thought to exactly what they might be supporting.
That's a sucker's question. Cable TV is $100/month and you still see ads. There is no end to the greed.
In traditional sense, shares of a company XYZ were meant to buy you, well exactly, "shares" of the company. Company made X amount of dollars, you got to share profits in accordance with what you own in that company. Company grew, the shares were worth more, however the idea was you got to share the profit. Sure you could sell your shares, however the concept got turned head over heals when shares themselves became trading commodities, so unless prices of shares rise, they are not valued, it does not matter if company is making a fixed X amount of profit year over year.
3 cheers for greed!
I vote "meh". Seems self-evident that
a) Google (if it chose to) could mine a lot more data than it does - e.g. contents of gmail, results of using Google DNS, etc
b) There are ways that Google could make a lot of money out of mining more data from the contents of their servers
c) There is a point where customers would get pissed off/could be illegal if they over stepped the mark
d) That it's entirely reasonable for Google to debate and investigate what further data mining they could do without Being Evil.
I presume the document in TFA is a debate over where they draw the line. I'm glad they're debating it. I'll let you know what I think of them when they've decided where that line is.
Google has two classes of shares: A and B.
A are only worth 1 vote, B are worth 10.
A are all publicly traded, B are all hold by founders, directors and executives.
At least in 2007, 67% of the votes were owned by Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
So being publicly available does not mean they don't control the company anymore.
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