Slashdot Mirror
Is Google Polluting the Internet?
Pickens writes "In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a promise: 'We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.' Now, Micah White writes in the Guardian that the vast library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact, where users can no longer tell the difference between content and advertising, and the omnipresence of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. And at the center of it all, with ad space on 85% of all internet sites, is Google. In the gleeful words of CEO Eric Schmidt, 'We are an advertising company.' The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore, writes White. 'The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatize the index, commercialize the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder.' Google currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. 'Now it is up to us to realize the dream of a non-commercial paradigm for organizing the internet. ... We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.'"
We've tried this before with GRUB, but it didn't really take off for a multitude of reasons.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I agree that we need a public people-controlled search-engine, and http://yacy.de/ is sadly the best P2P search engine there is right now. It is, sadly, a major fail as it is written in Java and brings the average desktop computer to it's knees just by doing whatever in the background. A good P2P engine would make a good alternative to the commercial search-engines. There really is no alternative to Google as of now, I've tried the alternatives and they are all epic failz & pure jokes.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I'd say the real thing I'm amazed at is just how long google has remained the go-to search engine. Results have been juuust passable for about five or six years now, when once they were very good.
Google proved that every so often, you need to refresh search not by "tweaking the algorithm" but by moving to a whole new algorithm, to defeat SEO spam. So why hasn't anyone dethroned them yet, it's long overdue. Is it just that the the expense of initially building the database at google's start was a much lower barrier to entry for newcomers than it is now?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
That is like saying that it is inconceivable that a person, being a product of Darwin, would do anything other than what is necessary to survive and reproduce, that is, behave 100% selfishly.
Fact is, being selfish turns out, in many cases, to decrease chances of said reproduction. It may be indirect (i.e. people figure out they can't trust you, you lose friends, you don't find a spouse, you don't have anyone to help you out when bad things happen to you, etc)
Same thing happens with corporations. Behaving purely "selfishly" (i.e. do everything to maximize profits) can have the opposite effect. (i.e. you have to pay a lot higher saleries if you want to hire the best and brightest, you lose customers because they think you are evil, etc)
I'm not saying anything one way or the other about Google, I'm just saying I disagree with the simplistic notion that all corporations, large or small, will only act in ways to maximize profits....or your implication that "being a good citizen" can't be a viable strategy toward maximizing profits.
What we need is "researchers" who are a bit more intelligent. This person claims users "can no longer tell the difference between content and advertising". Based on what? HIs own experience?
Personally, I don't know anyone who has any difficulty in telling the difference.
I agree with you completely. So many people completely misunderstand this. I blame it on the idea that our moral sense is given to us from a deity or creator rather than being a product of evolution. There is a survival reason that we behave in a moral fashion.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Maslow's hierarchy is a hack. The hierarchy of needs has no basis in actual, human needs: it was designed as a self-dependent prerequisite, and it's application tends to result in selfish aims alone.
Maslow tried to discredit detractors by emphasizing that his study only examined 'healthy' people and was not applicable to those with mental/emotional/etc. deficiencies. This is disingenuous:
The bulk of humanity will often do things which meet the 'higher' things on the hierarchy while neglecting the lower. They'll spend time, money, etc. for the shelter and care of loved ones while neglecting their own. They'll spend money to gain social standing while things as existential as their rent goes overdue. They'll pursue ideological ends while neglecting basic safety. This can be said for the bulk of humanity, at one point or another in their lives.
What's more, things are often done to meet the higher needs (esteem, self-actualization), in the complete absence of the lower levels. See: the sales of Coca Cola in 3rd world countries.
In contrast, pursuing or adhering to Maslow's hierarchy tends to only be achievable with no concrete acknowledged external responsibilities. It's a pyramid of self-fulfillment. You can't adhere to the hierarchy and be a good parent, for instance, without substantial funds or an external force (eg. government/charity) to aide in the basic physical needs. Ultimately, Maslow's hierarchy seems better - or at least, as good - at encouraging socialist agendas (as I have seen it done) than it does business practice.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Gee, I have no problem whatsoever telling the difference between ads and content on Google (or almost anywhere, for that matter.) Even if this clown can't tell the difference, I can't say it's a universal problem. As far as the search index goes; Google seems to have been a decent steward so far. For what I search for, it produces good results, and they clearly delineate between ads and search results (unlike some other engines) and they have always done so.
I suspect some people (myself included) would happily pay a monthly $5 or $10 to access a search engine that was completely free of adverts or bias. If the market were big enough ...
One would be surprised how many people would rather see adverts than knowingly or inadvertently revealing more private data to them via their billing information by paying for the service.
If you have enough money or power, can't you just use it to get the other? Much like matter and energy they can be converted back and forth.
P= $e^2
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You're still the leech. They are providing a service, which is being paid for by advertising. If it bothers you so much, don't use the service.
You don't get to say "oh stopping to buy a ticket slows me down and get in the say so I'm just going to jump over the turnstile" when you're getting in the subway. The same thing applies to ad supported websites.
The only reason most community public libraries still exist is that some astute librarian/marketer figured out that more people wanted access to popular fiction and not necessarily reference materials. Otherwise the system was in decline throughout the middle of the 20th century. Public libraries started buying periodicals and novels in bulk, with public money, in order to justify the expense of their existence.
Now that electronic publishing is coming into its own with Amazon and Apple leading the publisher's to reorient their markets, the public library system will atrophy naturally, the way that the retail book buyers have been swayed toward convenience. By the time anyone figures out that Jeff Bezos hedged his bet by subsidizing the process with free shipping, the damage will be done and buyers will be stuck exchanging paper for carbon emissions from UPS trucks. So it goes.
But as far as the libraries go (and they will), I'm in agreement that the loss of public space devoted to the purpose of reading and exploring knowledge would be a poor, but understandable, economic decision. One alternative might be to utilize some of the otherwise underutilized space in public schools.
Maybe we could find a way to store books all around the inner circumference of gymnasiums and require librarians to wear whistles and referee's uniforms. Of course changing the rules of basketball to account for the presence of cubicles and the fouling of readers might not go over too well. But the loss of whisper from the library is already gone. Done away with by the inability of seniors to realize that cellphones actually have a vibrating option and don't require a louder speaking voice just because the don't output enough volume for the elderly.
Well, yes and no.
Sure it's true as far as you tell it, but you've ignored the most important point.
Google is a corporation driven by the fundamental belief that a corporation does NOT NEED TO BE EVIL (for any non-zero, random, potentially quantum, multiverse-applicable, non-denomenational value of "evil") in order to be hugely successful and generate what amounts to *almost obscene* amounts of profit.
In fact, Google seem to be going as far as trying to show that a corporation can be Socially Responsible, Energy Efficient, Environmentally Conscious, AND good to their employees - And Still Make Humongous Piles of Profits.
Remember folks, *we do not HATE corporations*, what we hate is EVIL CORPORATIONS.
Google *really* tries to NOT BE EVIL.
People ARE just that fucking stupid. Really, they are. Ever administrated a school or office network? You will cry tears of blood my friend. The shit people will do. The dialog boxes they will dismiss without reading. The attachments they will open. The stupid crap they will install. Most people are content to be computer users. Slashdot readers tend to be computer operators. What is the difference between users and operators you might ask? Operators do not fear the machine, and they seek to understand it and use it as a tool to its fullest potential. Users fear the machine so deeply that if the computer ever displays any unexpected behaviour it is either an instant call to tech support, "The computer says I don't have enough space on the drive and I should delete some things to make room. What should I do?" or a wild panic. "The computer seems slow, I must have a virus. I will now install 5 different anti-virus programs."
Adblock works on explicit ads. What I find issue are the millions of generated pages that either read like infomercials or are thinly veiled advertisements for products, supplements, etc. Everyone has information, but they want to charge you for the fucking ebook, etc. Try googling for things like bodyweight exercises or dietary recommendations and it can be tedious sifting through the chaff to find the wheat. Granted, this is a tech site, so perhaps not many people try googling for more mundane things (I rarely have this issue when looking for, say, parsing xml with perl/python).
One could argue your neo-conservative perspective is not only failed, but the cause of much misery in the world today. The facts do not lie. The middle class in America is on the retreat and it is questionable whether it will rebound in the near future or not. Meanwhile, socialist/communist China are making tremendous societal gains. Methinks you're the Hack. ;)
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Google is not immune. /.ers have seen it time and time again over the years. Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Apple and now, it appears, Google. They've all succumbed to their successes with excesses.
It truly is very difficult to resist using one's power if one is good enough and lucky enough to get some. Most of us never get to experience this heady state of mind (which is probably a good thing). If we were running Google, we'd already be working on our rationalization speech: "But, we're Google. A company that has pledged to Do No Evil. Be honest: would you rather be spammed by a company like ours or some shadowy, suit-populated advertising broker who is only in it for the money?" Uh, wait a minute. Strike the part about the money...
Nothing really new here.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
We have an open source search engine : http://nutch.apache.org./ But we need a distributed index storage system that is uncensorable and/or trackable. Do we have that?
Just FYI, all the old search engines - Excite, Altavista, etc. - are still around. They still suck so bad nobody uses them. It's impressive that Microsoft has managed to improve their search engine to the point where it can actually compete (though still get beaten, mostly in mind-share) by such a dominating search engine as Google. Google left every search engine on the market in the dust ten years ago, and Microsoft has managed to basically catch up in the last few years with Bing. There is still a wide gap between them and the rest of the search engines.
I think a lot of people, the OP especially, forget what the internet was like in the 90's. Yes, advertisements are ubiquitous today, but they are nowhere near as obtrusive as they were 10 years ago. Yeah, overlay adds suck. So do embedded videos with sound that cannot be muted or stopped (my personal pet-peeve at the moment). But it's nothing, nothing compared to the popups and redirects and flashy banner adds of the 90's.
Besides, Google adds are always labeled as such, and are usually very unobtrusive. Frankly, if people are getting confused by a section that says "Ads brought to you by Google", I don't give a shit. I have absolutely no problem with them, and I wish everybody would use unobtrusive Google-esque advertisements. I wish all the remaining popovers and floating ads and banners would be replaced by simple text ads on the side of the web page. That is my internet dream.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
It is interesting that you say I am trolling, but in these statements you in essence agree with me. BTW, while I believe in God/higher power, I am definitely not a fan of organized religions because I believe all they lead to is the church leaders eventually only wanting more power and use the church and their perceived honourable offices as tools to achieve them (whether they admit it or not). Organized religion is too easily corrupted. I say people should worship God in their own way. Granted, some people need validation. [sigh]
While I applaud and believe in informed humanistic activities, I believe too much is done by people who don't have a clue, and/or involve either directly or indirectly humanist philosophers who have never actually traveled anywhere or gone anywhere to try to put into practice what they preach (all talk and no action). Because of this I believe that oftentimes more damage is done by humanists than help. A great novel on this concept is called The Comedians by Graham Greene. Essentially many of the protagonists unable to leave Haiti during Papa Doc's early days try to do good for some of the poorer residents as they occasionally interact with them, but being ignorant of the local morals, and not caring to learn them, their thoughtless acts of help actually cost many of their beneficiaries a lot of pain or trouble. For example (from the book), while we would think that it might be moral to provide some money to poor people occasionally, doing so in front of some of Papa Doc's 'police' causes the poor to be beaten or killed when the 'police' steal the money from the poor once the benefactor leaves. Hardly moral doing something that will ultimately get someone hurt or killed. In this case, the poor couldn't afford to be given money. The cost was too high. Our western morals were too expensive for the area.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Advertising certainly is pollution. I no longer watch television shows on television - only shows that can be downloaded. I also use ad blocking software on my browser, use an email app instead of webmail, and listen only to non-commercial radio. You don't have to look at this garbage if you don't want to. As for those who'll say they need advertising to keep their content online: I really wouldn't care much if your content disappeared. I wouldn't mind a bit if we went back to the kind of web we had before all these commercial interests jumped online.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped