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Actually, It's Google That's Eating the World

Posted by timothy on from the respond-only-with-your-real-name-and-gps-coordinates dept.

waderoush writes "An Xconomy column [Friday] suggests that Google is getting too big. When the company was younger, most of its acquisitions related to its core businesses of search, advertising, network infrastructure, and communications. More recently, it's been colonizing areas with a less obvious connection to search, such as travel, social networking, productivity, logistics, energy, robotics, and — with the acquisition this week of Nest Labs — home sensor networks and automation. A Google acquisition can obviously mean a big payoff for startup founders and their investors, but as the company grows by accretion it may actually be slowing innovation in Silicon Valley (since teams inside the Googleplex, with its endless fountain of AdWords revenue, can stop worrying about making money or meeting market needs). And by infiltrating so many corners of consumers' lives — and collecting personal and behavioral data as it goes — it's becoming an all-encompassing presence, and making itself ever more attractive as a target for marketers, data thieves, and government snoops. 'Any sufficiently advanced search, communications, and sensing infrastructure is indistinguishable from Big Brother,' the column argues."

5 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. subject by Ragzouken · · Score: 5, Funny

    How's their colony on LV-426 doing?

    1. Re:subject by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Soon after the dragon attack, every colonist got an email from Google to the effect that the beta had been discontinued.

  2. Same Shit Different Day by GrumpySteen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does every idiotic rambling monologue filled with vague predictions of doom based on the idea that Google is too successful have to be given a place on the front page?

  3. No, dorks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SV went from scientists and engineers selling a new product they invented to a bunch of dorks who are trying to get rich quick.

    When I see someone with an over inflated ego call herself a JavaScript "Engineer" (engineer?! Oh, please!) who is has this incredible "innovation" (Just Another Fucking Social Media/Pimp Subscriber's Data for Ads and Marketing software), I just shake my head and see that SV has jumped the shark,

    I AM seeing some incredible innovations in healthcare in ...wait for it ... India. American trained Indian doctors are giving superior healthcare at a fraction of the price to some of the poorest people on Earth. And the docs are STILL making a very nice living - if not more because of the processes they invented. Win/win!!

    THAT is exciting and Innovative.

  4. Re:The beta will kill Slashdot if it goes live. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The new owners think its pretty. So fuck you.