So by your thinking, if I post a billboard in public, you should be able to just copy it for free and make a profit off of it? After all I put it IN PUBLIC!! Just because something is public does not give others the right to reproduce it, let alone make a profit off of it (as Google could potentially do)
That philosophy has always bugged me....it's like "Well if you don't want me robbing your house, why don't you just lock the doors?". The point is I shouldn't HAVE to lock my doors...you're the one robbing my house, why should I have to go to an extra step to keep you from displaying my copyrighted material against my wishes?
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well. (From Google's 10 things)
They should listen to their own philosophy...because they seem be trying to do 100 things "ok", and maybe 3 or 4 things really really well. When was the last time they made an innovation in search?
Why do you seem to consider this a bad thing? Don't you want terrorists to get caught?
hehe, yes actually I do trust the government, and also have nothing to hide, so I do use Gmail too, but I can see why there is concern. It's like the Patriot Act Library card thing everyone is so up in arms about...who cares who can see what Library books I take out? Until there is a documented case of abuse by the gov. One time a took a class that involved a discussion of civil liberties, and people were talking about how the grocery store "discount cards" they all require these days track your shopping history. And this one person was like "my friend was a drug dealer and they noticed he bought hundreds of rolling papers and they totally arrested him!" And I'm like...ok, so tell me when they caught someone who WASNT breaking the law...
I don't see what the big draw is going to be for HD-DVD, at least not until giant high-def TV's become way more common.
People didn't quickly adopt to DVD's either. When did you get your first DVD player? 2000? 2001? DVD's started coming out in 1996, and it wasn't until 2003 when you started to see more DVD's then VHS on the shelves. You probably don't want HDDVD because you don't own an HD TV yet...I do, and I can't wait for them to come out (seeing High def movies on HBO keeps me from ever watching DVDs for the most part). But I think they will start ramping up quickly...the early adopters will get them next year, but everyone will have them in 3 years. Its unfortunate they decided to go with a format change so soon, i don't buy any regular DVD's anymore just cuz i know i will need to replace them.
Um, I would hope the associate the number with your account, otherwise if i register 10 gmail accounts with my phone number, the next person to get my phone number is completely screwed? And actually they specifically say they associate it with your account...if you go into your Google account you can see the number, and remove it if your paranoid. By default they keep the number in your profile, thus most people will leave it there.
Also i agree the "the program can read your email" is a little hysteric, but Google has to keep logs of it's Adsense....don't you think it logs the source of the clicks to prevent abuse? So it must know that a click on such and such ad came from so and so's email account (otherwise, i just thought of a new way to defraud competitors, just write an email to myself with some keywords and click away their budget). So they can probably tell if they wanted to that the contents in your email are mostly about goat sex or whatever because there have been so many targeted clicks for goat farms from your email account.
My cell phone company charges me $.05 for incoming too:(. My old cell phone company Sprint did the same. I always thought it would a nice evil revenge to sign someone's cellphone email address up to a mailing list.
And access to my emails...who cares? It's the same no matter what email service you use...unless you host your own server.
No...regular internet companies don't save any of your mail. Especially once you download it off your POP3 server. Google is the only one that ENCOURAGES you not to delete it....it's the only one whose servers READ your email to give you targeted ads. Because of your Google cookie, Google in theory knows exactly what you search for, what you shop for, who you IM, and your entire email records. I don't think Google actually cares, but the GP was pointing out that if you are suddenly suspected of being a terrorist under the patriot act or whatever, the Gov can find out your entire life from one court order to google. Microsoft, Apple, etc... know nothing about your personal life.
Just joking...though this would cost me $.05 cents a pop in text messaging to sign up. A small cost to pay for a decent free email service. It does keep people who do not have cell phones from getting free email (yes those people exist, and are probably one of the people that NEED free email the most). And I worry about them storing mobile phone numbers by default (they say you can remove them manually). It would just really suck if someone hacked google and got a bunch of mobile numbers, but all in all a novel way to stop spammers.
That sure sounded bad. But if you'll look back you'll see he leaked some financial stuff he should not have pre-IPO.
Informative? Thats just plain incorrect. First of all the IPO was in August 2004, he wrote the following:
google's profits and revenue are growing at an unprecedented rate even while they are increasing their expenditures on capital and human resources. not to mention that google has been primarily focused on the u.s. market and is now turning their full attention to the global marketplace.
in January 2005. There is nothing there that would be considered sensitive or insider information...the growing financials are public record (and showing him financials before an earnings announcement would be illegal). Yes, announcing that Google would be going worldwide might be somewhat secretive...but common its not an unexpected move, and i'm pretty sure it was in the prospectus... certainly nothing to FIRE someone over.
Please see the Summer of Code and our other work with open source.
Please, the Summer of Code was just the summer of cheap labor for Google. I'm certain it wasn't done simply for the purpose of helping open source it was either A) Used as a recruiting tool to weed out more smart people from the many applying B) Used to get kids to help develop products that Google will use to sell AdSense space (notice all the sponsors could in some way help Google's business model?)
Me thinks that $4 bil they just got will lead to some monopolistic things...but until then you are only wrong on the count that Google supports open source more then other companies.
Google supports open source only when it can help them...you dont see them open sourcing their search algorithm or their adsense right? What about gmail? Nope...they work on open source chat projects when they want to release a chat program, or they put out some of their api's for their maps and what not when they want to draw more use of them. Google's open source activities are really not all that benevolent.
But the article makes a good point about arrogance. There seems to something about a growing tech company that they feel they need to touch EVERY area instead of focusing on what they are good at. Google hasn't made any innovations to their search for years, while competitors like Clusty.com, Yahoo and A9 are coming up with new ways to improve search. Meanwhile Google is busy playing with chat, and photos and all sorts of other nonsense, like when Yahoo branched out into all sorts of things. The article describes this as arrogance, and who can blame them? Just releasing a Google skinned version of the open source Jabber client created about 8 articles here on slashdot and several in every other publication. Hey, maybe they will build that Space Elevator now...their stock price went up when they offered $4 bil more...maybe they can try a $10 bil offering and buy Egypt, but call it G-gypt.
What if they are planning on using wireless net, dark fiber, and Google talk to launch a "free" (only pay the cost of phone) alternative to cellular in all of the major metropolitan markets?
There are many problems with that idea...you can't lay that kind of infrastructure without the cell phone companies knowing, Google can't offer something that expensive for free (want ads in your phone calls?) and that has even less to do with search then any of their other ideas.
But that crazy speculation aside, I understand wanting secrecy in launching new products, hell it got them like 6 stories on Slashdot just for their talk client...but it's the way that everything about Google, not just their products is secret. As I mentioned above, Mark Jen got fired just for saying "they have some cool stuff coming up next year" without giving any details. When investors wanted a tour of Google's financials, they got the "Chief Food Officer". Meanwhile insiders dump shares at uncanny rates and the company gets billions more on the open market. In a recent presentation they showed a server room but completely dimmed, so no one could tell what was going on?...wtf about a bunch of blinking servers could be so top secret? I'm just saying that all the secrecy surrounding the company gives it an eerie feeling, it doesn't feel like a legitimate, out in the open company....you would think a company that prides itself on being non evil would be completely transparent...and take this chat client for instance, there is nothing new or unique about it...it didn't tap into some gold mine or start some revolution so why the secrecy?
Google is so ubiquitous it's easy to forget that, in many ways, they're still the little guy in comparison to some of their competitors.
I'm not sure they are the "little guy" anymore by anyone's definition...with 4,100 employees, a market cap of $80 bil (larger then Time Warner, Yahoo, and Ebay, Amazon), and a warchest of now $6 bil in cash (larger then Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon) really the only competing software company that is consistently larger then them is Microsoft. And although they are definitely a company to fear based on previous tactics, I'm sure MS could find out what Google is up to before reading it in the LA Times if they wanted to.
I'm not sure how Google gets away with being so clandestine, yet people think they are not evil. It reminds me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory... If Google is such a great open non evil company, how come their employees don't have public blogs like all those at MS? (In fact they fire the one person that had a semi famous blog) How come they are one of the most opaque companies on wall street in telling their shareholders what's going on? How come all their projects are so top secret despite the fact they end up just being another jabber knock off? I understand things like their search algorithim should be kept secret, but cripes why all the mystery?
Just out of curiosity what is the point of Google doing this if they are just going to use Jabber? Why would i switch from my iChat or Jabber name to my gmail one? And what does this have to do with search again? Unless they made an IM client that could search for other buddies better then the current ones out there....
Ok i played a lot of Halo 2 there for a while, got up to level 25 or so before the first reset, so i'd consider myself a decent Halo player...took a few months break, came back and tried to play the new maps, and got schooled over and over and over again by little kids. It sucked. Its hard to tell how much is cheating and how much is people just playing sickening amounts of Halo, but I just can't enjoy it online with random people anymore.
Ok but lets assume Google isn't doing anything with your data...it is pretty crazy to think they care about your love life or whatever. But let's say Google toolbar has some small bug that allows remote users to see your data, or Google gets bought by another company who can now mine your data. Or say someone is snooping your internet connection, and google is sending the contents of your email to it's servers to show you "relevant" info....it's just dangerous and unecessary for a simple tool like this to do so much, in the way it does it.
Slashdot Mirror
Either this guy has a MUCH longer weekend then me, or each song is like 5 seconds long....am I missing something?
Ah...takes me right back to after school in 4-5th grade. Always used to look forward to Zelda fridays.
So by your thinking, if I post a billboard in public, you should be able to just copy it for free and make a profit off of it? After all I put it IN PUBLIC!! Just because something is public does not give others the right to reproduce it, let alone make a profit off of it (as Google could potentially do)
That philosophy has always bugged me....it's like "Well if you don't want me robbing your house, why don't you just lock the doors?". The point is I shouldn't HAVE to lock my doors...you're the one robbing my house, why should I have to go to an extra step to keep you from displaying my copyrighted material against my wishes?
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well. (From Google's 10 things)
They should listen to their own philosophy...because they seem be trying to do 100 things "ok", and maybe 3 or 4 things really really well. When was the last time they made an innovation in search?
Why do you seem to consider this a bad thing? Don't you want terrorists to get caught?
hehe, yes actually I do trust the government, and also have nothing to hide, so I do use Gmail too, but I can see why there is concern. It's like the Patriot Act Library card thing everyone is so up in arms about...who cares who can see what Library books I take out? Until there is a documented case of abuse by the gov. One time a took a class that involved a discussion of civil liberties, and people were talking about how the grocery store "discount cards" they all require these days track your shopping history. And this one person was like "my friend was a drug dealer and they noticed he bought hundreds of rolling papers and they totally arrested him!" And I'm like...ok, so tell me when they caught someone who WASNT breaking the law...
I don't see what the big draw is going to be for HD-DVD, at least not until giant high-def TV's become way more common.
People didn't quickly adopt to DVD's either. When did you get your first DVD player? 2000? 2001? DVD's started coming out in 1996, and it wasn't until 2003 when you started to see more DVD's then VHS on the shelves. You probably don't want HDDVD because you don't own an HD TV yet...I do, and I can't wait for them to come out (seeing High def movies on HBO keeps me from ever watching DVDs for the most part). But I think they will start ramping up quickly...the early adopters will get them next year, but everyone will have them in 3 years. Its unfortunate they decided to go with a format change so soon, i don't buy any regular DVD's anymore just cuz i know i will need to replace them.
Yeah I mean these movies are so bad these days, it's barely worth anyone's time or bandwidth to download them illegally anymore.
Um, I would hope the associate the number with your account, otherwise if i register 10 gmail accounts with my phone number, the next person to get my phone number is completely screwed? And actually they specifically say they associate it with your account...if you go into your Google account you can see the number, and remove it if your paranoid. By default they keep the number in your profile, thus most people will leave it there.
Also i agree the "the program can read your email" is a little hysteric, but Google has to keep logs of it's Adsense....don't you think it logs the source of the clicks to prevent abuse? So it must know that a click on such and such ad came from so and so's email account (otherwise, i just thought of a new way to defraud competitors, just write an email to myself with some keywords and click away their budget). So they can probably tell if they wanted to that the contents in your email are mostly about goat sex or whatever because there have been so many targeted clicks for goat farms from your email account.
My cell phone company charges me $.05 for incoming too :(. My old cell phone company Sprint did the same. I always thought it would a nice evil revenge to sign someone's cellphone email address up to a mailing list.
And access to my emails...who cares? It's the same no matter what email service you use...unless you host your own server.
No...regular internet companies don't save any of your mail. Especially once you download it off your POP3 server. Google is the only one that ENCOURAGES you not to delete it....it's the only one whose servers READ your email to give you targeted ads. Because of your Google cookie, Google in theory knows exactly what you search for, what you shop for, who you IM, and your entire email records. I don't think Google actually cares, but the GP was pointing out that if you are suddenly suspected of being a terrorist under the patriot act or whatever, the Gov can find out your entire life from one court order to google. Microsoft, Apple, etc... know nothing about your personal life.
Just joking...though this would cost me $.05 cents a pop in text messaging to sign up. A small cost to pay for a decent free email service. It does keep people who do not have cell phones from getting free email (yes those people exist, and are probably one of the people that NEED free email the most). And I worry about them storing mobile phone numbers by default (they say you can remove them manually). It would just really suck if someone hacked google and got a bunch of mobile numbers, but all in all a novel way to stop spammers.
Informative? Thats just plain incorrect. First of all the IPO was in August 2004, he wrote the following: in January 2005. There is nothing there that would be considered sensitive or insider information...the growing financials are public record (and showing him financials before an earnings announcement would be illegal). Yes, announcing that Google would be going worldwide might be somewhat secretive...but common its not an unexpected move, and i'm pretty sure it was in the prospectus... certainly nothing to FIRE someone over.
Please see the Summer of Code and our other work with open source.
Please, the Summer of Code was just the summer of cheap labor for Google. I'm certain it wasn't done simply for the purpose of helping open source it was either A) Used as a recruiting tool to weed out more smart people from the many applying B) Used to get kids to help develop products that Google will use to sell AdSense space (notice all the sponsors could in some way help Google's business model?)
Me thinks that $4 bil they just got will lead to some monopolistic things...but until then you are only wrong on the count that Google supports open source more then other companies.
Google supports open source only when it can help them...you dont see them open sourcing their search algorithm or their adsense right? What about gmail? Nope...they work on open source chat projects when they want to release a chat program, or they put out some of their api's for their maps and what not when they want to draw more use of them. Google's open source activities are really not all that benevolent.
But the article makes a good point about arrogance. There seems to something about a growing tech company that they feel they need to touch EVERY area instead of focusing on what they are good at. Google hasn't made any innovations to their search for years, while competitors like Clusty.com, Yahoo and A9 are coming up with new ways to improve search. Meanwhile Google is busy playing with chat, and photos and all sorts of other nonsense, like when Yahoo branched out into all sorts of things. The article describes this as arrogance, and who can blame them? Just releasing a Google skinned version of the open source Jabber client created about 8 articles here on slashdot and several in every other publication. Hey, maybe they will build that Space Elevator now...their stock price went up when they offered $4 bil more...maybe they can try a $10 bil offering and buy Egypt, but call it G-gypt.
What if they are planning on using wireless net, dark fiber, and Google talk to launch a "free" (only pay the cost of phone) alternative to cellular in all of the major metropolitan markets?
There are many problems with that idea...you can't lay that kind of infrastructure without the cell phone companies knowing, Google can't offer something that expensive for free (want ads in your phone calls?) and that has even less to do with search then any of their other ideas.
But that crazy speculation aside, I understand wanting secrecy in launching new products, hell it got them like 6 stories on Slashdot just for their talk client...but it's the way that everything about Google, not just their products is secret. As I mentioned above, Mark Jen got fired just for saying "they have some cool stuff coming up next year" without giving any details. When investors wanted a tour of Google's financials, they got the "Chief Food Officer". Meanwhile insiders dump shares at uncanny rates and the company gets billions more on the open market. In a recent presentation they showed a server room but completely dimmed, so no one could tell what was going on?...wtf about a bunch of blinking servers could be so top secret? I'm just saying that all the secrecy surrounding the company gives it an eerie feeling, it doesn't feel like a legitimate, out in the open company....you would think a company that prides itself on being non evil would be completely transparent...and take this chat client for instance, there is nothing new or unique about it...it didn't tap into some gold mine or start some revolution so why the secrecy?
Um...one word man...Gaim, just get Gaim. It already does all those chat clients (and google's) plus IRC.
Google is so ubiquitous it's easy to forget that, in many ways, they're still the little guy in comparison to some of their competitors.
I'm not sure they are the "little guy" anymore by anyone's definition...with 4,100 employees, a market cap of $80 bil (larger then Time Warner, Yahoo, and Ebay, Amazon), and a warchest of now $6 bil in cash (larger then Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon) really the only competing software company that is consistently larger then them is Microsoft. And although they are definitely a company to fear based on previous tactics, I'm sure MS could find out what Google is up to before reading it in the LA Times if they wanted to.
I'm not sure how Google gets away with being so clandestine, yet people think they are not evil. It reminds me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory... If Google is such a great open non evil company, how come their employees don't have public blogs like all those at MS? (In fact they fire the one person that had a semi famous blog) How come they are one of the most opaque companies on wall street in telling their shareholders what's going on? How come all their projects are so top secret despite the fact they end up just being another jabber knock off? I understand things like their search algorithim should be kept secret, but cripes why all the mystery?
Just out of curiosity what is the point of Google doing this if they are just going to use Jabber? Why would i switch from my iChat or Jabber name to my gmail one? And what does this have to do with search again? Unless they made an IM client that could search for other buddies better then the current ones out there....
Halo Movie Slated For 2003
Interesting typo....In other words, straight to video?
Hopefully they bring their ease-of-use to the IM world.
What is so difficult right now? Double click on who you want to chat to, and then type and hit enter? Pretty scary stuff there....
Ok i played a lot of Halo 2 there for a while, got up to level 25 or so before the first reset, so i'd consider myself a decent Halo player...took a few months break, came back and tried to play the new maps, and got schooled over and over and over again by little kids. It sucked. Its hard to tell how much is cheating and how much is people just playing sickening amounts of Halo, but I just can't enjoy it online with random people anymore.
Ok but lets assume Google isn't doing anything with your data...it is pretty crazy to think they care about your love life or whatever. But let's say Google toolbar has some small bug that allows remote users to see your data, or Google gets bought by another company who can now mine your data. Or say someone is snooping your internet connection, and google is sending the contents of your email to it's servers to show you "relevant" info....it's just dangerous and unecessary for a simple tool like this to do so much, in the way it does it.