Fear Of Google. FOG. It’s all over the blogs today. I just got done reading my feeds and here’s the posts that have FOG all over them:
Mary Jo Foley: Google is failing the Microsoft litmus test.
James Robertson: Is Google Big and Stupid Already?
Sebastien St-Laurent: Does Google Have a Double Standard?
Todd Cochrane: Google is Buying FeedBurner, this is pure Evil!
Philipp Lenssen: Is the Google Video PlusBox Fair?
Shelley Powers: Your Life, Googled.
Scott Karp: Google’s Video PlusBox May Be Its Most Disruptive Feature Ever.
Janet Driscoll Miller: What the Heck is Google’s Business Plan?
OpenDNS Blog: Google turns the page … in a bad way.
Danny Sullivan: Google & Dell’s Revenue-Generating URL Error Pages Drawing Fire.
More of the Dell and Google thing is being talked about over on TechMeme.
Actually, I think FOG is changing into DOG. Distrust/Disdain Of Google. What do you think?
Me? Google is too secretive. Too unwilling to engage. Too aloof. Oh, and Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has lost touch with how normal people think (if these quotes are correct, and that’s a big “if”). If they are correct I think it’s evidence that he’s been hanging around too many advertising execs lately. Their goal is to put impulses into your mind so you take certain actions (like buy Diet Coke instead of Diet Pepsi). Believe it or not advertising execs talk like that. So, when Eric is reported to have said, during a visit to Britain this week: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?'” we all get a little freaked out. We don’t want Google to know that much about us.
Or do you?
Also, the secrecy at Google is rubbing off on its PR in other ways — when we meet Google employees at events like Maker Faire (I met several on Saturday) and many of them can’t tell me anything about what they do beyond “I work in networking.”
It’s these personal interactions that make us mistrust what’s going on inside Google. They are building the world’s most fantastic advertising engine but they won’t explain a little bit about who they are, and what they are doing to make our searches better? To be fair, I also met Matt Cutts there and he’s very open about what he’s doing, but Google really needs to open up a bit more.
If I were working in PR there, I’d invite in regular bloggers (not just A-List egoists like that Scoble guy) and let them talk to the engineers so they can see what the engineering intent is when they are doing things that are tracking us. And stop talking like an advertising executive. More and more of my friends are getting freaked out by just how much data Google (and other advertising based companies) are collecting and the inferences they are starting to make about the kind of people we are.
I saw lots of reactions to Feedburner’s purchase by Google decrying that Google will know what feeds they are subscribed to.
I think Google has to be very transparent, very warm, and very open when it comes to privacy and the data it’s collecting on all of us and to many of us it’s coming across as closed, cold, and opaque. That leads to bad PR. Bad PR — if continued unabated — leads to government action. Just ask my friends at Microsoft.
Is that what Google wants here?
Scobleizer 
I’m getting more and more traffic from Google, they love me much more then MSN, Yahoo or Technorati.
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I’m getting more and more traffic from Google, they love me much more then MSN, Yahoo or Technorati.
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http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
He was in the NSA, that’s secretive enough. Apparently from what I hear from other NSA alumni he’s not very popular there anymore.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/
Well, that’s certainly not very secretive.
http://code.google.com/
That’s not either.
Are Google jerks?
Yeah, not more than Microsoft though.
Are they evil?
Definitely less than Microsoft.
I think the FUD on them is just the hype du jour.
“If I were working in PR there”
Bzzzzt.
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http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
He was in the NSA, that’s secretive enough. Apparently from what I hear from other NSA alumni he’s not very popular there anymore.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/
Well, that’s certainly not very secretive.
http://code.google.com/
That’s not either.
Are Google jerks?
Yeah, not more than Microsoft though.
Are they evil?
Definitely less than Microsoft.
I think the FUD on them is just the hype du jour.
“If I were working in PR there”
Bzzzzt.
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Robert – I have been very outspoken over the past couple of years on Feedburner, that is no secret you search my blog you will find my reasoning.
That being said I also have extreme respect for the privacy of the visitors of my website, thus when I found out that sitemeter was doing some nasty stuff I removed their web stats package from my website.
I understand that advertising is what is driving the online world, heck I make money from advertising myself.
I find it very creepy, that Google will be able to close the loop through the FeedBurner and other acquisitions, and not only track what we search, ads we click on they now will be able to see nearly everything we are subscribed to.
At a micro level who cares until someone goes digging for info. Before this data was spread out among a multiple of companies that usually did not work good together and hard to combine without mass cooperation of those companies and other services.
But what you have now essentially is a company that has the worlds best intelligence operation can Google be trusted not to share that info with foreign governments or even our own?
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Robert – I have been very outspoken over the past couple of years on Feedburner, that is no secret you search my blog you will find my reasoning.
That being said I also have extreme respect for the privacy of the visitors of my website, thus when I found out that sitemeter was doing some nasty stuff I removed their web stats package from my website.
I understand that advertising is what is driving the online world, heck I make money from advertising myself.
I find it very creepy, that Google will be able to close the loop through the FeedBurner and other acquisitions, and not only track what we search, ads we click on they now will be able to see nearly everything we are subscribed to.
At a micro level who cares until someone goes digging for info. Before this data was spread out among a multiple of companies that usually did not work good together and hard to combine without mass cooperation of those companies and other services.
But what you have now essentially is a company that has the worlds best intelligence operation can Google be trusted not to share that info with foreign governments or even our own?
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I am sure that some will of course say that this purchase of Feedburner by Google can only be a good thing.
to me it is just another stepping stone to a de-evolution of the Internet into yet another media controlled by a limited number of players or as I refer to it in a post today – The Internet R.I.P.
http://www.winextra.com/2007/05/23/the-internet-rip/
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I am sure that some will of course say that this purchase of Feedburner by Google can only be a good thing.
to me it is just another stepping stone to a de-evolution of the Internet into yet another media controlled by a limited number of players or as I refer to it in a post today – The Internet R.I.P.
http://www.winextra.com/2007/05/23/the-internet-rip/
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But doesn’t it make sense for Eric Schmidt to talk like an advertising executive? He is the CEO of an advertising company.
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But doesn’t it make sense for Eric Schmidt to talk like an advertising executive? He is the CEO of an advertising company.
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Since they released the Google toolbar, I said they were evil. It is all coming now.
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Since they released the Google toolbar, I said they were evil. It is all coming now.
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Google is undergoing a fundamental shift from “do no evil” in their DoubleClick purchase. They were committed to never using past history in their ad targeting, DoubleClick wipes that out.
That is a huge shift for Google. It goes against everything they have ever said in the past. Personally, I can see Google having very rough times very soon as people begin to back away from their services.
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Google is undergoing a fundamental shift from “do no evil” in their DoubleClick purchase. They were committed to never using past history in their ad targeting, DoubleClick wipes that out.
That is a huge shift for Google. It goes against everything they have ever said in the past. Personally, I can see Google having very rough times very soon as people begin to back away from their services.
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There’s a basic contradiction between Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil” and their requirement as a public company to do anything legal to maximize profit. The very adoption of the motto shows that they are aware of the moral risks in their position.
I think people are just starting to acknowledge what they have not wanted to think about before now — the concentration of such vast information assets in a single company is inherently risky. They may not intend to be evil, but who ever does?
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There’s a basic contradiction between Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil” and their requirement as a public company to do anything legal to maximize profit. The very adoption of the motto shows that they are aware of the moral risks in their position.
I think people are just starting to acknowledge what they have not wanted to think about before now — the concentration of such vast information assets in a single company is inherently risky. They may not intend to be evil, but who ever does?
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I guess while you’re small, you’re the cool upstart underdog. You get big and you become The Man.
What Google should be aiming for is to get their “Channel9” moment in before it’s too late. Microsoft is doing a lot of things right nowadays, but there are still a lot of people who remember the eviler Microsoft of old. If Google play their cards right, they might not get tarred with that brush at all.
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I guess while you’re small, you’re the cool upstart underdog. You get big and you become The Man.
What Google should be aiming for is to get their “Channel9” moment in before it’s too late. Microsoft is doing a lot of things right nowadays, but there are still a lot of people who remember the eviler Microsoft of old. If Google play their cards right, they might not get tarred with that brush at all.
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Google’s (unspoken) slogan:
“All your data are belong to us.”
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Google’s (unspoken) slogan:
“All your data are belong to us.”
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The truth is that Google isn’t really a company in the ‘normal’ sense, as they are actually a front for the NSA. Google is the perfect society monitoring tool. GMail is the masterstroke of the NSA’s er, Google’s goal of knowing all about us. When we entrust our personal mail to Google they promise to mine it. We give them permission by using the free service. No search warrants. No laws broken. All monitoring and knowledge scraping is performed by a legal quasi-governmental company; Google.
Just so happens that more than provide advertisers with leads on which soda to recommend to us, the NSA is also tracking our thoughts, interests and impulses (via the tracking of Google searches) and cross-linking them with the contents of our personal email exchanges. Pedophiles caught. Terrorists nabbed. Political revolutionaries exterminated (oops, oh well 2/3 ain’t bad).
If you don’t believe this, check out other NSA-fronted businesses, like the one Howard Hughes did in the 1970’s. I’m sure a Google search will give you all the information you need. (oh the irony!)
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The truth is that Google isn’t really a company in the ‘normal’ sense, as they are actually a front for the NSA. Google is the perfect society monitoring tool. GMail is the masterstroke of the NSA’s er, Google’s goal of knowing all about us. When we entrust our personal mail to Google they promise to mine it. We give them permission by using the free service. No search warrants. No laws broken. All monitoring and knowledge scraping is performed by a legal quasi-governmental company; Google.
Just so happens that more than provide advertisers with leads on which soda to recommend to us, the NSA is also tracking our thoughts, interests and impulses (via the tracking of Google searches) and cross-linking them with the contents of our personal email exchanges. Pedophiles caught. Terrorists nabbed. Political revolutionaries exterminated (oops, oh well 2/3 ain’t bad).
If you don’t believe this, check out other NSA-fronted businesses, like the one Howard Hughes did in the 1970’s. I’m sure a Google search will give you all the information you need. (oh the irony!)
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People tend to forget that google is nothing but a search engine – they actually google to get some information. This is odd but true. you move to any forum and google is there with its omnipotent self!
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People tend to forget that google is nothing but a search engine – they actually google to get some information. This is odd but true. you move to any forum and google is there with its omnipotent self!
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Scoble said “many of them can’t tell me anything about what they do beyond “I work in networking.””
I strongly disagree on that one (and many things you have said lately by the way).
Google is not secretive at all. When you reverse engineer search results, or ad ranks, you know what information they are gathering, how they are using it. Have you forgotten anybody can use operators such as link: ?
Your rant against Google reminds me of a Microsoft apologist’s rant where anything non-Microsoft is bad.
Quit blogging.
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Scoble said “many of them can’t tell me anything about what they do beyond “I work in networking.””
I strongly disagree on that one (and many things you have said lately by the way).
Google is not secretive at all. When you reverse engineer search results, or ad ranks, you know what information they are gathering, how they are using it. Have you forgotten anybody can use operators such as link: ?
Your rant against Google reminds me of a Microsoft apologist’s rant where anything non-Microsoft is bad.
Quit blogging.
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You mention a vital point. So often CEOs / management board members no longer are surrounded by everday people when their business get’s successful. Then more and more consultants, analysts etc. Hence they loose the tight relationship and dialogue with the people they should focus on.
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You mention a vital point. So often CEOs / management board members no longer are surrounded by everday people when their business get’s successful. Then more and more consultants, analysts etc. Hence they loose the tight relationship and dialogue with the people they should focus on.
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I don’t like how Google can link the cookies that every website with Google ads has to my google account (that includes Gmail, **search history**, usenet history, notebook, etc). That disturbs me so I use Yahoo more often now, and my ISP email that at least as PIPEDA protection as opposed to Gmail that never really is deleted. Plus my gmail account used to store all the different usernames + passwords that various websites had….sigh.
So Robert, IMO you’re not alone; and that particular article from Eric Shmidt on Google finding jobs for us is jus the tip of the iceberg.
Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.
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I don’t like how Google can link the cookies that every website with Google ads has to my google account (that includes Gmail, **search history**, usenet history, notebook, etc). That disturbs me so I use Yahoo more often now, and my ISP email that at least as PIPEDA protection as opposed to Gmail that never really is deleted. Plus my gmail account used to store all the different usernames + passwords that various websites had….sigh.
So Robert, IMO you’re not alone; and that particular article from Eric Shmidt on Google finding jobs for us is jus the tip of the iceberg.
Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.
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Robert: One thing i wonder is how your linkblog is coping with copyright. Is there a difference between copy and paste the material into a neutral blog and link to the source and using Google reader to publish the RSS feeds content?
Isn´t your linkblog an infringement to Read/write blogs copyright? Why should i visit Read/write when i can read your Google reader feed?
I think this discussion about RSS and content is worth taking because i can see in the future how we need to handle these issues.
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Robert: One thing i wonder is how your linkblog is coping with copyright. Is there a difference between copy and paste the material into a neutral blog and link to the source and using Google reader to publish the RSS feeds content?
Isn´t your linkblog an infringement to Read/write blogs copyright? Why should i visit Read/write when i can read your Google reader feed?
I think this discussion about RSS and content is worth taking because i can see in the future how we need to handle these issues.
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Wow, What are you going to do Google? When I was talking against you, you’ve send me hundreds of miles away in your ranks (Fear Inside Goggle?). Don’t do that for all, Cool down Google!
Developers Developers Developers – past
Advertisers, Advertisers, Advertisers – present
Trust, Respect, Privacy – is the future!
Thanks
saran
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Wow, What are you going to do Google? When I was talking against you, you’ve send me hundreds of miles away in your ranks (Fear Inside Goggle?). Don’t do that for all, Cool down Google!
Developers Developers Developers – past
Advertisers, Advertisers, Advertisers – present
Trust, Respect, Privacy – is the future!
Thanks
saran
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Does it matter if Google is warm & fuzzy or not? Not really. They have the data, their being nice about it doesn’t change that. This has always been the strategy, to gather as much information as possible, right? So, you know, DOG has existed for some of us from the outset. In fact, that is the part of Web 2.0 that I don’t like: Generally I have to share data in order to participate. Some data sharing is innocuous of course but it is those companies who gather more than the usual that make me run away from them if they aren’t *crystal clear* about what they plan to do with those data.
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Does it matter if Google is warm & fuzzy or not? Not really. They have the data, their being nice about it doesn’t change that. This has always been the strategy, to gather as much information as possible, right? So, you know, DOG has existed for some of us from the outset. In fact, that is the part of Web 2.0 that I don’t like: Generally I have to share data in order to participate. Some data sharing is innocuous of course but it is those companies who gather more than the usual that make me run away from them if they aren’t *crystal clear* about what they plan to do with those data.
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Its the tall poppy syndrome and a lot of people think that Google somehow owes them a free ride
ron isn’t really a company in the ‘normal’ 🙂
Just because Matt Interened there doesn’t meen its an evil conspiracy tm.
They do have some issues and need to get a lot more savy in how they play the political game.
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Its the tall poppy syndrome and a lot of people think that Google somehow owes them a free ride
ron isn’t really a company in the ‘normal’ 🙂
Just because Matt Interened there doesn’t meen its an evil conspiracy tm.
They do have some issues and need to get a lot more savy in how they play the political game.
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I still dream of the day when companies will grow to a certain size before their self imposed ethics will force them to split up into smaller units. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a company split into several smaller independent chunks, instead of continuing to amass power by further and further concentrating it, by buying the next 100 ideas and destroying all the creative energy that was previously expressing itself freely, trying to show itself openly to the world. There have been far too many examples of this process in the last year or so.
Each time an idea is bought it needs to be ‘integrated’ into the behemoth, forced to comply to a certain shape and form. And as the behemoth gets bigger it becomes the evil empire by virtue of its size and the mechanisms that govern every large organization. Sure, there are differences, but in the end the outcome will be a slightly different monster of grand proportions, just a variation on what we have seen in other contexts before.
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I still dream of the day when companies will grow to a certain size before their self imposed ethics will force them to split up into smaller units. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a company split into several smaller independent chunks, instead of continuing to amass power by further and further concentrating it, by buying the next 100 ideas and destroying all the creative energy that was previously expressing itself freely, trying to show itself openly to the world. There have been far too many examples of this process in the last year or so.
Each time an idea is bought it needs to be ‘integrated’ into the behemoth, forced to comply to a certain shape and form. And as the behemoth gets bigger it becomes the evil empire by virtue of its size and the mechanisms that govern every large organization. Sure, there are differences, but in the end the outcome will be a slightly different monster of grand proportions, just a variation on what we have seen in other contexts before.
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I swear, Robert, you’re about the only one of the ‘players’ that ever links to me or anything I write. I disagree with you a lot, am and will continue to be critical, but I’ll say this: you’re both inclusive and generous with your links and I appreciate your attempts to bring me into the discussion.
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I swear, Robert, you’re about the only one of the ‘players’ that ever links to me or anything I write. I disagree with you a lot, am and will continue to be critical, but I’ll say this: you’re both inclusive and generous with your links and I appreciate your attempts to bring me into the discussion.
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I have to say in 6 years I have been advertising on Google this is the first time I am now looking to advertise in newspapers again. I think many small busnesses like mine are thinking of moving back to tradtional advertising as its becoming more costly to convert adword enquiries. I did a test last week in a local paper and pound for pound I got a better return through the paper!!! Never thought I would say that.
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I have to say in 6 years I have been advertising on Google this is the first time I am now looking to advertise in newspapers again. I think many small busnesses like mine are thinking of moving back to tradtional advertising as its becoming more costly to convert adword enquiries. I did a test last week in a local paper and pound for pound I got a better return through the paper!!! Never thought I would say that.
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So everyone was afraid of Microsoft? Now everyone is afraid or distrustful of Google. The federal government has always known everything about us. What’s the big deal?
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So everyone was afraid of Microsoft? Now everyone is afraid or distrustful of Google. The federal government has always known everything about us. What’s the big deal?
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Mobuzz.TV has a bit on Google today. I love Karina…what a little hottie.
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Mobuzz.TV has a bit on Google today. I love Karina…what a little hottie.
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I have a nice little conspiracy tinged article on my blog on the Google investment in the genetic testing company. They way I feel about Google is much the same way I feel about my girlfriend. When I need her, I am glad she is around, but I still get kinda queasy thinking about her having access to all my stuff.
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I have a nice little conspiracy tinged article on my blog on the Google investment in the genetic testing company. They way I feel about Google is much the same way I feel about my girlfriend. When I need her, I am glad she is around, but I still get kinda queasy thinking about her having access to all my stuff.
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The problem here is Google’s fundamental business model – scavange people’s data and sell that data to other people for the highest price they can get. This is far, FAR more pernicious than Microsoft (which is not to say MS wouldn’t do it, too, if given a chance…). Google doesn’t care what it collects as long as it is sellable, thus, it has no respect for my privacy or intellectual property rights. If it can pry the data away from me, they’ll use it as they see fit.
I’m less concerned by government using this info (Yes, Darth Cheney & Co. wish to take over the world, but they are incompetant jerks) than I am by large corporations doing so, with special concern for financial & credit services and for medical & insurance services. The answer to both of these is regulation of the services and how they can/cannot use the information.
For example, medical insurance should not be in private hands. Profit margin requires denial of service and reduction of care. My father-in-law died of a treatable but fast-growing cancer last year because the insurance company would not approve treatment in time and the medical facilities would not treat him without insurance *even when we said we would pay cash up front.* This situation has to be eliminated, and that means public insurance for all citizens.
In terms of credit & finance, they should be required to get our permission prior to using our data and the consumer needs 24/7 free access to all of their data, with the ability to get bad data changed. We nearly lost a mortgage last week because TransUnion decided my husand was dead and flat out told him that it was not their problem if they reported bad info. Kind of hard to get credit when your FICO is 0, ya know?
We can’t put the information genie back in the bottle, nor would we want to. Powerful search capabilities help the public, too. The point is to control the (ab)use of that data.
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I hope they don’t do something silly like use RSS to determine search rank.
Let’s say there are only two blogs in the world:
Jennifer Lopez Blog with 8 zillion subcribers
Growing Corn In Iowa 199 subscribers.
Let’s assume that the Growing Corn in Iowa posts on corn in every post, and last week, Ms. Lopez ate an ear of corn. I’d hate to see that post show up as more relevant for the term corn – but I could easily see how this could go down this path.
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I hope they don’t do something silly like use RSS to determine search rank.
Let’s say there are only two blogs in the world:
Jennifer Lopez Blog with 8 zillion subcribers
Growing Corn In Iowa 199 subscribers.
Let’s assume that the Growing Corn in Iowa posts on corn in every post, and last week, Ms. Lopez ate an ear of corn. I’d hate to see that post show up as more relevant for the term corn – but I could easily see how this could go down this path.
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The problem here is Google’s fundamental business model – scavange people’s data and sell that data to other people for the highest price they can get. This is far, FAR more pernicious than Microsoft (which is not to say MS wouldn’t do it, too, if given a chance…). Google doesn’t care what it collects as long as it is sellable, thus, it has no respect for my privacy or intellectual property rights. If it can pry the data away from me, they’ll use it as they see fit.
I’m less concerned by government using this info (Yes, Darth Cheney & Co. wish to take over the world, but they are incompetant jerks) than I am by large corporations doing so, with special concern for financial & credit services and for medical & insurance services. The answer to both of these is regulation of the services and how they can/cannot use the information.
For example, medical insurance should not be in private hands. Profit margin requires denial of service and reduction of care. My father-in-law died of a treatable but fast-growing cancer last year because the insurance company would not approve treatment in time and the medical facilities would not treat him without insurance *even when we said we would pay cash up front.* This situation has to be eliminated, and that means public insurance for all citizens.
In terms of credit & finance, they should be required to get our permission prior to using our data and the consumer needs 24/7 free access to all of their data, with the ability to get bad data changed. We nearly lost a mortgage last week because TransUnion decided my husand was dead and flat out told him that it was not their problem if they reported bad info. Kind of hard to get credit when your FICO is 0, ya know?
We can’t put the information genie back in the bottle, nor would we want to. Powerful search capabilities help the public, too. The point is to control the (ab)use of that data.
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@8,
I know somebody that used to work at the NSA and only left recently, and I know they aren’t happy with Matt Cutts. They probably aren’t very happy with Google either.
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@8,
I know somebody that used to work at the NSA and only left recently, and I know they aren’t happy with Matt Cutts. They probably aren’t very happy with Google either.
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Regular bloggers? Yeah.. that would be me! 😉
Rex
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Regular bloggers? Yeah.. that would be me! 😉
Rex
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This is one of the reasons I believe in returning the power of the search engine to the user. I’ve been programming a search engine that spiders information on topics of interest to you and stores it on your own machine for some years now. It’s due to go gold this year so wish me luck 🙂
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This is one of the reasons I believe in returning the power of the search engine to the user. I’ve been programming a search engine that spiders information on topics of interest to you and stores it on your own machine for some years now. It’s due to go gold this year so wish me luck 🙂
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I guess people are scared about google holding up so much of our information exactly because google tells us that they’re holding that information.
I’m sure MSN, Yahoo! and other huge volume site also track behaviour. Think about the potential of websites like Facebook, MySpace etc. which have more info about us than Google (just my guess). One more thing to worry about when the bigger companies gobble up these community spaces – private information.
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I guess people are scared about google holding up so much of our information exactly because google tells us that they’re holding that information.
I’m sure MSN, Yahoo! and other huge volume site also track behaviour. Think about the potential of websites like Facebook, MySpace etc. which have more info about us than Google (just my guess). One more thing to worry about when the bigger companies gobble up these community spaces – private information.
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Anyone who uses gmail, Google desktop or Google’s SaaS applications is getting what they deserve. That goes for Google search as well.
Is it that addicting that we can’t just move to another search engine? There are choices…..now I’ve made mine.
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Anyone who uses gmail, Google desktop or Google’s SaaS applications is getting what they deserve. That goes for Google search as well.
Is it that addicting that we can’t just move to another search engine? There are choices…..now I’ve made mine.
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The poll I’m running on my site at http://blog.markhopwood.com/2007/05/who_do_you_trust_the_most.html suggests that most people (in my little circle anyway) trust Google a lot more than they trust Government. This could be naive, but I have to ask, what is the harm in Google knowing all this stuff, if you can opt out (indeed a lot of it doesn’t happen until you’ve created one of their accounts) and
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The poll I’m running on my site at http://blog.markhopwood.com/2007/05/who_do_you_trust_the_most.html suggests that most people (in my little circle anyway) trust Google a lot more than they trust Government. This could be naive, but I have to ask, what is the harm in Google knowing all this stuff, if you can opt out (indeed a lot of it doesn’t happen until you’ve created one of their accounts) and
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… if all they’re going to use it for is to target advertising better.
I’d rather that than some of the other things people want to use our data for.
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… if all they’re going to use it for is to target advertising better.
I’d rather that than some of the other things people want to use our data for.
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Wow, sounds like no one wants to work for Google. Maybe that gives me a better chance! =)
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Wow, sounds like no one wants to work for Google. Maybe that gives me a better chance! =)
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I still have to ask- why does Microsoft get a pass for buying an ad agency (AvenueA/Razorfish)(conflict of interest) and Google get crucified for buying an ad serving software/network company (content agnostic)? If Google had bought aQuantive the world would be in speculation meltdown.
Reminder: Live Search is an advertising business- do they really think their customers want them in a competing situation by going direct to clients via AvenueA?
And another shot: Universal Search is the big story no one is covering well.
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I still have to ask- why does Microsoft get a pass for buying an ad agency (AvenueA/Razorfish)(conflict of interest) and Google get crucified for buying an ad serving software/network company (content agnostic)? If Google had bought aQuantive the world would be in speculation meltdown.
Reminder: Live Search is an advertising business- do they really think their customers want them in a competing situation by going direct to clients via AvenueA?
And another shot: Universal Search is the big story no one is covering well.
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Martin: I think its because Google’s market power puts in a position to weild undue influence on the net. Its shaping up to be a nice replay of MSFT’s desktop OS monopoly experience from years gone by.
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Martin: I think its because Google’s market power puts in a position to weild undue influence on the net. Its shaping up to be a nice replay of MSFT’s desktop OS monopoly experience from years gone by.
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Robert I do think its a reaction to Google except for the studpi pr stuff..
I think its a natural reaction and concern about web 2.0 and upcoming web 3 technology as far as what are our privacy rights and how do we control them and give them away when we want to..
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Robert I do think its a reaction to Google except for the studpi pr stuff..
I think its a natural reaction and concern about web 2.0 and upcoming web 3 technology as far as what are our privacy rights and how do we control them and give them away when we want to..
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Hi Robert – wish you would add my rss to your 622 🙂
I have a two good articles for your FOG collection:
My Life without Google:
http://www.centernetworks.com/my-life-without-google
and
Big Brother 2007 – what does Google “Not” know about you:
http://www.centernetworks.com/big-brother-2007-google-how-much-dont-they-know-about-you
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Hi Robert – wish you would add my rss to your 622 🙂
I have a two good articles for your FOG collection:
My Life without Google:
http://www.centernetworks.com/my-life-without-google
and
Big Brother 2007 – what does Google “Not” know about you:
http://www.centernetworks.com/big-brother-2007-google-how-much-dont-they-know-about-you
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@ JIM You said, “Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.”
Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.
Isn’t it odd that Google was THE ONLY company allowed to keep their users’ info and not give it to the gov?
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@ JIM You said, “Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.”
Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.
Isn’t it odd that Google was THE ONLY company allowed to keep their users’ info and not give it to the gov?
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@JIM (#15)
You said, “Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.”
Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.
Isn’t it odd that Google was THE ONLY company allowed to keep their users’ info and not give it to the gov?
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@JIM (#15)
You said, “Although let’s be real, all of the search engines. I remember that MSN, Yahoo, and Excite gave info to the gov’t without fighting, while Google apparently did fight against it. And let’s not even get into their conduct in China.”
Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.
Isn’t it odd that Google was THE ONLY company allowed to keep their users’ info and not give it to the gov?
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I agree with Paul, I get much more traffic from Google than the other search engines, bar none.
In my opinion, Google, as a company, will still try to acquire organizations that make sense for them to acquire–like feedburner. There may be a point in time where the US Government steps in and does something.
As marketers and business owners, I think we fear life without Google more than just the fear of google.
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And for a view from London: http://wombatdiet.net
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I agree with Paul, I get much more traffic from Google than the other search engines, bar none.
In my opinion, Google, as a company, will still try to acquire organizations that make sense for them to acquire–like feedburner. There may be a point in time where the US Government steps in and does something.
As marketers and business owners, I think we fear life without Google more than just the fear of google.
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And for a view from London: http://wombatdiet.net
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The problem about one company growing too large seem to solve itself when it becomes too large it seems it parts having a hard time nowing what the other part is doing thus dissolving since it starts to loose direction. Look at Microsoft they seem to get more and more desperate as open source is growing.
A new way to blog using Google Notebook and Tumblr…
http://internettime.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=656824%3ABlogPost%3A2630
Or do you fear the Google bug will bite you?
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The problem about one company growing too large seem to solve itself when it becomes too large it seems it parts having a hard time nowing what the other part is doing thus dissolving since it starts to loose direction. Look at Microsoft they seem to get more and more desperate as open source is growing.
A new way to blog using Google Notebook and Tumblr…
http://internettime.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=656824%3ABlogPost%3A2630
Or do you fear the Google bug will bite you?
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Size is not the issue. It’s their attitude. Typical of liberals they feel they are superior to us and should be able to do things that are clearly immoral.
Remember Taiwan? They used to be a country ’til Google erased them.
Remember civil rights? So do I, then Google decided that selling out to Communist terrorists by giving them info on dissenters. Their response? Ooooops! Yea a little torture is o.k. IF you are Google.
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Size is not the issue. It’s their attitude. Typical of liberals they feel they are superior to us and should be able to do things that are clearly immoral.
Remember Taiwan? They used to be a country ’til Google erased them.
Remember civil rights? So do I, then Google decided that selling out to Communist terrorists by giving them info on dissenters. Their response? Ooooops! Yea a little torture is o.k. IF you are Google.
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Hey… what’s the deal? This is a top five WP blog, so where are the cute cats and spelling mistakes?
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Hey… what’s the deal? This is a top five WP blog, so where are the cute cats and spelling mistakes?
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I love Google and there stuff. I will continue to use their stuff until either there is something better or they piss me off. Right now i am happy with their products especially Gmail.
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I love Google and there stuff. I will continue to use their stuff until either there is something better or they piss me off. Right now i am happy with their products especially Gmail.
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You know, I read that as a job pitch…
Tote the shaky cam around to John Carpenterish white hair and cobalt-eyed Engineer Cultists, but free lunches made by a chef, hey…
Channel 666? 😉
(I doubt Google’d ever do that, and the USA Government won’t bounce, as they have their NSA fingers in deep. Now the European governments, that’s a differing story…)
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You know, I read that as a job pitch…
Tote the shaky cam around to John Carpenterish white hair and cobalt-eyed Engineer Cultists, but free lunches made by a chef, hey…
Channel 666? 😉
(I doubt Google’d ever do that, and the USA Government won’t bounce, as they have their NSA fingers in deep. Now the European governments, that’s a differing story…)
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Paczkowski over at Digital Daily has a great take on this as well. Definitely worth a read.
It wasn’t so long ago that Google was a company that could do no wrong. “Everyone loves Google,” Wired wrote in 2001. And at the time, it was true.
Not so today. The company’s enormous success and relentless pursuit of new markets has inspired some in the entrepreneurial culture that produced it to take an evil-empire view of the search-engine phenomenon–one that’s increasingly echoed in the media. To wit, a rather hysterical front-page story in the (London) Independent draws some rather unoriginal comparisons between Google’s efforts to organize the world’s information and Big Brother’s efforts to control it.
Comparisons like these are inevitable, especially when your chief executive has a penchant for making unwittingly Orwellian statements (”We are moving to a Google that knows more about you,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Feb. 9, 2005) and
The European Commission’s advisory group on privacy protection is demanding an explanation of your data retention policies. But to see it featured so prominently in the mainstream press–yes, even the press abroad–does seem to suggest that Google is heading for a negative media cycle that might possibly shake up mainstream attitudes about it. Certainly, The European Commission Friday said its advisory group on privacy protection has sent Google Inc. a letter demanding an explanation of the search engine’s privacy policies.
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070524/i-am-locutus-of-goog-resistance-is-futile/
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Paczkowski over at Digital Daily has a great take on this as well. Definitely worth a read.
It wasn’t so long ago that Google was a company that could do no wrong. “Everyone loves Google,” Wired wrote in 2001. And at the time, it was true.
Not so today. The company’s enormous success and relentless pursuit of new markets has inspired some in the entrepreneurial culture that produced it to take an evil-empire view of the search-engine phenomenon–one that’s increasingly echoed in the media. To wit, a rather hysterical front-page story in the (London) Independent draws some rather unoriginal comparisons between Google’s efforts to organize the world’s information and Big Brother’s efforts to control it.
Comparisons like these are inevitable, especially when your chief executive has a penchant for making unwittingly Orwellian statements (”We are moving to a Google that knows more about you,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Feb. 9, 2005) and
The European Commission’s advisory group on privacy protection is demanding an explanation of your data retention policies. But to see it featured so prominently in the mainstream press–yes, even the press abroad–does seem to suggest that Google is heading for a negative media cycle that might possibly shake up mainstream attitudes about it. Certainly, The European Commission Friday said its advisory group on privacy protection has sent Google Inc. a letter demanding an explanation of the search engine’s privacy policies.
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070524/i-am-locutus-of-goog-resistance-is-futile/
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I think google is the Big and The Best… 🙂
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I think google is the Big and The Best… 🙂
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I’ve turned this into an argument with Nick Denton, woohoo
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I’ve turned this into an argument with Nick Denton, woohoo
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Wow, this post sure attracts the nutcases:
“Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.”
You give the government far too much credit. Are you really talking about the same government that has intelligence failures all the time and goes to war over it?
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Wow, this post sure attracts the nutcases:
“Maybe Google fought ’cause it’s run by the government. Get it? It’s trying to gain your trust so that you’d dump more of your personal info into Google and other services that they run. How gullible you are. Sad.”
You give the government far too much credit. Are you really talking about the same government that has intelligence failures all the time and goes to war over it?
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It is inevitable that after a company gets so big the conspiracy theorists and “haters” come out of the woodwork and talk about how they “used to be great” and how they’ve “sold out”. All of this is right on time as expected and quite boring. The sooner you realize google doesn’t care about your stupid information other than to better its business the better you’ll all be. get a life and find something worth while to complain about.
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It is inevitable that after a company gets so big the conspiracy theorists and “haters” come out of the woodwork and talk about how they “used to be great” and how they’ve “sold out”. All of this is right on time as expected and quite boring. The sooner you realize google doesn’t care about your stupid information other than to better its business the better you’ll all be. get a life and find something worth while to complain about.
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We blogged about this back in February… this is a trend that has been slowly growing for probably the better part of a year now.
Here is the round-up of concerns about Google up until Valentines day this year:
http://www.nonlinear.ca/blog/index.php/2007/02/14/google-backlash-approaching/
Between the large number of recent acquisitions and the increasing centralization of Google’s services, there seems to be more and more people expressing concern at the amount of clout one company should hold.
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We blogged about this back in February… this is a trend that has been slowly growing for probably the better part of a year now.
Here is the round-up of concerns about Google up until Valentines day this year:
http://www.nonlinear.ca/blog/index.php/2007/02/14/google-backlash-approaching/
Between the large number of recent acquisitions and the increasing centralization of Google’s services, there seems to be more and more people expressing concern at the amount of clout one company should hold.
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Can’t wait til Google buys Accutracking.com. Not only will they know everything we do online, but soon will know everywhere we go….
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Can’t wait til Google buys Accutracking.com. Not only will they know everything we do online, but soon will know everywhere we go….
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Google is just like any large corporation, no better, no worse. They may dominate search at the moment, but I expect that will change over the years as search engines become more niche and specialised. It wasn’t hat long ago that Alta Vista was the dominant player. then Yahoo.
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Google is just like any large corporation, no better, no worse. They may dominate search at the moment, but I expect that will change over the years as search engines become more niche and specialised. It wasn’t hat long ago that Alta Vista was the dominant player. then Yahoo.
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