BREAKING: Google does something truly NON evil !!@!

[Requia ☣]

I don't really see this as a 'good' move for Google.  Last I checked Google was the only engine that tells you if your results got filtered, and Google's translator was one of the best English to Chinese options (English sites aren't censored very often).

Those are minor victories, but they are still better than nothing.

[Captain Utopia]

This is the part I've never had a problem with. So Google can now say to a retailer, f'rinstance, we'll only advertise to people who are, statistically guaranteed to want to buy your product but we'll charge more than a newspaper who can't guarantee jack shit, beyond some vague demographics.

This is the part which gets me excited. Really. I fucking hate my local-mega-global cable company. I fucking hate Fox and ABC and CTV and NBC and ITV and to a much lesser extent the BBC and every other parasitic middle man that takes a slice of my dollar before it gets to the people who actually produce the content I'm supposedly paying for.

I ran the figures a few years back, and it was insane -- e.g online ads on The New York Times provided over 100x the coverage - impressions and page percentages than the paper edition. The cost of buying television adverting completely overshadows what you pay for piping 30 seconds of the exact same advert before an online clip.

Basically - the advertising market seems completely irrational right now. But I think people are emotionally attached to the concept of newspapers and magazines and the CoTS hardware to stream content to the living room is still in its infancy and is alien to many people. In many cases (e.g. The New York Times) the people maintaining the disproportionate balance are the same players who benefit from maintaining the status quo. Why do you think Rupert Murdoch gets his pants in such a twist over Google?

But the balance will change and sooner or later it'll become common, rather than a rarity, for new content to be pool-financed and distributed first over the internet. Viewing figures will be accurate for the first time in history, and popular shows won't be axed by some nameless executive, rather just a lack of eyeballs and interest. The downside is that it'll become easier for bloggers to earn a living spouting drivel, but something will have to pick up the slack as Newscorp becomes a smoldering heap.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

"Trust me.  All the data we have on you clearly shows that you will like the new season of Dancing with the Stars featuring Tony Danza and Sheena Easton."

They do that shit on purpose. 

Because it drives the sale of alcohol through the roof.

Yeah, I can't watch TV at all.  If I was juiced to the gills on rum I probably could, but then they'd have to come and take me away.

The headlines alone would turn your stomach.

I don't really see this as a 'good' move for Google.  Last I checked Google was the only engine that tells you if your results got filtered, and Google's translator was one of the best English to Chinese options (English sites aren't censored very often).

Those are minor victories, but they are still better than nothing.

The guy they interviewed on ... I guess it was BBC (before 9 AM it's NPR, after 9 it's BBC)... anyway, he basically said they went into China thinking that they would slowly relax controls but in the past years its actually gotten worse. His argument was basically that at this point they are demanding unfiltered results or they will leave.

Sure he's a PR shill, but it was a pretty good argument. There was some obvious "Stay on message" talking points stuff... I think he repeated the same lines a few times for different questions, but that's American business these days I guess.

As the majority of searches are still handled through the Chinese Search Engine "Baidu.com", maybe Google decided 2nd place +unethical behavior was not enough of a win.

[Golden Applesauce]

Point. The more I think about it the more I wonder just how much capacity for evil there actually is in a setup like Google. I guess they could sell datamining results to the highest bidder or bump search rankings but the risk to the company of being found out with their hands in the till like that have gotta move things to the realm of - just not worth it. You can't exactly advertise those kinds of services without incurring the wrath of the rest of the world so it'd have to be through shady subsidiary dealers still with the risk of being caught.

Why bother when you make so much moneybucks allready with the revolution in demographically targetted advertising that they have managed to pull off?

Cause all that data can be scanned in some pseudonymous manner to create even more precise 'targets' for ad sales... The better you know your customer, the more money you can charge for the ads.

Then again, maybe they're really altruistic.

Gosh that's hard to write without the lulz face....

This is the part I've never had a problem with. So Google can now say to a retailer, f'rinstance, we'll only advertise to people who are, statistically guaranteed to want to buy your product but we'll charge more than a newspaper who can't guarantee jack shit, beyond some vague demographics.

So everyone only sees ads that are of interest to them. And the companies get a better conversion rate, ship more units and continue to grow. Yes there is a privacy issue but not the kind of privacy issue I have a problem with exactly. I mean it's not as if the guvmint are snooping through my emails or shit, it's more impersonal, no one is actually spying on me in a way that freaks me out as of yet and, to be perfectly honest, I'd rather see only ads that were of interest to me than for Sky sports or Disneyland.

It's possible to de-anonymize that sort of data.  So it's not inconceivable that at some point someone would be able to go through Customer #1134259 and figure out the topics of the emails he's been sending and receiving (Google loves to show me gaming ads while I'm emailing with my D&D group about meeeting times, for instance) and then connect that to a real name.  And if Google keeps that data around, at some point they will be subpoena'd for it, regardless of their intentions.

[Captain Utopia]

It's possible to de-anonymize that sort of data.  So it's not inconceivable that at some point someone would be able to go through Customer #1134259 and figure out the topics of the emails he's been sending and receiving (Google loves to show me gaming ads while I'm emailing with my D&D group about meeeting times, for instance) and then connect that to a real name.  And if Google keeps that data around, at some point they will be subpoena'd for it, regardless of their intentions.

This won't be a problem when Google OpenDemocracy^TM, takes over the day-to-day operations of the World Government requesting the subpoena. 

Although, haven't Google already been subpoena'd for such information? IIRC, in one case (of how many?) they fought a little bit then caved to the unquestionable legality of the request. I dunno, it is a minor concern to me, but it does seem to be a problem to be better solved by having a better Government, than intentionally crippling a useful technology. But I'm a geek, so that is my bias.

[Requia ☣]

And if Google keeps that data around, at some point they will be subpoena'd for it, regardless of their intentions.

Already happened, USgov tried to get them to give up all their data 'to find child molesters' or some such nonsense, Google refused and appealed it.

Google dismissed claims of altruism on that one though, said that they were concerned about the gov finding out Google's secrets.

[Triple Zero]

People think Google is evil?  Fo realz?

mostly that Google's motto used to be simply "dont be evil".

except that they have violated that motto on numerous accounts, that it is now actually news when they take a public action that is outspokenly non-evil.

[P3nT4gR4m]

People think Google is evil?  Fo realz?

mostly that Google's motto used to be simply "dont be evil".

except that they have violated that motto on numerous accounts, that it is now actually news when they take a public action that is outspokenly non-evil.

Name one. Way I see it they done some things that may have been ill-advised or been faced with rock v's hard place choices like they were faced with moving into china. Nothing I would go as far as calling "evil"

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Remember Kids "pseudonymous" does not equal "anonymous". Google collects data in a pseudonymous manner... not a completely anonymous manner.

The difference is simple, anonymous data has no 'reverse' path, you can't figure out the actual 'nym' behind the data. Pseudonymous on the other hand, means that your unique data is being held uniquely and the pseudonym can be tied/translated or correlated with the nym of a real person.

[Triple Zero]

So far, I have not seen Google behave abominably.

apart from their contempt for privacy and security. and the fact that it's nigh impossible to get into contact with them if something goes wrong.
and much more: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=google%20site%3Aha.ckers.org that's not just exploits, but a lot of security model errors that they just will not fix. this guy has spoken with MS and Mozilla on conventions about their security policies, parts of which advice they took and adapted. Google, on the other hand, is an impregnable wall, impossible to get a hold of, or even a message across to.

They have embraced Open Source and Free Software

not more than your other average searchengine (Yahoo, YDN, YUI etc) or browser (Mozilla, Opera Unite). I know some of their OSS projects, but there's loads of stuff they aren't releasing. Their hacked version of Linux that their server farms are running on? Also, their web applications (GMail, calendar, docs ..) aren't exactly "open" or anything, in fact the javascript is purposefully obfuscated and this makes it pretty hard to write extensions for it or to automate tasks which means you are locked in, in a way, to the functionality and user interfaces they are willing to provide.

Google can give out ALL of their code and it will simply make the code better (cause all those geeks love to find and fix bugs like 'counting coo')... but they have Infrastructure, and Presence and Big Pipes and ALL that stuff that a up and coming nobody wouldn't have access to. Because they're Google and their Internet footprint looks like The Sasquatch Barn Dance Floor, they don't need to control us through hardware or through the code... they can offer us something that no one else can Virtual Space to Spare.

except they don't give out their code. not at all, not by a small fraction. don't get distracted by the few cookies they tossed your way.

if they gave away their server farm code, other people could build them too the hardware they use is pretty cheap after all.

and have you ever taken a look at the HTML code of your average Google SERP? I have no idea why it looks horrible like that, it doesnt even save space or anything (inline style definitions and font tags???).

I think the drugged out hippies running Google have Good Intentions.

Google hasn't been run by drugged out hippies for years now. That was when they were still a funky young startup, instead of a stock quoted billion dollar multinational corporation. Larry and Sergei might have had good intentions but they don't run the company anymore.

[Triple Zero]

I think you're absolutely correct. I suspect, right at this moment, Google really are "on the level" as the saying goes. But for how long? Give them a couple of years, the retirement of some key people--

see previous post, this already happened a few years ago.

it just took a little time for the machine beast to wake up.

[Triple Zero]

I don't think they'll lock us in via software... too much of their code base is open source and can be reimplemented by others...

what? where? which mythical opensource repository do you have access to?

[Triple Zero]

Point. The more I think about it the more I wonder just how much capacity for evil there actually is in a setup like Google. I guess they could sell datamining results to the highest bidder or bump search rankings but the risk to the company of being found out with their hands in the till like that have gotta move things to the realm of - just not worth it. You can't exactly advertise those kinds of services without incurring the wrath of the rest of the world so it'd have to be through shady subsidiary dealers still with the risk of being caught.

Why bother when you make so much moneybucks allready with the revolution in demographically targetted advertising that they have managed to pull off?

the evil is in that it doesn't care about the people using their services. it doesn't need to. Google's not a people, it's a corporation. like their google streetview lawyer said "you can't expect privacy in this day and age".

the other evil is in the fact that the data is simply there. ready to be subpoena'd by the US Gov or whatever. ready to get hacked and leak everywhere. it's not in our hands, but in a nicely centralized database. well, the database is decentralized, but the data is centrally accessible.

it's the awesome power they wield, and the fact that there is no mechanism in place to stop that power from being abused horribly. especially since they went to the stock market. whether they intend to or not.

[Triple Zero]

And if Google keeps that data around, at some point they will be subpoena'd for it, regardless of their intentions.

Already happened, USgov tried to get them to give up all their data 'to find child molesters' or some such nonsense, Google refused and appealed it.

really? and the appeal worked?

got a link or some more info on that, I'd love to read about it. Do you suppose the EFF has written about it?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Remember Kids "pseudonymous" does not equal "anonymous". Google collects data in a pseudonymous manner... not a completely anonymous manner.

The difference is simple, anonymous data has no 'reverse' path, you can't figure out the actual 'nym' behind the data. Pseudonymous on the other hand, means that your unique data is being held uniquely and the pseudonym can be tied/translated or correlated with the nym of a real person.

Did you really need to spell that out? Because,

HURRRRRRR
        \