Dvorak on Google and Wikipedia 449
cryptoluddite writes "PC Magazine has an article by John C. Dvorak expanding on the community discussion of Google's offer for free web hosting of Wikipedia. Those against the deal point out that Google may be planning to co-opt the encyclopedia as Googlepedia (by restricting access to the complete database). In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.' Should public domain information be free?" It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days. Update: 02/16 20:16 GMT by T : This story links inadvertently to the second page of the column; here's a link to the first page.
Harsh on Google (Score:3, Insightful)
I take issue with the submitter (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days."
That's horrible.
Contract? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Hookay! There goes my good favour... (Score:2, Insightful)
For a company that claims they are endevouring to never be evil, this strikes me as a pretty evil bait-and-switch type scheme to me.
I think I'm going to start checking out Yahoo's search engine. Not because I think I'll ever prefer it, but because I think I'd better start getting used to it, just in case.
Google alrealy has a working profit model. (Score:5, Insightful)
There could be (Score:5, Insightful)
However it must have both free and subscription based services for it to be a viable system.
Wikipedia needs hosting help, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Page would be unlikely to charge (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether Wikipedia should accept is another matter. I don't think that they should. It's much easier to appear independent if you have to pay your way, and for an encyclopedia, appearing independent is really pretty important.
An answer to his question (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes it should indeed be free. Information is the essential ingredient to the advancement of society. This is why public libraries, schools, and lectures were created, so that information could be dissemenated to all individuals who actively sought it out for themselves and for their children. Charging $20 a month for access to information is an outrageous idea and is particularly frightening when uttered by an individual whose company holds the key to so much of the electronic information on the web. I think if they continue with his "vision" of the future, Google's usage will plummet quite rapidly.
Hasn't the Open Source community taught anyone the value of free information exchange??
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First rule about public businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, people! (Score:1, Insightful)
How to Stop it . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
People are fearful that Google will attempt to co-opt the Wikipedia. That's what is apparent in the Dvorak article. However, what Wikipedia needs is a slick lawyer to write a contract between Google and Wikipedia. (IANASL)
1. Google will host the Wikipedia as a donation.
2. Google will not restrict access to the Wikipedia except as mutually agreed upon by both parties, and a public page to explain what restrictions and why. At no time will restrictions be based upon subscriptions or charges.
3. Wikipedia will put a slick Google icon somewhere on the page to say "thanks Google for hosting us."
4. This agreement may be terminated with fair notice to the other party at any time.
If Wikipedia is able to maintain its autonomy, and the relationship is clearly labelled a donation of server space, then I think the Wikipedia could be hosted on Google.
DON'T PANIC (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, Google may just want to be in on the ground floor if and when Wikipedia decides to allow Adsense-type ads.
Third, companies do often do charitable things. It's a tax write-off.
Given those three things, I recommend that some commenters pay attention to the big, friendly letters in the subject line.
Re:An answer to his question (Score:4, Insightful)
Google has already done amazing things with aggregating data that is useful to the searcher. If they could take it much farther, $20 a month would be a small price to pay.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First rule about public businesses (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line: again, Dvorak's talking out of his ass, just like when he claimed that there were almost no linux applications that could run on the PS2, he's making an uninformed guess based on something he heard somewhere.
"should public domain information be free?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Public domain information is already free (free as in speech), but that doesn't mean that somebody can't also charge for it.
It's no different than the GPL -- also free as in speech, but not necessarily free as in beer.
Where to start? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems obvious enough to me that DejaNews/Google Groups has kept Usenet far more prominent than it would have been otherwise (Dvorak doesn't seem to get that the archive isn't ownership of Usenet itself), but given that he's claiming that Groups isn't linked off the Google front page at all, why bother arguing details.
Whatever. If dumbasses who have seen Star Wars too many times enjoy droning on about how Google used to be Good and Not Evil, but is now Evil, who am I to argue? At any rate, Wikipedia isn't going anywhere.
Dvorak is stale (Score:5, Insightful)
In the days of 10Mhz 286's I used to really enjoy John's columns. Now, I don't know if I've just gotten smarter, or he's gotten dumber (heh), but I can't remember the last time he didn't seem like a technology lunatic to me.
Re:Harsh on Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh really? And how do you know that? Just because you know that Google isn't an EVIL company like Microsoft?
Re:Free and Clean (Score:1, Insightful)
If so, why? I've never been browsing Wikipedia and stumbled upon pornography. I'd been using Wikipedia for about a year or so before I even found out its founder has an adult business.
But, if you're going to make that judgement for a community resource such as Wikipedia, do you do it with other businesses as well? It's been said recently that the consumer electronics industry is driven largely by what the adult industry needs in such devices (camcorders, DVD standards, etc.). Do you hold these companies to the same standard and refuse to purchase or recommend their products if they have any ties to adult oriented business?
Just sayin'
Re:An answer to his question (Score:2, Insightful)
Public domain in print publishing (Score:5, Insightful)
Dvorak is a columnist, he's out for a reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
Dvorak's doing much the same thing for the tech industry that your paper's sports columnists do for the local teams. His role isn't "provide a balanced picture of such-and-so," it's more like "provoke a reaction by pushing every subject to distorted extremes."
Every sports section has at least one writer like that. Their job is to generate traffic, or responses, by staking out polemical opinions. Usually the one writer who pulls this duty paints a bleak picture of the local teams' moves, so as to get the loyalists to write in. It helps circulation. The same people work extra shifts on call-in shows, pretty often.
In this case, our sage has consistently been on the wrong side of basically every technology he's commented on in my book. He's a sort of gadfly to all things Apple, for example. (His reaction to the idea of the mouse was as spectacularly wrong as anything ever written on computers.)
Re:I take issue with the submitter (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you assume that a company had no internet strategy, and that 640k Ram should always be enough, based on some 1984 speeches? No, because they are outdated, and many things have changed. Just as things have changed alot for google since 2001.
Feel free to continue blowing comments out of proportion while i'm away.
Re:Harsh on Google (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like Google did with Usenet Newsgroups?
Don't get me wrong, I like Google, but don't assume that they can't own the only database containing the 'free' information and provide access as they see fit. After all, they are paying to maintain it, right?
Re:Hookay! There goes my good favour... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dvorak is stale (Score:3, Insightful)
At 18 or so, I picked it up again and took a look. The Internet was becoming prevailant, and his stuff was swill. Pure nonsense, really. He was at least 6 months behind what the Internet (largely via slashdot) had already alerted me to what was going on, and going to happen. This was in 1998 or 1999.
I recognized him for what he was, then: a mis-placed journalist with an interest in technology who managed to catch the coattails of the IT explosion. He was marginally tech savvy in 1985, I imagine, but now it's rediculous how ill-informed he is. He was a mouthpiece for tech companies to large corporations to begin with, but now a person has to wonder where he fits in, what with the "new" corporate tech culture.
He's like the senior tech guy at the office that's been there for 30 years and knows nothing (maybe he still says things like "AMD processors aren't compatible with Pentiums!" or something similarly circa 1994) - but they won't fire him or get rid of him. They keep him around for laughs and because he's got a name for himself (whether the name is good or bad).
You're probably correct in both senses: your knowledge and discernment has increased, while he never had discernment and hasn't really increased in knowledge.
Noted Windbag Trolls for Page Views. /. Suckered (Score:5, Insightful)
PC Magazine is zombie, it's empire crumbled, aside from it's regular product comparison charts (which are widely blamed for much of today's feature-bloat) nobody would still be aware of it's continued existence. From that sad little bailiwick Dvorak bleats for attention and worse yet the gullible wanna-be defenders rush to dispute him.
This week he's on a smear against Google & Wikipedia. It could as well been another (willfully) know-nothing Linux FUD article, or another Mac-troll, or whatever. They're all trash and only PHB's struck in the 80's still pay the slightest attention to his "opinions" (quotes because I don't think be means a bit of what he says himself.)
The folks who run Wikipedia are notably honest. To date the folks at Google have done pretty well by their "No Evil" credo. Everything on Wikipedia is open so if need be it could be quickly reconstituted elsewhere. Thus, whatever the negotiations between Wikipedia & Google there's nothing to fear.
If the current Wikipedia administration does something heinously stupid the project will route around them. Besides which the best guesses are Google is talking bandwidth & caching, perhaps prioritized ranking, not ownership.
Dvorak, he's taking an old quote out of context and trying to create a scare. That's not reporting, or even editorializing, that's just baiting, pure & simple. Don't play into his game, he's the SCO of journalism.
Re:An answer to his question (Score:5, Insightful)
You may erroneously think that your local library is free, but in fact it's not. You pay taxes that fund the library. The government doesn't have some magic pot of gold that it pays for that stuff you know... it's most certainly *not* free.
It's happened before (Score:1, Insightful)
Need I remind everyone about CDDB? I contribute my time and effort into uploading track descriptions, etc., only to have my contributions co-opted by the guy running the database. I don't plan on letting this happen again.
Re:"should public domain information be free?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hookay! There goes my good favour... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not much to pay at all, I call it my Internet bill and that's why I have the internet.
The internet was not created to provide a revenue model. Countless companies learned this in the dot.bomb. It's not like cable or satellite where my choices are limited and if I don't pay I don't get content. Wikipedia came about for a reason. If it goes subscription it immediately loses value because now articles are only maintained/created by subscribers.
If it goes subscription another free/open online encyclopaedia will take its place, the same way that FreeDB came about after CDDB required buying a license to use in applications.
Re:Land Grab (Score:3, Insightful)
All the contributions to CDDB were merely info copied from liner notes and CD cases by fans with some free time. GraceNote was a bastard when they went closed, but it's hard to argue that the information was owned by anyone (except perhaps the original artists).
With Wikipedia, you've got original works. These are things that are copyrightable, and as far as I know, the original authors of all the articles still retain their copyrights. The Wikipedia license doesn't seem to say anything about surrendering that. So if Google were to try and close this and charge for redistribution, they'd be violating the license under which these thousands of original authors released their work and opening themselves up to a very valid lawsuit.
Re:"should public domain information be free?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Statements like this are hurtful to the FOSS movement. Assuming all commercial interests are inherently evil is ignorant, being able to create profitable, Free (as in FOSS) commercial projects is vital to the survival of the whole movement. The majority of skilled programmers will eventually go where the money is, especially once they have a family, simply not having time to freely (as in $$$) contribute to FOSS projects. In a capitalist world such as we live in, money is life blood. Good-will contributions and free press will only last so long. Once the bandwagon's run out of gas who will be left? People who can make a living in FOSS, that's who.
Storage allocation (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, there are two ways to stop people from reading a library book: you can remove the book from the shelf, or you can just remove it's entry in the card catalog.
We should all keep in mind that Google is becomming the "card catalog" for much of the on-line world. Many would argue that if it doesn't exist on the from page of a Google search, then for most of the world, it just doesn't exist.
Re:Google alrealy has a working profit model. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google alrealy has a working profit model. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Licensing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only that, but from Google's point-of-view Wikipedia provides the benifits of Yahoo's original function [yahoo.com] and the Open Directory Project [dmoz.org]. That is, the community's openness actually seems to provide insentive to edit and add to the the content, while the collective wiki gardening [c2.com] also removes wrong, out-of-date, or very low quality articles and spam from the system. Thus Wikis - and Wikipedia in particular - generally provide high quality links that search engines can use [c2.com] to target and/or refine their search bots. This helps them with searching, targeting adwords, anti-spam filtering in Gmail, among others. That's why spammers try vandalizing them [c2.com] so much. Given Google's lead among their peers with document analysis algorithms, they have a high incentive to support wikis like Wikipedia.
Re:Licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
They cannot restrict copying of the content, but they can limit access to it via Google's servers. The GFDL does not prevent this.
That's why it's important that there are always a few people maintaining mirrors of the entire Wikipedia.
It's also important that if Google ever stops the ability to make mirrors of the entire Wikipedia including updates and update history, that a big public fuss is made.
If you think it can't happen due to Wikipedia's license, think again: Usenet is presumably public domain, but Google aren't exactly falling over themselves to let people mirror that archive.
Some people will say that Google did real work to put together the Usenet archive, and it's within their rights as a business to limit access to it. Fair enough: just remember, that it's also within their rights as a business to limit access to their instance of Wikipedia in future, and if nobody has an up to date mirror, that will be a real limitation.
I'm not saying worry about it. Those are only possible scenarios. I'm saying: be diligent in keeping it open and fully accessible; don't let it slip like CDDB or the Usenet archive.
-- Jamie
You mean like the original Usenet archives? (Score:1, Insightful)
He then gave it to Google.
It's funny - I never heard about google ever offering to share THAT with anybody. And Google has made a lot of money off of it.
And, come to think of it, I don't recall Google ever offering to pay the University that originally had it.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Now explain how anyone is forced to use Google instead of Yahoo! or MSN search. Or point me to stats that say even 90% of searches use the Google engine.
Too often these days people use the term monopoly when they really mean big company I don't like.