The In-Progress Plot To Kill Google 234
twitter writes "Four years after Steve Ballmer vowed to kill Google, Wired details Microsoft's, AT&T's, and big publishers' ongoing slog. The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy. Their greatest coup to date was preventing Google from rescuing Yahoo."
Is it FUD if there's some truth to it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google keeps every search you or I ever make in their database.
They have my e-mail address, my calendar, my documents, my spreadsheets, my bookmarks, my address (Google maps), pictures of my house (Google streetview), my list of friends (Orkut), my blog (Blogger), my pictures (Picasa), my videos (Youtube), my website (Googlepages), my mailing lists (Google groups), my sales history (Google checkout), my local files (Google desktop), my medical records (Google Health), my Cell number (Google SMS), my chat history (Google talk), my RSS feeds list (Google news reader), my open source project collaboration (Google code), my notes (Google notebook)
They own the database, they could sell or outsource every bit of it to third parties at will.
If they let an untrusted party access to their DB, privacy is severely compromised for users of their services.
Re:conspiracy theories (Score:5, Interesting)
No doubt. But keeping Yahoo alive and independent of Microsoft was and still is in Google's best interests, whether you call it a 'rescuing' or not. Microsoft wants Yahoo's search because their own sucks and they know it. Even Ballmer has admitted that his own impatience caused Microsoft to fail in search. Yahoo is the next best technology to Google's.
So of course Google wanted to 'rescue' Yahoo from the jaws of Microsoft.
Never attribute to heroism what can be explained by simple self-interest. ;)
Re:What about the bank that keeps your money? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think his point was more about Google having everything in a nice centralized spot, like if the police wanted to build a nice, big profile about you and see you have a gmail email address - they would head to Google with a warrant and get a buffet of information.
It's definitely something to think about, and completely innocent people get symbolically hung by too much info in the hands of the authorities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc [youtube.com]
Re:Is it FUD if there's some truth to it? (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is: Yes, it is. FUD is about spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt, in whatever form. Yes, some FUD used to be untrue, but the most effective FUD is completely true. It's the hardest to fight.
Generally, this is done by pointing out the scariest parts of something while neglecting that those and/or other things are just as scary about the competition.
I don't deny that everything you said is 'scary', I just deny that it really matters. If it did matter, I wouldn't keep using those services. I'm perfectly capable of running my own servers for all those things for myself and my family and friends.
Re:Since when are concerns about privacy FUD? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that a lot of people think Google are good purely because they are now largely seen as the anti-MS... no other company has done remotely as much to scare the people at Redmond, and for that they should definitely be applauded. Paving the way to unseat a monopoly - however (un)likely the eventual unseating may be - is no small accomplishment and one that legions of us, pissed off with having to fund a monopolist all the time, should be quite appreciative of.
I do agree with your points though - I can just understand why people do like Google. There is also the fact that their mainstream tools usually just work. Can you say the same of MS?
Re:Since when are concerns about privacy FUD? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that tinfoil is seeping into your brain.
You are correct on one point - a company exists to make money, and look after its own interests. Absolutely. However, one thing you seem to be forgetting that it IS in Google's interest to protect your data. Do they have a lot of it? Absolutely. But they're not just going to pass it around willy-nilly unless there is a very good reason for them to.
Of course, you don't actually need to trust Google. You don't have to use their products and you can setup your own tools. But this isn't an option for most people. And Google makes some very excellent products that mesh well together. As a result, they provide a service that people will use. You aren't going to convince people any differently.
Re:conspiracy theories (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo has pretty good email actually and its filtering features are more flexible than gmail's. Yahoo's folders make sense. There's a lot to commend Yahoo mail.
Furthermore, you can't reasonably expect millions of people with Yahoo mail addresses to suddenly switch to gmail simply because it's incrementally better in certain ways. Yes, back when Yahoo had a 10 megabyte limit and made you pay for more space, it made sense to switch. It makes a lot less sense to switch today because Yahoo has caught up.
Yahoo search has been marginalized by Google. But its mapping, news, financial, sports, games, and shopping sites are still used by hundreds millions of people. Yahoo is still a huge franchise and would be a rich prize for whoever acquires it.
Microsoft attempted to acquire Yahoo for a premium price of over $40/share a while back (woe that I didn't sell my damn Yahoo shares at that time!!!) and now they *might* pick it up for fire sale prices. It seems that despite himself, Ballmer might yet pull off a coup by having waited for Yahoo's stock to go down.
I personally will be sad to see Yahoo go, because it was such a formative part of my own internet experiences back in the day. To this day I still have Yahoo stock quotes, news, and weather on my browser tool bar and I go there many times a day. I only wish their multimedia worked better in Linux, the one failing of Yahoo in my book. I'd rather see Google get them because Google might preserve the good stuff, while Microsoft is more likely to absorb and rebrand.
The other way around? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google works well (Score:0, Interesting)
I think folks are forgetting one important point. The reason why I like Google is that their search engine works extremely well. In fact, how often does google search find what you're looking for? Plus the fact that the service is "free" and paid for by relevant advertising is great. I don't see Microsoft giving you free software now do I? Nor does Microsoft's software always work as well as they claim it does. Sure Google probably collects a huge amount of information but so does the government. You have to trust someone and so far Google has shown that it hasn't breached that trust. A standard rule in life is to initially trust someone until it's been broken once. Then it's an all out war. You can't be paranoid of everyone that's new. It just stops changes.
If anything I think this is just proof that companies that would force the money out of you and steal everything you have are afraid of Google just because it's not doing the same and winning the hearts of the public. Nice try but I don't think this will work.
I am no cheerleader for MicroSoft, but they do offer so very good free software like Visual Web Developer.
Re:conspiracy theories (Score:3, Interesting)
Conspiracy theory is right. FUD about privacy? Err, there are real privacy concerns with pretty much all the search engines, not to mention social network sites. Expressing dissatisfaction in privacy policies isnt FUD its giving a shit about privacy.
I also fail to understand why I should support one faceless corporations but hate another. Once you peel away the flagrant fanboyism there really isnt much difference between google, apple, yahoo, ms, etc. A savvy consumer should be playing them against themselves for best quality and price, not making irrational allegiances.
Sadly, this is "high quality" article by slashdot standards.
Re:WHY the hell it cant be heroism ? or goodwill ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you joking? the day a board of directors would do anything for a reason other than to maximize profits, they would be sued straight away.
I see this come up all the time and it's kinda silly that when in the US we always joke about how you can sue for damn near anything but act as if you even whisper the word lawsuit to a board of directors they are going to run crying for their mommies.
Yes a board of directors is liable for it's actions and can be sued for not doing things that will further a companies goals. (Mind you this is different than always maximizing profits, something you also don't seem to understand.)
But no that does not always happen. As is pointed out it's still humans at the controls and mistakes are made, some decisions are made from more emotion than business sense, and other assorted nonsense.
So quick to defend Google? (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't make Google out to be some put upon victims; victims would be the people in China who can't access online material about Tienanmen Square. "Don't be evil" my arse.
I am no fan of Microsoft (haven't used windows in years), but neither am I a fan of the Chinese government nor those who collude with them against freedom.
Re:What about the bank that keeps your money? (Score:2, Interesting)
A person can try to request that Google delete their data, but then even if they actually "delete" the data it is only suppressed at best. Oh yeah, and it might even take up to seven days to supress that data, so deletion requests apparently need human review even though data capture takes less than a second. Then, as some have already seen with Google Groups and supposedly deleted Usenet posts, the data can actually return from being suppressed due to some software revision issue, and it can take up to a few months to fix that issue.
Re:So quick to defend Google? (Score:2, Interesting)
And yet at about the same time Google was the only holdout against the US government when they demanded private information on search-engine users. (link [nytimes.com])
Making ethical decisions like that is hard. What's better for the Chinese public: a search engine that omits results due to censorship (and says so) or no search engine at all? I don't know, but I'm tempted to say the former.
Re:conspiracy theories (Score:5, Interesting)
MS search is pretty bad, yes. Google is a lot better. However, Yahoo is substantially better than Google. Go to search.yahoo.com for a clean interface if you want, and next time you actually need something, compare Yahoo and Google. I do about once a month. For the last several years, Yahoo's results have been equivalent to or vastly superior to Google's, in terms of ordering of results and lack of unrelated results. It's hard to quantify, though, and conceivably Yahoo just has an advantage when searching for the things I typically need (scientist stuff).
If you want a more easily demonstrated Yahoo advantage, compare Yahoo's map searching and Google's. Last week I stood within five blocks of a restaurant I needed help finding and searched Google maps (the app version on my phone) for its name. Every single result I got was an irrelevant location, none closer than 10 miles to my location, and they were all based on someone mentioning the place I wanted (or the type of food it makes) in a review. Half of them weren't restaurants. I have to admit, searching for something that included the word sushi and getting a pet shop as my top results was pretty funny. This is very consistent behavior with Google maps, which is a great mapping site until you need to access Google's weakness: search. Luckily, I keep yahoo maps bookmarked, and so I was able to get a map (unfortunately without GPS) that got me to dinner. As usual, searching for the name of the restaurant got me that restaurant as my top response in Yahoo maps.
When I search for something, I don't want to be ushered toward the page that the most bloggers have mentioned in posts that include my search terms. As my first result, I want the page that includes the language I entered. Yahoo gives me that a lot more than Google.
Re:they don't need to "manufacture" (Score:3, Interesting)
Google is a single point of failure because of it's enormous logs of user activity. If Google was to one day say: "Yeah, we're done with the 'don't be evil' thing. It's everyone for themselves!!!" we have an awful lot of data to sell (I work for Google). Every suspicious sequence of things goes to the DOJ. Everything of interest to marketers gets sold off to them... etc.
The problem with that scenario is that that would be it for Google's future. That's the fire sale. Nobody is going to trust Google with anything after that. But it would be a big hit to privacy during the fallout from that one event and that's why Google represents a theoretical "single point of failure".
Now, do I think anything like that is likely? No. Google's employees are at least as fearful of Google's potential as the general public. You wouldn't believe the ration of shit that Google management would get if something like that were afoot. The existing protections around user data are pretty impressive and they're getting stronger every day. If there was a hint that user data protections were being subverted to make a buck, employee morale would be destroyed. Many employees (including me) work here contingent on "Don't be evil." The day Google loses "Don't be evil." is the day 20,000 employees go after that startup they were thinking about or at least warm up their resume.
There are real risks associated with the amount of data that Google has. But if I had to come up with a list of companies/organizations that I might trust with that data, based on past behavior and stated principles, it's a very short list and Google is at the top. I believed this last year (before working for Google) and I am even more confident about it now that I work here.