Comments on: The googlization of the world

The googlization of the world

seitensprung — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 05:46:01 -0800

The almightyness of a search engine? And here's other interesting info about it: Google's non-existing data retention policies, Google's new "We make Phone-Companies needless" Software, , Google tracks our postage, our Mails, our everyday life (not YET in realtime). Google is threatening businesses, records every single one of our steps in the virtual world. The more we live in a data world, the more we get into Google's Matrix.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:03:46 -0800

ach du meine google!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:06:11 -0800

Ich bein ein Googlelander?

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:09:06 -0800

caligoogle! uber alles! caligoogleuberalles!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:14:56 -0800

Googles over Disneyland!

By: sriracha

sriracha — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:15:06 -0800

Wow. What a load of sensationalist crap. See Tim O'Reilly's piece on this for a less hysterical position.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:20:25 -0800

That being said, I'm only going to worry about Google when the three people I currently know working at Google get worried. They're extremely hardcore about their privacy ethics, and I can't see them working - natch, loving to work - at a company that's evil. You couldn't pay them enough to work at Microsoft, and that's the thing Microsoft doesn't get. It's not the shoddy products, or the pay, it's their entire toxic culture. From what I've heard, working at Google is very nice, fun, often laid back and yet still often intense. Those links make few valid or strong arguments against Google other than the whole centralization thing. Google as far as I can tell isn't anti-competitive. They love competition. They just make really good stuff, and they'll step up wherever possible and match/exceed other offerings. Jesus, I sound like I'm drinking the Kool-aid right now. *gulp*

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:21:08 -0800

Supercalifragilisticgoogleuberalles?

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:29:32 -0800

Gesundoogleheit!

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:32:54 -0800

it is too late for complaints, anyway, because google controls earth!* *note: typing "earth" into google turns up no reference to google earth on the first page (that is, if you set your page to only ten results. if so... chump.)

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:36:07 -0800

Did you find the Google Earth easter egg yet, Hat Maui? I just wiped out Tokyo with a proton beam from L5. Solid.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:39:09 -0800

are you serious, lo-dog? do tell! I SEEK TO DESTROY!* (also, i search and destroy. because i am the world's forgotten boy.)

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:45:44 -0800

Hell yes, I'm serious. Check it out. *Targets 32.222ºN 110.926ºW, correcting beam focus for 2483 feet above MSL* Oh, shit. You might want to run or something.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:51:44 -0800

yo, maybe i'm a dummy and shit, but those coordinates, how does one implement them? especially with all the "correcting beam focus"?

By: Miko

Miko — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:53:06 -0800

You've seen this, right?

By: titboy

titboy — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:53:25 -0800

google uber alles

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:00:03 -0800

uoogle goober alles!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:01:07 -0800

Also, yes it sucks but in our capitalistic cesspool of a nation, everything is goin to come out of some kind of corporation. Fortunetly, some of them are drowning in profit and don't need to worry about squeezing blood from a 'consumer' at every turn.

By: Dean Keaton

Dean Keaton — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:09:30 -0800

Google comes off as more of an "apple" way of thinking. Sure it's money but if you do a google search for "google watch" it is right there as the very first link.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:34:16 -0800

scalar.google.com

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:40:04 -0800

Google comes off as more of an "apple" way of thinking. Sure it's money but if you do a google search for "google watch" it is right there as the very first link. Huh, is that why apple killed the clone biz? Is that why the sued the Med Student for leaking Tiger? Apple is one of the worst companies out there, morals wise. Great marketing, average products, and a shitty business ethic.

By: sfenders

sfenders — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:41:56 -0800

It's not that there's any one strong reason to dislike Google. Just that their innumerable little flaws add up to a dramatic failure to live up to their ridiculously over-hyped name. Gmail came close, but it was the video player that was the final straw for me, tipping my perception of Google right into the same category as Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.

By: realcountrymusic

realcountrymusic — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:52:30 -0800

Apple is one of the worst companies out there, morals wise Name one major technology company that would not sue over the theft of intellectual property.

By: NickDouglas

NickDouglas — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:53:42 -0800

Remember that Google Watch was founded by a guy pissed that Google wouldn't hand-edit search results to make his site higher. After this initial "problem," he started researching all of Google's "evil." The guy's not a master of logic. The 2038 cookie, for example: who the hell keeps a computer for 38 years? Even then, the porn users empty their cookies, cache and history daily. Public systems like libraries render the data less individualized. So do corporate and organizational proxies. Finally, Google's not the only corporation with that kind of record-keeping, and they won't always be the most powerful.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:55:04 -0800

Here we go again... Cookies = Stalking? (Jan 2000) Any server can read all your IE cookies. (May 2000) Is Google's use of cookies unnecessarily invasive? (Aug 2002; if you only have time for one tinfoil-hat evil-Google thread, make it this one) Nationalise Google? (April 2003) I'm pretty sure there were other such posts, but I'm getting bored thinking of ways to search for them. Anyway, have fun, but remember: Paranoia will destroy ya!

By: sfenders

sfenders — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:06:08 -0800

I prefer FuckedGoogle for a delicious source of anti-Google ranting.

By: zardoz

zardoz — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:12:26 -0800

The current Onion lead story is apropos: Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index.

By: funambulist

funambulist — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:25:06 -0800

Doogle!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:33:51 -0800

Gwoogle!

By: AspectRatio

AspectRatio — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:48:49 -0800

So Google is the new MS? I missed the memo but now I'll uninstall everything. No MS, no Google, I'm sure Yahoo is evil too. Ah hell, back to pen and paper.

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:51:09 -0800

Huh, is that why apple killed the clone biz? Is that why the sued the Med Student for leaking Tiger? Closing down a money-losing program, and suing someone for breach of contract? Yes, totally immoral.

By: sfenders

sfenders — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:09:46 -0800

No MS, no Google, I'm sure Yahoo is evil too. Ah hell, back to pen and paper. For almost everything Microsoft and Yahoo do, there are less-evil alternatives that happen to also be functionally better, for my purposes anyway. Not so much for Google, which is why I still use it even though it's tasting a bit sour.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:59:39 -0800

The GMail link resolved to my GMail inbox. OH NOES, IEV BEEN HACKED!!1

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:08:31 -0800

You've seen this, right? I love the large role that Friendster gets. It's like watching a sci-fi movie from the 50s that has a guy from Brooklyn going on about the Dodgers...

By: bingo

bingo — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:12:40 -0800

You couldn't pay them enough to work at Microsoft, and that's the thing Microsoft doesn't get. It's not the shoddy products, or the pay, it's their entire toxic culture. From what I've heard, working at Google is very nice, fun, often laid back and yet still often intense. I hate to tell you this, but I used to work at Microsoft, and that's just what it was like. Very good pay, too, and I was just a contractor. Like many others working there, I was not a die-hard fan of the company in general. But there can be a big difference between the outward face of a company, and the way it treats its people, and in my experience, that was certainly the case at MS. It may outwardly be an ever-expanding borg, but inwardly, the culture is hardly 'toxic.'

By: davy

davy — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:50:10 -0800

You think maybe Google is an International Illuminati plot? Does any of this have any connection, pro or con, with LaRouche?

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 11:20:30 -0800

No, I think it's all part of scalar technology. But... come to think of it, I'll bet the Illuminati are in on that! Hey, loquacious, whaddaya think?

By: sfenders

sfenders — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:10:37 -0800

Oh, come on now. Don't be silly. It's perfectly obvious to everyone that the Illuminati have to be in on it. Therefore they probably aren't.

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:48:07 -0800

The Illuminati aren't in on the companies you know about; they're in on the companies you don't know about.

By: sourbrew

sourbrew — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 13:01:45 -0800

and here are some screen shots of GOOGLE OS, or at least some well photoshopped ones.

By: sourbrew

sourbrew — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 13:08:12 -0800

but what about their os? now with tasty screen shots might be faked, who knows..... still teh hotness

By: sourbrew

sourbrew — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 13:08:27 -0800

their os being freakin GOOGLE OS.... in case you were wondering

By: dingobully

dingobully — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 23:46:13 -0800

eh.... I think you'll be needing one of these tin foil hats...