Who's Afraid Of Google? A Review An Article From The Economist.
"Speaking for many, John Battelle, the author of a book on Google and an early admirer, recently wrote on his blog that "I've found myself more and more wary" of Google "out of some primal, lizard-brain fear of giving too much control of my data to one source." *
Google itself has been genuinely taken aback by such sentiments. The Silicon Valley company, which trumpeted its corporate motto, "Don't be evil", before its stockmarket listing in 2004, considers itself a force for good in the world, even in defiance of commercial logic. Its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, have said explicitly and repeatedly that their biggest motivation is not to maximise profits but improve the world.
Too many sermons
Such talk can make outsiders wince. Book and newspaper publishers, media companies such as Viacom, businesses which depend on Google's search rankings and a lengthening queue of others are tired of moralising sermons.** Some feel their own livelihoods are threatened and are suing Google.*** Even some employees (called "Googlers") or former employees ("Xooglers") are cynical. Google is "arrogant" because it feels "invincible", says a Xoogler who left to run a start-up firm.**** The internal attitude toward customers, rivals, and partners, is "you can't stop us" and "we will crush you", he says. That "kinder, gentler" image is "mythology" and, he reckons, Google gets away with it only because of its impressively high share price."*****
*Such lizard-brained fear comes from a lizard-brained understanding of reality. What it all boils down to is the trust agreement. YOU, the customer of Google's FREE and sometimes PROMINENTLY BETA services decided, likely fleetingly, to put your personal data on their servers. Deservingly, you would feel insecure if your decided trust was suddenly undecided. If you resolve to fear giving too much control of your data to one source, DON'T DO IT!
In defense, however, in no way are you putting all your eggs in one basket. The sheer magesty of Google is that it's reliable. Whether it's their felxible cloud of data and transfering and backups and networking, or their constant monitoring of everything their corporation RELIABLY offers, Google is not a single, unstable, wire-wrought basket of the world's eggs. Google is a system of billions of baskets linked together under tight-knit security and high-tech data transferring meshwork. To NOT trust a company that thrives on the slogan "Don't be evil" and still put your faith in the American government is laughable in the least.
**I just went over this shit in my managment class today! The moralising sermons keep people motivated. Who wants to work for a company that feels like they should be working the street corner? The success of a business is determined by the people, and if the people can CONSTRUCTIVELY take in all that is said in these "sermons", the motivation and fabrication of a great, upbeat company can take foot. All the negativity in the business world crowds the industries with depression, and people just envy and hate the fact that SOMEONE out there found a new method of business, and guess what, IT WORKS! Grow the hell up, people.
***I really don't think I need to reiterate this, but my readers will probably cease to gather the facts if I don't. A little copy/paste never hurt anyone. "What it all boils down to is the trust agreement. YOU, the customer of Google's FREE and sometimes PROMINENTLY BETA services decided, likely fleetingly, to put your personal data on their servers. ... If you resolve to fear giving too much control of your data to one source, DON'T DO IT!" How can you honestly sue the very company who is providing you with the very free service YOU, the user, agreed to? And only because you FEEL insecure? Get to know the company before you judge it. If you're putting your life on the internet, you rightfully deserve to be found, if you don't want to be found in their searches, ask to have the data removed. It's not taboo, people, it's practice. And NO ONE wants to see you naked. Really.
****Hahahaha! ... Oh wait, you're serious? ... Hahahahahah!
*****You're a Xoogler for a reason, apparently. Look, I can understand the lighthearted competitive nature inside a business, and with a business as extreme as Google, I can almost expect some extreme competition. But if you're leaking to the Economist what was said over lunch with your cubicle-mate and secretary about slogans for a water-balloon fight against Microsoft... The words "petty" and "ungrateful scum" come to mind.
The more I stand tall to defend Google, the more I realize that it's become more of a religion than just another company. I'd like to see some comments on this one. You know, some well-thought out ones would be nice. Come check out the September 1st-7th 2007 issue of The Economist at the library and tell me what you think.
Google itself has been genuinely taken aback by such sentiments. The Silicon Valley company, which trumpeted its corporate motto, "Don't be evil", before its stockmarket listing in 2004, considers itself a force for good in the world, even in defiance of commercial logic. Its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, have said explicitly and repeatedly that their biggest motivation is not to maximise profits but improve the world.
Too many sermons
Such talk can make outsiders wince. Book and newspaper publishers, media companies such as Viacom, businesses which depend on Google's search rankings and a lengthening queue of others are tired of moralising sermons.** Some feel their own livelihoods are threatened and are suing Google.*** Even some employees (called "Googlers") or former employees ("Xooglers") are cynical. Google is "arrogant" because it feels "invincible", says a Xoogler who left to run a start-up firm.**** The internal attitude toward customers, rivals, and partners, is "you can't stop us" and "we will crush you", he says. That "kinder, gentler" image is "mythology" and, he reckons, Google gets away with it only because of its impressively high share price."*****
*Such lizard-brained fear comes from a lizard-brained understanding of reality. What it all boils down to is the trust agreement. YOU, the customer of Google's FREE and sometimes PROMINENTLY BETA services decided, likely fleetingly, to put your personal data on their servers. Deservingly, you would feel insecure if your decided trust was suddenly undecided. If you resolve to fear giving too much control of your data to one source, DON'T DO IT!
In defense, however, in no way are you putting all your eggs in one basket. The sheer magesty of Google is that it's reliable. Whether it's their felxible cloud of data and transfering and backups and networking, or their constant monitoring of everything their corporation RELIABLY offers, Google is not a single, unstable, wire-wrought basket of the world's eggs. Google is a system of billions of baskets linked together under tight-knit security and high-tech data transferring meshwork. To NOT trust a company that thrives on the slogan "Don't be evil" and still put your faith in the American government is laughable in the least.
**I just went over this shit in my managment class today! The moralising sermons keep people motivated. Who wants to work for a company that feels like they should be working the street corner? The success of a business is determined by the people, and if the people can CONSTRUCTIVELY take in all that is said in these "sermons", the motivation and fabrication of a great, upbeat company can take foot. All the negativity in the business world crowds the industries with depression, and people just envy and hate the fact that SOMEONE out there found a new method of business, and guess what, IT WORKS! Grow the hell up, people.
***I really don't think I need to reiterate this, but my readers will probably cease to gather the facts if I don't. A little copy/paste never hurt anyone. "What it all boils down to is the trust agreement. YOU, the customer of Google's FREE and sometimes PROMINENTLY BETA services decided, likely fleetingly, to put your personal data on their servers. ... If you resolve to fear giving too much control of your data to one source, DON'T DO IT!" How can you honestly sue the very company who is providing you with the very free service YOU, the user, agreed to? And only because you FEEL insecure? Get to know the company before you judge it. If you're putting your life on the internet, you rightfully deserve to be found, if you don't want to be found in their searches, ask to have the data removed. It's not taboo, people, it's practice. And NO ONE wants to see you naked. Really.
****Hahahaha! ... Oh wait, you're serious? ... Hahahahahah!
*****You're a Xoogler for a reason, apparently. Look, I can understand the lighthearted competitive nature inside a business, and with a business as extreme as Google, I can almost expect some extreme competition. But if you're leaking to the Economist what was said over lunch with your cubicle-mate and secretary about slogans for a water-balloon fight against Microsoft... The words "petty" and "ungrateful scum" come to mind.
The more I stand tall to defend Google, the more I realize that it's become more of a religion than just another company. I'd like to see some comments on this one. You know, some well-thought out ones would be nice. Come check out the September 1st-7th 2007 issue of The Economist at the library and tell me what you think.
posted by Elliya at 9:20 AM
Where the music is trapped. 
4 Comments:
EXCELLENT emphasis on the network. because that's exactly where the security and comfort you're referring to stems from.
with a company like google, you can expect them to have at least a 35% server farm backup ratio, which would pretty much survive the apocalypse.
it's not google's reliability or security i question, it's simply whether or not adapting myself to google applications will really make that much difference in my life. at this point, i can't say that i will. i use my pda to keep track of my calendar, which i keep on my at almost all times, and hotmail is my email server, which is convenient for me because it's directly compatible with the phone i currently have.
i've nothing against google, and i respect and believe that they do in fact, wish to make the world a better place. i simply don't use their products because i've no need to at this point.
but i'm still gonna bust on you :)
go Yahoo!
Gotta love America's Legal system, where people can sue anybody for any reason. They made the decision to to use the site, the services they provide, to sign the agreement, and to put forth the information they don't want other people to find. So because of their decision to do so, they feel they have the right to sue Google over their issues with the decision they made. That is no fault of the company, that's just them throwing a hissy fit about a decision they made.
TJ touched nicely on the physical application of their servers and security, and I have nothing to add to his comments.
I'm a fan of google. I like the services they provide. And if it wasn't google who had my e-mail information, and everything linked to it, it would be Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL. And I would rather my information be in the hands of Google, who refused a subpoena from the Justice Department to turn over my search engine records, than in the hands of Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL who gave that information up.
http://www.slate.com/id/2134767/ is a nice article about that
Here's where I school TJ... :P
As far as technicalities are concerned, and from what I can draw from what you've said (I'm no expert), their innovation in data security relies in the constant backing up of data. Like I said, I'm not a networking major like yourself, but there's no allocated space for data backup, rather the data and backup data are mixed together in a cloud of servers in which data and backup data is always being logged, copied, and moved elsewhere. If a server goes down, there a 100% garuntee of a backup somewhere (probably twice-where or thrice-where) that will be retrieved.
Also, you have to factor in account the data that Google Mail happens to keep for 180 days after deletion. Oh yeah. That's huge. Think about all the spam you get. They store that crap, too!
To respond to Jon's comment, there have been many situations in which Google has refused to turn over information to the Government under 'criminal' cases. But people STILL feel as though Google is untrustable. Exactly as you said, innovation and the pushing forward of technology is going to drive this transferring of data eventually, whether it's to AOL, or Yahoo or wherever. Eventually someone would have come up with YMail that links to iYahoo and Yahoo Checkout, and AOL would be storing people's addresses on AOLearth. Perhaps it's not the natural trend of things going digital that people fear, but that one company is SO DAMN GOOD AT EVERYTHING.
I can surely see the intimidation there, but the facts are out, people. Google was innovative enough to come up with its ideas first, test them openly, offer them freely, and advertise using them for profit where appropriate before any other company came up with the very idea.
Without Google, maybe 3 years down the road another company would be fighting the same war, or another few companies. Google just takes the rightful limelight because they shine brightly and steadily. And I guess no journalism branch of any magazine likes to publish GOOD THINGS.
this 'religion' is nothing new, i have been to many parts of the internet, this 'religion' i suppose started with the hippies but has gained widespread access from the internet, it is abundant in the diy and open source communities
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