Holding Google to Its Promise: "Don't Be Evil"

Steve K.'s Blog (10)

Gmail Fail

What do you think the cost will be to businesses and individuals relying on Google's Gmail service after today's sudden, unplanned, unexpected outage? Have we put too much confidence in the reliability of the Gmail service? What suggestions do you have for a "backup plan" for future #GmailFail situations? Please post your thoughts in the comments! Continue

Added by Steve K. on September 1, 2009 at 4:41pm — No Comments

Jeff Jarvis: "We Need to Shame Them"

Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, today writes this inspiring message:

Technology companies from Cisco to Nokia to Siemens that have provided technology to enable censorship and tracking, and companies from Yahoo to Google that have handed over information about users to governments that use it to oppress citizens should be ashamed. And we need to shame them. We need to give

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Added by Steve K. on June 30, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Google to Employees: No Christmas Bonus, Here's $180 Worth of "Dogfood" Instead

OK the headline is more incendiary than the actual story, but half of it is straight from the Gizmodo post that broke the story. The only real news here is that Google employees who in the past have enjoyed year-end cash bonuses of up to $20,000 are instead this year getting an $180 Googlephone, which the company describes as "eating their own dogfood." Is it evil? I say, n… Continue

Added by Steve K. on December 22, 2008 at 10:30pm — No Comments

Google acknowledges human intervention in search results

The Register reports: "Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement -- and nobody has yet grasped its significance ... "Make no mistake, Google is moving into new territory: not only making arbitrary, editorial choices -- really no different to Fox News, say, or any other media organization. It's now in the business of vali… Continue

Added by Steve K. on December 16, 2008 at 11:30am — No Comments

Google Uses 21 Times More Bandwidth than it Pays For

According to Precursor LLC, they have just conducted the first-ever research study of U.S. consumer Internet bandwidth usage and costs with the objective of estimating how much bandwidth Google uses and pays for. The result?

"The data confirm the study’s core hypotheses, that: Google is by far the largest user of Internet bandwidth, Google’s share of ba

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Added by Steve K. on December 5, 2008 at 9:00am — No Comments

"An ethical war ... will arise"?

Over on the Mashable blog the other day, Ben Parr had an interesting piece on 5 Ways Social Media Will Change Recorded History. In the midst of his five mind-bending observations, Parr writes,

Google has been giving the Federal Government information on flu-related searches in order to track and contain

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Added by Steve K. on November 25, 2008 at 1:28pm — No Comments

Google Gets Millions of Dollars in Profits from "Typo-Squatting"?

Here's another story from the Web Guild on October 27, 2008, about a lawsuit being filed against Google for "typo-squatting":

(Harvard professor Benjamin G.) Edelman says that Google is profiting from typo-squatting by engaging with companies that are taking advantage of existing trademarks costing advertisers $30-50 million a year. “This is one of the unsavory ways w

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Added by Steve K. on November 24, 2008 at 11:44pm — No Comments

My Comment on the NYTimes Bits Blog

BTW -- Here's the comment I posted on the NYTimes Bits blog post about the Google debate:

It’s the law of probability: Google has certainly done “evil” things in the past, and they will do “evil” things in the future. And because Google is an enormous multi-national corporation, we should be concerned about what happens when Google does evil stuff — not because we hate Goo

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Added by Steve K. on November 23, 2008 at 1:47am — No Comments

"'Don't be evil' is an invitation to debate"

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, told the New York Times recently, “‘Don’t be evil’ is an invitation to debate. It means we will fight over what it means.” That's why this group exists. To throw things out on the table that Google does and say, "This looks 'evil.'" We'll probably disagree with each other, let alone with Google corporate, but that's OK. Google has given us the invitation to debate. So let's debate.… Continue

Added by Steve K. on November 23, 2008 at 1:30am — No Comments

Intelligence Squared Debate Recap: "Google violates its 'don't be evil' motto"

The Intelligence Squared debate on whether “Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto” is now over. The New York Times Bits blog has a recap of the debate, “It was a spirited discussion, mixing substantive talk of Google’s market power, privacy practices and its censorship in China with tongue-in-cheek attempts to compare the search company with Pol Pot, Lucifer, Dr. Evil and other dark icons.” Here’s… Continue

Added by Steve K. on November 20, 2008 at 10:50pm — 1 Comment