Google Grim Reaper: The latest killed projects - Network WorldA fall spring clean, September
2011
In February 2010, Google bought social networking site Aardvark for $50 million,
and canned it
19 months later. Users submitted questions to Aardvark via the Web, IM, or email. Aardvark hooked
the requests up with friends-of-friends who might have the answer.
The seven-year-old Google Desktop Search bit the dust. Once the envy of XP-era desktop
search, Google’s product worked on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Fast Flip, a precursor to flippable news magazines like Flipboard (which appeared
on iOS in late 2010), bit the dust after two years. Google Pack, which bundled apps
like Desktop, Picasa, Google Earth, Chrome, and the toolbar for IE, got unglued. Google also axed
Maps APIs for Flash, Web Security, Notebook (which
may come back as
Google Keep),...
A fall sweep, October 2011
Google Buzz, an odd social networking feature in Gmail, strove to take on Facebook
and Twitter but failed,
except in its influence on Google+. Integration with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger,
and Twitter presaged the let's-dump-everything-here tendency of more recent aggregators. Buzz lasted
20 months.
If you were a programmer back then, you probably remember the demise of Code Search,
the remarkable attempt to make open source code more accessible, no matter where it resides.
Ohloh has taken up the mantle.
Google bought Jaiku, a Twitter-like networking service, in 2007, stopped new development
in 2009, and finally gave up the ghost in 2011, as tweets overwhelmed jaiks. iGoogle,
which features prominently in the July 2012 spring-cleaning announcement, lost its social features
More spring cleaning out of season, November 2011
Perhaps the most-loved Google orphan, Google Wave, defies description: Start with
a re-imagining of email, with the message and its replies in a single location, augmented by real-time
multi-user editing capabilities. And that’s just the beginning. Google released Wave to the public in
May 2010. By August 2010, Google stopped development, and
killed it officially in November 2011.
Google Gears also went belly-up. Once the storage engine behind Gmail, YouTube,
Docs, Reader, and many more Google products, Gears was best known for mirroring cloud files onto the
local computer via the browser. Google decided to add the features to HTML5.
While Google wanted Knol to turn into a Wikipedia competitor, it didn’t happen.
Google turned the content over to Annotum, an open-source academic site.
Renewing old resolutions for the new year, January 2012
In March 2010, Google bought Picnik -- best known as the default photo editor inside
Flickr -- for between $40 and $80 million. In January 2012,
Google announced that it was shutting Picnik down, moving the photo editing team to work on Picasa
and Google+.
In October 2011, Google spent $700 million for Needlebase, a highly regarded program
that scrapes data off Web databases (it was the engine behind Orbitz). In January 2012, Google announced
it was killing Needlebase on June 1, absorbing the technology into other Google products.
That same month, Google killed
Sky Map, an Android skyviewing app taken in by Carnegie Mellon;
Google Message Continuity enterprise email disaster recovery;
and the client side of Urchin, having provided the guts for Google Analytics.
Spring cleaning … in spring! April 2012
April’s
crop of cuts contained few that anyone would lament. The most interesting was an online mapping
app developed by Google called the Flu Vaccine Finder. Google handed over all of its
development tools to the HealthMap effort at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.
We also saw the usual demise of a bunch of APIs, a browsing assistant nobody ever used called
Google Related, a mobile version of Google Talk, the long-lamented
Picasa for Linux (which had maybe 10 users), and the One Pass payment
method for online publishers.
Spring cleaning in summer, July 2012
July brought the
single
worst Google evisceration in history. iGoogle, the build-it-yourself blocky interface
for RSS feeds, got the axe. I’ve taught thousands of people (tens of thousands?) how to work with RSS
feeds using iGoogle. Google didn’t summarily kill iGoogle, granting a 16-month stay of execution until
Nov. 1, 2013. I will miss it.
Google Video also hit the skids. Google started merging Google Video and YouTube
in 2007, finally blocking uploads to Google Video in May 2009, but retaining Video’s search functions.
In April 2011, Google announced it was killing Google Video, but then backed off two weeks later. This
was the coup de grace. The fat lady also sang for Google Mini enterprise search,
Google Talk Chatback, and Symbian Search.
More spring cleaning, September 2012
Just two months after the last spring-cleaning, Google
lopped off
eight more heads, simultaneously. The most ominous: AdSense for Feeds. Nobody was
using AdSense to make money from their RSS feeds, which is why Google killed it, but few people realized
at the time that Google had pretty much given up on RSS feeds: AdSense for Feeds was Google’s only way
to make money from RSS.
More roadkill: Google Classic Plus let you use any image as a background for the
Google search screen. Spreadsheet Gadgets were covered by the native Charts app.
Google News Badges rewarded reading news items (!). Places Directory
was rolled into Google Maps. Storage in Picasa and Google Drive was consolidated.
Insight for Search melded into Trends.
Winter cleaning, December 2012
Google announced it would
no longer support
syncing via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync by preventing customers from setting up new devices with
Google Sync. Except, that is, for paid Google accounts. There’s little apparent reason
for the axing, except to goad Microsoft into supporting CalDAV (calendar) and CardDAV (contacts) on
Windows Phone, Win8, and Windows RT. The move took effect Jan. 30, 2013; there was a reprieve for Windows
Phone users until July 31, but a recent Metro app update has
made everything murky. MS has posted a
Google
Sync work-around for Windows 8 and Windows RT customers.
Google also announced that it was discontinuing some Google Calendar features, the
Issue Tracker API, and a practically unknown retail customer loyalty scheme called...
A second spring of cleaning, March 2013
The
demise
of RSS aggregator Google Reader sent cries wailing in the blogosphere, with many
accusing Google of corporate malfeasance, crass indifference, and a closet targeting of tech writers,
who were among Reader’s most vocal victims. Of course, Reader was in decline: Tech Crunch’s MG Siegler
says Reader referrals to its site
were down two-thirds in the past 18 months.
Google Apps Script GUI Builder
hit the skids. Google restricted direct access to the CalDAV API to select developers.
Building Maker, an app that let people build 3D models for certain cities in Google
Earth went, too, as did Cloud Connect, which provides a direct way to access Google
Drive from Office apps. Now you need to install Google Drive separately....
More wood, and an arrow in Google Labs’ back, July 2011
Before “spring cleaning” became an enduring
Google meme 18 months ago, Google
signaled the start of its serious pruning effort by cancelling Google Labs, in
a July 2011 blog entitled “More
wood behind fewer arrows.” Before you shed a belated tear for the group that brought us, among many
others, Gmail and many of its features, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Body, and Google Goggles,
consider the not-so-surprising fact that many of the old Google Labs projects live on. They’ve just
been moved to different divisions, presumably transforming them from cost centers to parts of operational
divisions. The old logo’s gone, but the rest lives on. NetworkWorld
has a list, compiled in October 2011.
What’s going to happen to Feedburner?
I fully expect Google’s next spring cleaning post will announce the demise of FeedBurner. Why? Because
Google has
systematically killed off every RSS-based app in its arsenal except for FeedBurner, the engine that
drove them all. iGoogle went in July 2012, although it’s been granted a reprieve until November 2013,
and FeedBurner will no doubt stick around until then. AdSense for Feeds crumbled last September. Google
Reader bit the bucket earlier this month. Google declared the FeedBurner API
deprecated in June 2011, but left the door open with “no scheduled date for shutdown.”
Google bought FeedBurner in June 2007, for a reported $100 million. If it goes down the tubes, FeedBurner
will be one of the biggest products Google ever bought, then explicitly...
The latest likely cremation candidate: Google Keep
Just five days ago, Google
announced its latest creation, Google Keep. Although Google would like you to think that it’s an
Evernote competitor, in fact, Keep doesn’t play in the same league. A very straightforward note-keeping
app, Keep may have aspirations to compete with Microsoft’s OneNote, but even that comparison’s more
than a little strained.
Keep owes a little bit to its conceptual predecessor, Google Notebook, which was killed in September
2011.
Clearly, Google created Keep to answer critics of the Google Apps suite who couldn’t find a OneNote
competitor. Just as clearly, the product needs a lot of work. Will it succumb to spring-cleaning as
rapidly as the others in this list? Time will tell.
The latest likely cremation candidate: Google Keep
Just five days ago, Google
announced its latest creation, Google Keep. Although Google would like you to think that it’s an
Evernote competitor, in fact, Keep doesn’t play in the same league. A very straightforward note-keeping
app, Keep may have aspirations to compete with Microsoft’s OneNote, but even that comparison’s more
than a little strained.
Keep owes a little bit to its conceptual predecessor, Google Notebook, which was killed in September
2011.
Clearly, Google created Keep to answer critics of the Google Apps suite who couldn’t find a OneNote
competitor. Just as clearly, the product needs a lot of work. Will it succumb to spring-cleaning as
rapidly as the others in this list? Time will tell.
"... Jeffrey Wernick is strategic investor in Parler. He is also an early bitcoin adopter, advocate and acquirer. Additionally he is a seed investor and an angel investor. Wernick is a frequently invited lecturer and speaker including at his alma mater, the University of Chicago. ..."
How major social media companies threaten our most basic freedoms.
It is no secret that the dominant social media companies now monetize what is not theirs:
our personal data. In none of the agreements between social media users and these companies is
there a transfer of property. Yes, users (and consumers in general) often agree to relinquish
some privacy in exchange for a service or a good. But privacy and property are completely
different. They should not be conflated.
Privacy is at the core of who we are as free and sovereign individuals. An individual is
composed of many attributes. Some are public and open, others we keep to ourselves. All of them
define who we are.
Apparently, there is great commercial value in understanding our attributes and then using
what is learned. Sometimes this is in our interest, but many times it is not.
In the digital world, companies dissect us and package us for commercial gain without
compensating us -- and too often without our consent. That is not merely an invasion of our
privacy, but in actuality is a theft of our personal property.
In any free society, respect for the individual is predicated upon his or her sovereignty.
Our most important property right is our right to ourselves. If we lose ownership of ourselves,
we become the property of others.
Social media companies, and other platforms that sell or monetize our data without
permission are appropriating aspects of the sovereign individuals who are their users, and it
is a violation of our rights.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.398.1_en.html#goog_1683085215 Ad ends in 8s
Next Video × Next Video J.d. Vance Remarks On A New Direction For Pro-worker, Pro-family
Conservatism, Tac Gala, 5-2019 Cancel Autoplay is paused
But selling or monetizing your personal information isn't the only way tyrannical tech
seeks to own you.
In 2019, Facebook's Mark Zuckerbe rg explicitly said, "We are a tech company, not a
media company."
He later gave Congress a more nuanced answer:
"I view us as a tech company because the primary thing we do is build technology and
products," Zuckerberg testified. "I agree that we're responsible for the content, but we
don't produce the content. I think when people ask us if we're a media company or a publisher,
my understanding of what they're really getting at is do we feel responsible for the content on
our platform."
"The answer to that, I think, is clearly yes," he continued. "But I don't think that's
incompatible with fundamentally at our core being a technology company."
Zuckerberg's view of his company raises a crucial question: is Facebook a technology company
that promotes free speech and exists as a public forum that should be held exempt from
liability in connection with the content posted on its platform? Or is it a publisher with the
right to edit content at its discretion, whatever the methodology -- but must then assume
responsibility and liability for that content?
To say you assume responsibility for content, and then declare yourself exempt from
liability in connection with it is an absurd contradiction. An assumption of liability is an
indispensable component of statement of responsibility. It is the price one pays for being able
to take credit for something, or to exercise control over it.
As troubled as I am regarding Zuckerberg's hypocri sy, as shown by the contradictions
between his words and Facebook's policies and practices, it is even more troubling to me
that many of my fellow Zuckerberg critics -- both in the technology community and in the
progressive movement–hold a very different conception of free speech than I do. Their
view of the range of speech that should be protected is, unfortunately, much narrower.
Essentially, many of them believe technology should be used to censor content, accord
ing to criteria established by whoever controls the technology company. And today, most of
the technology companies handling our content have decided to develop these criteria in
partnership with those operating on a kind of mob mentality that sees dissent as something that
is dangerous, something to be repressed.
A mere platform or "tech company" would not take it upon itself to do this. But publishers
would and do, usually in the name of being "responsible." Unfortunately, almost all of today's
technology is developed under the auspices of a controlling authority acting as a censor.
This would be acceptable -- if they acknowledged themselves as publishers. But Zuckerberg,
during his congressional testimony, walked that not-even-remotely-fine line for a reason. Many
of today's tech companies, doing the bidding of the various mobs that want to dictate what
speech is allowed, wield the power they have according to their own perspective on what is
right, just, and moral. They anoint themselves as the modern version of Torquemada. Yes, I said
it: It is an Inquisition. These tech companies, and the mobs whose favor they curry, seek a
strategy to dehumanize, delegitimize, and digitally exterminate those with whom they
disagree.
Those in academia are often told they must "publish or perish." If platforms like Google,
Facebook, Twitter and others dared to verbalize what they were doing in the form of an
expression, an appropriate expression might be: "If we decide not to publish you, you will
virtually perish. You will be erased."
These companies really aren't "social media." They are not public forums. An actual public
forum respects the First Amendment, in spirit, and does not monetize content or personal data.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tyrannical tech giants are private companies operating
opaquely in the digital domain, exempt from discovery or accountability, gifted by Congress
with a liability exemption that allows them to do whatever they want. Including deplatforming
you.
Rabbi Hillel said, "that which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow."
If you want the right to speak, to express your ideas and opinions, it would be despicable
to you if someone prevented you from doing so. You would not want someone else to persecute,
dehumanize, deplatform or digitally exterminate you.
Such behavior is abhorrent to the ideal of free speech. It is unfathomable that, in the
twenty-first century, "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your
right to say it," has, somehow mutated into, "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will
digitally exterminate you if you dare try to say it."
A true public forum eschews censorship of any kind. Freedom of expression, and the exchange
of knowledge that goes along with it, can flourish only in an environment where there is no
authoritative entity or controlling party, where one speaks by right, not by permission.
Jeffrey Wernick is strategic investor in Parler. He is also an early bitcoin adopter,
advocate and acquirer. Additionally he is a seed investor and an angel investor. Wernick is a
frequently invited lecturer and speaker including at his alma mater, the University of
Chicago.
America is in the midst of one of the great moral panics in our nation's history.
If we don't stand up
for our nation's core values, the situation could get even worse – and soon. If you've spent any time on social
media in the last three weeks, you've probably noticed the organized campaigns to get college and even
high
school
students expelled or denied admission based on their political views. You've also seen gleeful mobs
celebrating as Americans lose their jobs for running afoul of someone's momentary political obsessions.
In every sector of American society, people are having their careers destroyed to the pitiless baying of the
"woke" masses.
It's happening in business. CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman spent 20 years building the fitness
brand into a multi-billion dollar company, only to be
thrown
out
of the empire he built for declining to go along with the "racism is a public health crisis" dogma.
It's happening in journalism. New York Times editor James Bennet, a liberal, was
fired
for
publishing an op-ed by a sitting Republican senator advocating for a military response to nationwide rioting -- a
position the majority of Americans
agreed
with.
The same fate befell Philadelphia Inquirer editor Stan Wischowski, who was terminated for approving an article
that condemned looting and arson.
It's happening in
entertainment
,
in
academia
,
and pretty much anywhere someone can be found who is not sufficiently supportive of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
It's even happening to people who didn't do anything at all.
An L.A. Galaxy soccer player was forced to
resign because
his
wife
tweeted that rioters should be shot. A lawyer in San Francisco was fired because
his
wife
was rude to a man she
thought
was
spray-painting BLM propaganda on a building that wasn't his (it was). On Thursday, this Stasi-esque trend reached
another level when a company called Equity Prime Mortgage
fired
the
stepmother
of
the officer charged in the controversial shooting of drunk driver Rashad Brooks after he fought with and fired a
taser at police. The stepmother was apparently fired for no reason other than family loyalty.
On Monday, the panic reached what one can only hope will be its peak when a San Diego Gas and Electric employee
lost
his
job for "making a white supremacist hand gesture." We've
long
since debunked the notion that the OK sign is somehow racist -- that was just a fiction perpetrated by internet
trolls -- but in this case, this man lost his livelihood
despite the fact
he
wasn't even making an OK sign
. He was apparently cracking his knuckles as he drove.
What America is going through right now is not merely another, more intense round of "cancel culture." We're now
in the midst of a full-force, totalitarian remolding of our society, one that seeks to place the petty resentments
of an outraged minority of leftist activists above everything else in American life.
Because of their willingness
to riot, loot, and assault anyone they perceive to be insufficiently sympathetic to their cause, leftists are able
to bully ordinary people into submission. As a result, television shows such as "
Cops
" and
"
Live
PD
," classic films such as "Gone With the Wind," and iconic brands such as
Aunt
Jemima
,
Mrs.
Buttersworth
, and
Uncle
Ben's
rice are consigned to the "dustbin of history."
I used to speak frequently to nervous conservatives who were convinced that if we only allowed the left to tear
down Confederate war memorials, they would be satisfied. How quickly events have disproved that wishful thinking.
From Christopher
Columbus
,
George
Washington
,
Thomas
Jefferson
,
and the western
pioneers
,
activists are now coming after cartoon
sports
mascots
and college
fight
songs
.
Everything
--
from the core of our country's history to the values and norms undergirding American culture -- must be
uprooted to appease the mob.
They are tearing down dozens of statues and facing no consequences whatsoever for vandalizing our public spaces --
including memorials to our nation's greatest heroes. When private citizens try to do the job the government won't
and protect our culture, our history, and our public property from destruction, local officials step in and
remove
the
statues on behalf of the vandals, lest they injure themselves while imitating Iraqis celebrating the fall of
Saddam Hussein.
These people are not seeking change at the margins. They are demanding a total cultural revolution, and cowardly
public officials are giving it to them.
If you look at this national outpouring of hatred and
recrimination with horror verging on despair, I assure you that you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans
feel exactly the same way.
President Trump is doing exactly what an American president should do in a crisis like this. He is working to
maintain law and order and prevent cowed local officials from allowing political violence to flare again. He
issued an executive order to add to his legacy of reform and address legitimate concerns about law enforcement in
this country. He also issued a separate executive order targeting the systemic bias in Silicon Valley's censorship
offices, which has allowed our social media platforms to become echo chambers for left-wing extremism and "cancel
culture."
The only thing that could make the situation worse at this moment would be handing the White House to a doddering
and unprincipled establishment politician beholden to the "cancel culture" mob.
Presumptive Democratic
nominee Joe Biden would immediately delegate
de
facto
control over the vast justice, civil rights, and regulatory apparatus of the federal government to the
loudest voices in his coalition: the woke activist class.
At this moment, there is a veritable army of lawyers and bureaucrats who have spent the last three and a half
years subsisting on resentment and salivating at the prospect of regaining power.
Things are bad enough
now, but conditions will become much worse if the "cancel culture" born on social media is augmented with the
force of law and given the full attention of Biden appointees imbued with the sweeping powers of the federal
bureaucracy.
Dark forces have been unleashed in this country. Even now, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
If
we don't want to find out how much damage it can inflict on the ship of state, we must prevent those forces from
taking control of the federal government.
Delay
,
5 minutes ago
FTA: there is a veritable army
of lawyers and bureaucrats who have spent the last three and a half years subsisting on resentment and
salivating at the prospect of regaining power.
They are not merely subsisting, they have paid themselves well and have accumulated substantial tangible
wealth. Their homes are similar to oases in a desert of despair. The army of lawyers and bureaucrats
think they have all their problems under control by giving tax money to their black servants. The fact is
Latinos, Chinese, Moldovans and even their viziers say to themselves, "When you see an amazing
opportunity for looting, but you are not sure you can do it, just do it."
Secret Weapon
,
53 minutes ago
BLM/Antifa is a replay of Mao's Red guards. They revved up the college students and set them loose upon the
countryside. It worked in China. Will it work here? Second Amendment is the wild card in the deck. Funny
thing was, once Mao was done with the Red Guard, he had all of them executed. He did not trust them.
Blondefire
,
1 hour ago
The cancel culture is emboldened because they are, for the most part, getting away with it. They saw
Hillary's classified email debacle go unpunished, the Uranium One sale go unpunished, Fast and Furious go
unpunished, Benghazi go unpunished, the attempted coup go unpunished, and they realized they can
literally get away with anything. Now vandalism, theft, riot, arson and anarchy are not only unpunished
but glorified in the msm while police officers are being led away in handcuffs. Tomorrow is not the day to
regain control, Q isn't going to release some new documents next week and save us. We need to act today,
right now, with overwhelming force, against all enemies foreign and domestic.
We value diversity and respect for others, and we strive to avoid offending users, so we
don't allow ads or destinations that display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance,
discrimination, or violence.
Content
that incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group
on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran
status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is
associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization
Examples : Content promoting hate groups or hate group paraphernalia; content that
encourages others to believe that a person or group is inhuman, inferior, or worthy of
being hated
Content
that harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals
Example : Content that singles out someone for abuse or harassment; content that
suggests a tragic event did not happen, or that victims or their families are actors, or
complicit in a cover-up of the event.
Content
that threatens or advocates for physical or mental harm on oneself or others
Examples : Content advocating suicide, anorexia, or other self-harm; promoting or
advocating for harmful health or medical claims or practices; threatening someone with
real-life harm or calling for the attack of another person; promoting, glorifying, or
condoning violence against others; content made by or in support of terrorist groups, or
transnational drug trafficking organizations, or content that promotes terrorist acts,
including recruitment, or that celebrates attacks by transnational drug trafficking or
terrorist organizations.
Content
that seeks to exploit others
Examples : Extortion; blackmail; soliciting or promoting dowries
Promotions
containing violent language, gruesome or disgusting imagery, or graphic images or accounts of
physical trauma
Examples : Crime scene or accident photos, execution videos
Promotions
containing gratuitous portrayals of bodily fluids or waste
Examples : Blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste
Promotions
containing obscene or profane language
Examples : Swear or curse words, slurs relating to race or sexuality, variations and
misspellings of profane language
Note : If the official name of your product, website, or app includes profane language,
request a
review and provide details of the name. Think about the target audience for your
campaigns, and develop your keywords to fit the user's likely intent when searching.
Promotions
that are likely to shock or scare
Examples : Promotions that suggest you may be in danger, be infected with a disease, or
be the victim of a conspiracy
Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting[1]) is the act of blocking or partially blocking
a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.
By making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the
absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave
the site.
< More and more "resistance" type Twitteratti get shadowbanned, that is, their posts dont appear in the Twitter feed though they
are visible on their profiles. Find out if you are shadowbanned here:>
Until recently I didn't know the word "shadowbanning", but that was what happened to me several years ago. The managers of
the Indianapolis Star had given their forum to the tender care of a mix of Libertarians, rightwingnuts, and devoted followers
of the Holy Cesspool south of Syria. Gradually I realized nobody was responding to my posts, and only by accident did I learn
those posts were invisible to everybody else. Only when I was logged in could I see them myself.
So that's why I have gone cold turkey on the only Indianapolis newspaper. I'd recommend it only for folks whose parakeets need
a lining for the bottom of the bird's cage. Their editorial page works best for that application.
Yeah I first encountered the phenom during the last days of the 2014 Euromaidan while reposting info on Facebook about sniper
fire coming from opp held rooftops. I couldnt understand why interaction on the subject stopped until someone confirmed via the
chat that none of my posts with the word "Ukraine" appeared in the feed. They must've triggered FBs early filter algorithm. I
have since left the Ministry of Truth..
"... The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con. ..."
"... The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter. ..."
We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent public utilities available to all or
they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.
The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship
that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con.
This site got a taste of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship back in 2016 when a shadowy
fake-news site called PropOrNot aggregated every major alt-media site that had published anything remotely skeptical of the coronation
of Hillary Clinton as president and labeled us all shills for Russian propaganda.
Without any investigation of the perps running the site or their fake-news methodology, The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos' plaything)
saw fit to promote the fake-news on Page One as if it were journalistically legitimate. Why would a newspaper that supposedly values
the integrity of its content run with such shameless fake-news propaganda? Because it fit the Post's own political agenda and biases.
This is the essence of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship: sacrifice accepted journalistic
practice, free speech and transparency to promote an absurdly obvious political and social agenda.
If there was any real justice in America, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai should be wearing prison jumpsuits
for what Facebook and Google have done to American democracy. Both of these monopolies have manipulated news feeds, search results
and what individuals are shown in complete secret, with zero public oversight or transparency .
The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals
see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether
Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian
regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter.
What matters is that no one can possibly know how Facebook and Google have rigged their algorithms and to what purpose. The typical
corporation can buy political influence, but Facebook and Google are manipulating the machinery of democracy itself in three ways:
1. They are secretly censoring alternative media and skeptics of the status quo narratives.
2. They are selling data and ads to anyone interested in manipulating voters and public opinion.
3. They are providing data to the National Security organs of the state which can then use this data to compile dossiers on
"enemies of the people," i.e. skeptics and dissenters who question the "approved" context and narrative.
That's a much more dangerous type of power than buying political influence or manipulating public opinion by openly publishing
biased "commentary."
We all understand how America's traditional Corporate Media undermines democracy: recall how every time Bernie Sanders won a Democratic
primary in 2016, The New York Times and The Washington Post "reported" the news in small typeface in a sidebar, while every Hillary
Clinton primary win was trumpeted in large headlines at the top of page one.
But this sort of manipulation is visible; what Google and Facebook do is invisible. What their algorithms do is invisible, and
the shadow banning and other forms of invisible censorship cannot be easily traced.
A few of us can trace shadow banning because we have access to our site's server data. Please consider the data of Google searches
and direct links from Facebook to oftwominds.com from November 2016 and November 2018:
Nov. 2016: Google Searches: 36,779
Nov. 2016: links from Facebook: 9,888
Nov. 2018: Google Searches: 12,671
Nov. 2018: links from Facebook: 859
Oftwominds.com has been around since 2005 and consistently draws around 250,000 page views monthly (via oftwominds.com and my
mirror site on blogspot, which is owned/operated by Google. Interestingly, traffic to that site has been less affected by shadow
banning ; Coincidence? You decide....).
Given the consistency of my visitor traffic over the years, it's "interesting" how drastically the site's traffic with Google
and Facebook has declined in a mere two years. How is this shadow banning not Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship? It's
akin to China's Orwellian Social Credit system but for private profit .
It wouldn't surprise me to find my photo airbrushed out of group photos on Facebook and Google just as the Soviet propaganda organs
did when someone fell out of favor in the 1930s.
Fortunately, oftwominds.com isn't dependent on Facebook or Google for its traffic; other content creators who were skeptical of
RussiaGate are not so fortunate. One of the implicit goals of shadow banning and filters is to destroy the income of dissenting sites
without the content creators knowing why their income plummeted.
Strip dissenters of their income and you strip them of the ability to dissent. Yea for "free speech" controlled by for-profit
monopolies!
Where's the "level playing field" of free speech? As long as Facebook and Google are free to censor and filter in secret, there
is no free speech in America. All we have is a simulacrum of free speech in which parroting "approved" narratives is promoted and
dissent is censored/banned--but without anyone noticing or even being able to tell what's been filtered, censored or banned.
So when are we going to tackle privately held monopolies which are selling user data to the highest bidder, obliterating free
speech in secret and manipulating news feeds and search to promote hidden agendas? I've argued (see links below) that the solution
is very simple:
1. Regulate Facebook and Google as public utilities. Ban them from collecting and selling user data to anyone, including federal
agencies.
2. Allow a modest profit to each firm via display adverts that are shown equally to every user.
3. Require any and all search/content filters and algorithms be made public, i.e. published daily.
4. Any executive or employee of these corporations who violates these statutes will face criminal felony charges and be exposed
to civil liability lawsuits from users or content providers who were shadow-banned or their right to free speech was proscribed
or limited by filters or algorithms.
There is no intrinsic right for privately held corporations to establish monopolies that can manipulate and filter free speech
in secret to maximize profits and secret influence. We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated
transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.
I recently addressed these invisible (but oh-so profitable) mechanisms in a series of essays:
"... Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page didn't get board approval when he awarded a $150 million stock grant to Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software who was under investigation by the company for sexual harassment at the time, according to a lawsuit. ..."
"... The new allegations shed light on Page's power to compensate top executives and could add fuel to criticism that the company's board isn't strong enough to keep management accountable to shareholders. ..."
"... Alphabet initially required shareholders' lawyers to conceal information in the complaint about the $150 million stock award to Rubin, on grounds it was confidential, according to Renne. Alphabet then rescinded its demand. Google declined to comment on that decision. ..."
Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer
Larry Page didn't get board approval when he awarded
a $150 million stock grant to Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software who was under investigation by the company for
sexual harassment at the time, according to a lawsuit.
Page later got "rubber stamp" approval for the equity compensation package from a board leadership committee eight days after
he granted it in August 2014, according to a revised investor complaint made public on Monday in California state court in San Jose.
Rubin used the grant as "leverage" to secure a $90 million severance agreement when he left the company almost three months later,
according to the complaint.
The new allegations shed light on Page's power to compensate top executives and could add fuel to criticism that the company's
board isn't strong enough to keep management accountable to shareholders. It could also pull Page deeper into the controversy around
how Google has handled sexual harassment complaints. The Alphabet co-founder has generally stayed behind the scenes, while Google
CEO Sundar Pichai has been left to deal with criticism of the company's culture.
Investors claim the board failed in its duties by allowing harassment to occur, approving big payouts and keeping the details
private. The complaint targets the company's top executives and committee members, including co-founder
Sergey Brin , venture capitalist John Doerr, investor
Ram Shriram and Alphabet Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, among others.
"It's confirmation of the fact that there were these large payouts" to Google executives and that the company's "own internal
investigation had shown there was misconduct and harassment," Louise Renne, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monday by phone.
"Nonetheless, rather than being just being terminated, they were terminated with hefty reimbursement and gifts," Renne said.
A lawyer for Rubin said the complaint mischaracterizes his departure from Google.
"Andy acknowledges having had a consensual relationship with a Google employee," attorney Ellen Stross said in an email. "However,
Andy strongly denies any misconduct, and we look forward to telling his story in court."
The $90 million severance package was first detailed by the New York Times in October 2018, and sparked a
firestorm of criticism from both inside and outside the company. Soon after, thousands of Google employees walked out to protest
how the company handles sexual harassment complaints. Since then, Google has changed its policies, including ending the practice
of barring employees from suing the company and shunting them into private arbitration. People fired for sexual harassment haven't
gotten severance payments in the past two years, Google has said.
"There are serious consequences for anyone who behaves inappropriately at Google," a spokeswoman for Google said in an emailed
statement. "In recent years, we've made many changes to our workplace and taken an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct
by people in positions of authority."
Alphabet initially required shareholders' lawyers to conceal information in the complaint about the $150 million stock award to
Rubin, on grounds it was confidential, according to Renne. Alphabet then rescinded its demand. Google declined to comment on that
decision.
"My hope is this is a step toward transparency," Renne said, referring to Alphabet's decision to not fight the information being
unsealed. "The reason we brought this shareholder lawsuit was to have some transparency governing corporate affairs, as well as the
behavior being completely inappropriate conduct toward women," she said.
One allegation unsealed Monday is that Amit Singhal, a top Google executive who left the company in 2016, was allowed to resign
after accusations that he sexually harassed a female employee were found credible and he was given an exit package worth between
$35 million and $45 million. Singhal would go on to work for Uber Technologies Inc., but
resigned from the ride-hailing company after Recode
reported that he hadn't told Uber
about the reasons he left Google. Singhal, who has denied the harassment claims, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Martin v. Page, 19-cv-343672, California Superior Court, Santa Clara County (San Jose).
Asked whether they have confidence in CEO Sundar Pichai and his management team to
"effectively lead in the future," 74 percent of employees responded "positive," as opposed to
"neutral" or "negative," in late 2018, down from 92 percent "positive" the year before. The
18-point drop left employee confidence at its lowest point in at least six years. The results
of the survey, known internally as Googlegeist, also showed a decline in employees'
satisfaction with their compensation, with 54 percent saying they were satisfied, compared with
64 percent the prior year.
The drop in employee sentiment helps explain why internal debate around compensation, pay
equity, and trust in executives has heated up in recent weeks -- and why an HR presentation
from 2016 went viral inside the company three years later.
The presentation, first reported by Bloomberg and
reviewed by WIRED, dates from July 2016, about a year after Google started an internal effort
to curb
spending . In the slide deck, Google's human-resources department presents potential ways
to cut the company's $20 billion compensation budget. Ideas include: promoting fewer people,
hiring proportionately more low-level employees, and conducting an audit to make sure Google is
paying benefits "(only) for the right people." In some cases, HR suggested ways to implement
changes while drawing little attention, or tips on how to sell the changes to Google employees.
Some of the suggestions were implemented, like eliminating the annual employee holiday gift;
most were not.
Another, more radical proposal floated inside the company around the same time didn't appear
in the deck. That suggested converting some full-time employees to contractors to save money. A
person familiar with the situation said this proposal was not implemented. In July,
Bloomberg
reported that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of Google's workforce were temps,
contractors, and vendors.
(techcrunch.com)
78
BeauHD
on Monday October 15, 2018 @06:00PM
from the
interesting-narrative
dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:
Morgan Knutson, a UI designer who seven years ago,
spent eight months at Google working on its recently shuttered social networking product Google+ and who, in
light of the shutdown, decided to
share on Twitter
his personal experience with
how "awful the project and exec team was
." It's a fairly long read, but among his most notable complaints
is that former Google SVP Vic Gundotra, who oversaw Google+, ruled by fear and never bothered to talk with
Knutson, whose desk was "directly next to Vic's glass-walled office. He would walk by my desk dozens of times
during the day. He could see my screen from his desk. During the 8 months I was there, culminating in me
leading the redesign of his product, Vic didn't say a word to me. No hello. No goodbye, or thanks for staying
late. No handshake. No eye contact."
He also says Gundotra essentially bribed other teams within Google to incorporate Google+'s features into their
products by promising them handsome financial rewards for doing so atop their yearly bonuses. "You read that
correctly, "tweeted Knutson. "A f*ck ton of money to ruin the product you were building with bloated garbage
that no one wanted." Gundotra is today the cofounder and CEO of
AliveCor
,
maker of a
device
that captures a "medical grade"
E.K.G. within 30 seconds; AliveCor has gone on to raise $30 million from investors, including the Mayo Clinic.
Asked about Knutson's characterization of him, Gundotra suggested the rant was "absurd" but otherwise declined
to comment.
Knutson goes on to paint "a picture of a political, haphazard, wasteful and ultimately
disappointing division where it was never quite clear who should be working on what or why," reports
TechCrunch.
Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise
More
|
Reply
Login
Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise
Comments
Filter:
All
Insightful
Informative
Interesting
Funny
›
former Google SVP Vic Gundotra, who oversaw Google+
While running Goog+, Mr. Gundrota implemented a policy of requiring everyone to use their
"real name". Funny thing about that. Mr. Gundrota's real name is not Vic. Like many Indians
who come to the U.S., he adopted a more "American" first name. So, the guy demanding that
you you must use your real name, is using a fake name.
But wait, the lulz are just getting started.
Goog+ AUTOMATICALLY got linked to your G-Mail, YouTube, Goog Docs, everything.
So if, for some reason, Goog thought you were using a fake name (all hail the Mighty
Algorithm) -- because of your Youtube name, or because you have an "obviously fake" name
like
Jake Butt
[wikipedia.org]-- your Goog+ account got permanently suspended. With the
standard Google appeal / recourse of "fuck you, no humans here".
This also took out your G-Mail account (and all your mail), and your YouTube account, and
your Goog Docs...
Anyone who was even mildly curious about Goog+ dropped it like a toxic hotshit and never
looked back.
I myself actively avoided it for this very reason - why risk my google account when there
were reports of it being disabled for no good reason and no room for appeal with the only
benefit of using a nascent social media platform?
Yup, it was Google's real name policy and their policy of neutron bomb non-recourse to
any errors on their side that caused me never even to consider learning the first thing
about Google+.
And this from a position where I figure Google was already 100% under my
personal privacy kimono, so I estimated my exposure to marginal privacy loss at close to
zero. (For every other social media service, I either block cookies entirely, or use the
service on a thin, sporadic basis at most.) So basically, Google+ was t
I copied my misspelling from an AC post I was replying too, who managed
not
to
copy it correctly from a previous post where he had actually already quoted the
correct spelling. It's properly Vic Gundotra.
Just what is it about AC that shaves
off 30 IQ points, as a general starting point?
He would have been more at home at Facebook. He
was basically just trying to build another Facebook.
It's sad because it was so much wasted potential. The concept of circles for
sharing your posts was excellent. You had a lot more control over your feed and
content than Facebook got you. But they managed to screw it up.
Goog+ AUTOMATICALLY got linked to your G-Mail, YouTube, Goog Docs, everything.
This is because Google+ was actually two different things: A unified Google login and
a social media network. I'm told that people at Google had been thinking about the idea
of a single login to all Google products for a while, so when the social media thing got
started, it became that single login, too. People (quite reasonably) misinterpreted it as
an attempt to force them into using Google+, but it was really a separate thing. I think
if the notion of a unified Google login had been pitched a year or
The real-name policy is what drove many of the people I know off the platform.
The
policy basically made G+ another Facebook; if that's the case, why not use use Facebook?
Some of us don't like using our real names online, for a variety of reasons. I think
even my reason, that I just like using a different name, is perfectly valid. Anyone can
find my real name if they really want to. But it was the principle. Others used
pseudonyms because they didn't feel safe using their real names online. For those people,
Lack of pages for businesses and celebrities at the initial roll-out was a significant
factor. It would have been better to delay the launch and have everything ready at the
start.
I dunno, but there were a lot of people furious about that. Possibly they were self
important and wondered why they weren't allowed on. But this is standard procedure for
many new products - roll them out slowly, try it out in a beta test, etc.
The thing I
hated was linking it to other Google services. I liked Google+, but then one day I found
out I had a Youtube account that I did not want and could not get rid of. Even today
Youtube automatically logs me in if I am logged in to Google+.
I feel like the next hundred comments could each mention a different issue that played
"a role" in google+'s demise.
I'll start: Invite-only rollout.
Yep. Being feature-incomplete compared to Facebook at the time didn't help either. It was
essentially Twitter with screwy privacy settings and a crappy UI.
That's a good question but I suspect the answer is "never" and the real story hidden beneath
this facade of incompetence is whatever crimes Gundotra was committing that he was afraid
this guy would find out about if he got involved too much in decision making.
This guy might be right, but he's also a huge narcissist. This guy thinks he shits gold
He's a designer, it kind of comes with the territory, necessarily - if you don't believe
in your designs you're not really putting your effort into it.
It has been widely reported for at least a couple of weeks at least that Google is pulling
the plug on Google +. I don't know how long the grace period will be, but you might want to
prepare yourself for it going away soon.
You know, when I worked in the industry back in the day (late 70' through the 80's) it
wasn't so toxic. But then, we didn't really have UI/UX designers
:-)
I hate to second guess people in bad situations, but from my reading through his few hundred
tweets earlier today I would say a few points jumped out to me as him doing the wrong thing at
the time:
1) Should not have agreed to design review meeting the next morning. If a deadline
is totally unrealistic, don't agree to it man. Tell them you need to delay It by whatever makes
sense. If they hate you already they will not hate you any more or less because you push back.
2) When report of grandmother dying comes in, drop everything and send a message out noting
you need a reschedule and why. If they say no, well wouldn't it be great to go to HR with a
complaint that a manager would not let you attend to a dying nana? Regardless urgent family
matters ALWAYS come first for anyone you care about.
3) When meeting was called off the next morning do not whine about that to whoever. Just
roll with it. It would have been irrelevant anyway if the first two points I made had been
followed. As it was it led to an HR complaint and since it made you look weak the people that
hated him tried to take advantage and treated him even worse after.
4) If you are put under a manager you know "will not end well", GET OUT ASAP. Maybe finish
up some important task you have but start figuring out your exit immediately, because you will
be exiting anyway and better to do it while you have endured minimal stress.
Again, I know I was not in the situation at the time, but there is no situation I've ever
been in where point 1 or 2 could not be followed all the time without repercussion. You should
always always push back on very unreasonable things and not just pretend you can meet them,
even if sometimes you can. Anyone worth working for can understand reasonable pushback, so if
they can't you needed a new job anyway.
How about a snap or reality. Alphabet aka Google, got caught with the grubby little fingers
in the Democracy cookie jar, trying to bake election results by tainting searching, to
generate their preferred flavour of corruption cookie. This put people off social mediaering
with Google, simply tainted their brand as a pack of shit stains corrupting society. Now add
in their fuckery with YouTube and well, didn't Google finnaly realise they are the people's
bitch and not the other way around but Google+ is dead
Yup. Reading through his story, it really seems like he put quite a lot on himself that he
did not need to.
I generally don't doubt him at all about the shitty people he interacted
with, but it really sounds like he sort of shot himself in the foot a number of times.
There's no reason why he should have felt obligated to listen to his crappy manager's
statement on not bothering to come back to work, for example. I'm pretty sure he could have
pushed back on that and won without too much difficulty. It's ve
I like Google+. I felt they really botched the roll-out when they had lots of excitement, but
didn't have features for businesses and such. They had one shot at taking out Facebook, and
they completely messed it up. I don't see anyone else having enough credibility to convince
people to move to another platform, no matter how better it may be.
They have gone through the transition from a small, cool, outwardly facing start up to a huge
bureaucratic, inwardly facing monster. Happens to all successful companies.
The Damore memo
incident is a good indicator of this. Not because I care about Damore but because it gave a
rare insight into the thinking and priorities of Google's CEO.
Alphabet was a good idea as a way to try to escape it. Not sure whether it will succeed.
My own company is going through this right now, having been bought by an investment
firm a couple years ago.
I handed in my notice the day my old boss announced the company had been sold to an
investment firm.
Most of the people I worked with were gone within a year, and the doors closed about a
year after that. I am pretty easy going, but I won't work for an investment company, or
an accountant.
So you're telling me...a company with the resources of Alphabet/Google were unable to put
together a viable social platform but
Second Life
[secondlife.com] is still a thing?
"... I used the Chrome browser for about seven years. It's a great browser -- fast, snappy, good looking, responsive. Unfortunately, it's controlled by Google, an organization that can no longer be trusted. ..."
"... I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem. Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it. ..."
IE 9 was the first non sucky IE browser and MS was forced to follow webstandards all thinks to Chrome's marketshare (...)
All they know is Firefox was slow, and their worksites looked funny which is why it never took more than 15% marketshare.
What a load of bullshit history revisionism being modded up by moderators sucking Google's cock. Firefox peaked at
well over 30% [statcounter.com],
people were leaving IE in droves taking it from 95%+ to the low 60s before Chrome even existed. Mozilla and Firefox did all the hard
work of getting sites to work in something other than IE6 and the decline continued even though Microsoft much improved standards
compliance in IE7 and IE8. Yes, Chrome was good but it came long after writing MS specific HTML/CSS was dead.
which is why Google left Gecko
That never happened, Google chose Webkit from the very beginning. Perhaps because they found it better in the first place, but
it's not like they built something around Gecko and then abandoned it. Don't get me wrong, Chrome was a good product that took users
from Firefox and sent IE from a decline into a free fall. But it was way too late to the party to get any credit for breaking IE's
monopoly and forcing Microsoft into standards compliance. Except for all the money Google funneled into Mozilla in return for search
results of course, but Chrome basically walked in open doors Firefox had already knocked down.
I used the Chrome browser for about seven years. It's a great browser -- fast, snappy, good looking, responsive. Unfortunately,
it's controlled by Google, an organization that can no longer be trusted.
This sent me back into the welcoming arms of Firefox
(and yes, my search engine is DuckDuckGo).
We're talking about chromium, and the fact that it in fact does not use system hardware or software decoders. And with semi-recent
changes Google made to chomium code, you can no longer just drop in the decoders into appropriate folder to make it work. ›
Webkit was a much needed improvement. Also IE 6 websites still dominated many many years after 2000 in 2007/2008 when the first
iPhone came out.
Webkit was better and designed to be abstract and multi-platform unlike gecko which was why Chrome switched from gecko to webkit
while it was still in alpha. Without Chrome and mobile app support IE 6 would still be here. I was one of those Firefox rebels
but it was a geek thing 10 years ago. If I recall it had just 10 to 15% of the market and I had to keep IE around for some websites.
Grandma would see this site not render in Firefox and blame the browser and go back to IE which made webdevelopers scream in
frustration.
Though webkit and it's blink cousin are default in all devices and platforms I think it's a good thing we the web returned
to where it should be and is now an open standard. Thanks Google, Apple, and the Konqueror project for making this possible.
KHTML was chosen as the basis for WebKit due to being lightweight (140k LoC). After Apple seized control the number of lines
of code quickly grew to 14 million (!) This was expected to be better than if Microsoft got control of the project (NaN LoC estimate).
I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem. Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it.
I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem.
Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it.
LOL....LOL....LOL
Apparently you don't understand where Mozilla gets all their money.
Almost 100% of Mozilla's revenue (currently about $350 Million a year) comes from . . . . . . . GOOGLE!
And Mozilla is just as "neoliberal fascist" as Google. (Forced their CEO to resign because he gave some money to a political
campaign they don't like).
Dumbed down anti-user interface. Arrogant background processes that spawn countless instances and take over your computer.
Drive-by unwanted trojan installs as Google greases the palms of every freeware dev to sneak a Chrome install into their app installer.
But worst of all now are the "Only works in Chrome" websites:
Tell that to my RAM usage monitor. I finally had enough headaches with Chrome's memory usage that I gave Firefox a fair shot
for several weeks (I gave up due to a thousand small lacks of attention to detail), and now am giving Safari a fair shot for a
few weeks.
At this point, I plan to stay with Safari. Though it isn't as full-featured, the current version feels snappier, uses less
memory, and does enough of the stuff that I care about to have won me over from Chrome. ›
Just a genera advice from a native Russian speaker, i still suggest you first trying
dedicated language-specialized engine like ProMT/Stylus (my link of www.translate.ru) before
stohastic engines like Google/Bing
The latter have much better vocabularies but are deaf on nuances and are affected by
holywars on hot topics (to the extend of calling white black), so they better serve to clear
places that dedicated engine failed at.
Granted, the dry official style of diplomatic notes is perhaps not one where the nuancing of
live language matters. It is also funny how both engines failed at legalese "Case of Teh
Skripals", though in different ways.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Questions of the Russian Side to France on the "business by Skripalya" fabricated by Great
Britain against Russia
618-31-03-2018
On March 31 the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Paris sent to foreign policy department
of France a note with the list of questions to the French party on the "business by Skripalya"
fabricated against Russia:
1. On what basis France was involved in technical cooperation in investigation of incident by
Great Britain in Salisbury?
2. Whether France sent the formal notice to OPCW on connection to technical cooperation in
investigation of incident in Salisbury?
3. What proofs were transferred to France by Great Britain within rendering technical
cooperation?
4. Whether there were French experts at a biomaterial intake at Sergey and Yulia Skripaley?
5. Whether research by the French experts of biomaterials of Sergey and Yulia Skripaley, if
yes, that in what laboratory was conducted?
6. On the basis of what signs the French experts drew a conclusion on use of fighting toxic
agent like "Beginner" (on the British terminology) or its analogs?
7. What expert knowledge France in the field of studying of fighting toxic agents of this type
or its analogs has?
8. On the basis of what signs (markers) the French experts established "the Russian character"
of an origin of the substance applied in Salisbury?
9. Whether there are for France control approved samples of fighting Beginner toxic agent (on
the British terminology) or its analogs?
10. Whether samples of fighting toxic agent of this type or its analogs in France, if yes, that
in what purposes were developed?
skripki is the Russian word for violin, it has plural form
It is a bit of mystery why "of Skripals" = Skripalyev was deconstructed as the same as "of
violins" = skripok. However, Google translate has the following method: remove grammatical
endings and what remains, translate verbatim, if multiple possibilities exist, pick one at
random. If everything fails, leave a word untranslated. This leads to such feats of
translatory:
Bishops flood blood about their expensive fury
In the original, "flood" is a verb, 3rd person singular, present tense, so it has to be
bloods that flood, not the bishops who are many. Bloods flood someone = that someone is very
irritated. So bishops were very irritated, and the reason was "expensive fury". Fury
(pronounced foo-ry) is plural of fura, a horse driven cart for transporting bulky stuff, say,
hay, but in popular slang it means a car, the topic of an article with cited title was a
reaction of higher clergy to papal order not to use luxury vehicles. For some reason Google
did not find the word in its dictionary. Last comment: "their" was a lucky guess by Google,
because the original is randomly translated as her, his, mine, their, our, yours -- what it
really means is belonging to the subject.
Those companies are way too connected with intelligence agencies (some of then are
essentially an extension of intelligence agencies) and as such they will be saved in any case.
That means that chances that it will be dot com bubble burst No.2 exist. but how high they are is
unclear.
Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems
too. Should the world's top tech firms be worried?
rump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is
short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is
turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.
Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling
Read more
The past two weeks have been difficult for the tech sector by every measure. Tech stocks
have largely driven the year's stock market decline, the largest quarterly drop since 2015.
Facebook saw more than $50bn shaved off its value after the Observer revealed that Cambridge
Analytica had harvested millions of people's user data for political profiling. Now users are
deleting accounts, and regulators may seek to limit how the company monetizes data, threatening
Facebook's business model.
On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it was investigating the company's data
practices. Additionally, Facebook said it would send a top executive to London to appear in
front of UK lawmakers, but it would not send the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is
increasingly seen as isolated and aloof.
Shares of Facebook have declined more than 17% from the close on Friday 16 March to the
close on Thursday before the Easter break.
Amazon, meanwhile, long the target of President Trump's ire, saw more than $30bn, or 5%,
shaved off its $693bn market capitalization after it was reported that the president was
"obsessed" with the company and that he "wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after
Amazon with antitrust or competition law".
Shares of Apple, and Google's parent company Alphabet, are also down, dropping on concerns
that tech firms now face tighter regulation across the board.
For Apple, there's an additional concern that following poor sales of its $1,000 iPhone X.
For Google, there's the prospect not only of tighter regulation on how it sells user date to
advertisers, but also the fear of losing an important Android software patent case with the
Oracle.
Big tech's critics may be forgiven a moment of schadenfreude. But for shareholders and
pension plans, the tarnishing of tech could have serious consequences.
Apple, Amazon and Alphabet make up 10% of the S&P 500 with a combined market
capitalization market cap of $2.3tn. Add Microsoft and Facebook, with a combined market value
of $1.1tn, and the big five make up 15% of the index.
Overall, technology makes up 25% of the S&P. If tech pops, the thinking goes, so pops
the market.
"We're one week into a sell-off after a multi-year run-up," says Eric Kuby of North Star
Investment Management. "The big picture is that over the past five years a group of mega cap
tech stocks like Nvidia, Netflix, Facebook have gone up anywhere from 260% to 1,800%."
The post office is a service for citizens. It operates at a loss. Being able to send a letter
across the country in two days for fifty cents is a service our government provides. Amazon
is abusing that service. It's whole business model requires government support.
Amazon's spending power is garnered simply from its massively overalued stock price. If that
falls, down goes Amazon. Facebook is entirely dependent on the postive opinion of active
users. If users stop using, down goes Facebook's stock price, and so goes the company. It's
extremely fragile. Apple has a short product cycle. If people lose interest in its newest
versions, its stock price can tank in one year or so. Google and Microsoft seem quite solid,
but are likely overvalued. (Tesla will most likwly go bankrupt, along with many others.) If
these stocks continue to lose value, rwtirement funds will get scary, and we could enter
recession again almost immediately. Since companies such as Amazon have already degraded the
eatablished infrastructure of the economy, there may be no actual recovery. We will need to
change drastically in some way. It seems that thw wheels are already turning, and this is
where we are going now - with Trump as our leader.
'Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley said: "We do not think attacking Amazon will be
popular."'
Lloyd Walmsley hasn't spent much time in Seattle, apparently. The activities of Amazon and
Google (but especially Amazon) have all contributed to traffic problems, rising rents and
property prices, and gentrification (among other things) that are all making Seattle a less
affordable, less attractive place to live. That's why Amazon is looking to establish a
'second headquarters' in another city: they've upset too many people here to be able to
expand further in this area without at least encountering significant resistance. People here
used to refer to Microsoft as 'the evil empire'; now we use it to refer to Amazon. And when
it comes to their original business, books, I and most people I know actively avoid buying
from Amazon, choosing instead to shop at the area's many independent book stores.
Dear Guardian,
why do you still sport the FB, Twitter, Google+, Instagramm, Pinterest etc. buttons below
every single article? Why do you have to do their dirty work? I don't do that on my webpages,
you don't need to do neither. Please stop it.
Not being a Trump supporter, however there is a lot of sense in some of the comments coming
from Trump,. Whether he carries through with them , is another subject.
His comment on Amazon:- " Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state or local
governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US)
and putting many thousands of retailers out of business."
Who can argue against that? Furthermore, the retailers would have paid some
tax!
Talk about elephants in the room. What about the elephants who were let out of the room
to run amuck ? Should it not have been the case of being wise before the event , rather than
after the event?
A quasi-battle of the billionaires. With Bezos, there's the immediate political element in
Bezos' ownership of the clearly anti-Trump Washington Post, which has gone so far as to
become lax in editorial oversight (eg, misspelling and even occasional incomplete articles
published in an obvious rush to be first to trash POTUS), but there are other issues.
Amazon's impact on physical retail is well-documented, and not so long ago (ie, before Trump
"attacked" Amazon"), it was sometimes lamented by those on the American left, and Trump is
correct in that critique, provided one believes it is valid in the first place. Amazon does
have a lot of data on its customers, including immense expenditure information on huge
numbers of people. What kinds of constraints are there in place to protect this data, aside
from lawyer-enriching class action suits? Beyond that, there's also online defense
procurement, worth hundreds of billions in revenue to Amazon in the years to come, that was
included in the modified NDAA last year. Maybe that is on Trump's mind, maybe not, but it
should probably be on everyone's mind. Maybe the Sherman Antitrust Act needs to be
reinvigorated. It would seem that even Trump's foes should be willing to admit that he gets
some things right, but that now seems unacceptable. I mean, look at the almost knee-jerk
defense of NAFTA, which way back when used to be criticized by Democrats and unions, but now
must be lionized.
If Amazon can get cheaper shipping than anyone else and enable manufactuers to sell direct,
they can sell more than anyone else as long as consumers only buy according to total price.
This means two things. One, all retailers as well as distributors may be put out of business.
Two, the success of Amazon may rely almost entirely on shipping costs. American consumers
also will need to forego the shopping experience, but if they may do so if they're sarisfied
with remaining in their residences, workplaces, and cars most of the time. This is the case
in many places. People visit Starbucks drive thrus and eat and drink in their cars. If Amazon
owns the food stores such as Whole Foods and Starbucks, it's a done deal. Except for one
thing. If this happens, the economy will collapse. That may have already happened. Bezos is
no rocket scientist.
(qz.com)BeauHD on Saturday February 10, 2018
@09:54PM from the fallacy-of-merit dept. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report
written by Scott E. Page, who explains why
hiring the "best" people produces the least creative results : The burgeoning of teams
-- most academic research is now done in teams, as is most investing and even most songwriting
(at least for the good songs) -- tracks the growing complexity of our world. We used to build
roads from A to B. Now we construct transportation infrastructure with environmental, social,
economic, and political impacts. The complexity of modern problems often precludes any one
person from fully understanding them. The multidimensional or layered character of complex
problems also undermines the principle of meritocracy: The idea that the "best person" should
be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a
biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire
the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance
criteria. Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring
diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills. That team would more likely than not
include mathematicians (though not logicians such as Griffeath). And the mathematicians would
likely study dynamical systems and differential equations.
Believers in a meritocracy might grant that teams ought to be diverse but then argue that
meritocratic principles should apply within each category. Thus the team should consist of the
"best" mathematicians, the "best" oncologists, and the "best" biostatisticians from within the
pool. That position suffers from a similar flaw. Even with a knowledge domain, no test or
criteria applied to individuals will produce the best team. Each of these domains possesses
such depth and breadth, that no test can exist. When building a forest, you do not select the
best trees as they tend to make similar classifications. You want diversity. Programmers
achieve that diversity by training each tree on different data, a technique known as bagging.
They also boost the forest 'cognitively' by training trees on the hardest cases -- those that
the current forest gets wrong. This ensures even more diversity and accurate forests.
Levine's investigative reporting on the connection between the Silicon Valley tech giants and the military-intelligence community
has been
praised
by high-level
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and many others. [See my interviews of Drake here:
"Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing
drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google's involvement."
--
Gizmodo / March
6, 2018
Gizmodo's report on Google's work for the Pentagon has been making headlines all day. It's also thrown the normally placid halls
of Google's Mountain View HQ into chaos. Seems that Googlers can't believe that their awesome company would get involved in something
as heinous as helping the Pentagon increase its drone targeting capability.
But the fact that Google helps the military build more efficient systems of surveillance and death shouldn't be surprising, especially
not to Google employees. The truth is that Google has spent the last 15 years selling souped-up versions of its information technology
to military and intelligence agencies, local police departments, and military contractors of all size and specialization -- including
outfits that sell predictive policing tech deployed in cities across America today.
As I outline in my book
Surveillance Valley
, it started in 2003 with customized Google search solutions for data hosted by the CIA and NSA. The company's military contracting
work then began to expand in a major way after 2004, when Google cofounder Sergey Brin pushed for buying Keyhole, a mapping startup
backed by the CIA and the NGA, a sister agency to the NSA that handles spy satellite intelligence.
Spooks loved Keyhole because of the "video game-like" simplicity of its virtual maps. They also appreciated the ability to layer
visual information over other intelligence. The sky was the limit. Troop movements, weapons caches, real-time weather and ocean conditions,
intercepted emails and phone call intel, cell phone locations -- whatever intel you had with a physical location could be thrown
onto a map and visualized. Keyhole gave an intelligence analyst, a commander in the field, or an air force pilot up in the air the
kind of capability that we now take for granted: using digital mapping services on our computers and mobile phones to look up restaurants,
cafes, museums, traffic conditions, and subway routes. "We could do these mashups and expose existing legacy data sources in a matter
of hours, rather than weeks, months, or years," an NGA official gushed about Keyhole -- the company that we now know as Google Earth.
Military commanders weren't the only ones who liked Keyhole's ability to mash up data. So did Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
The purchase of Keyhole was a major milestone for Google, marking the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing
Internet company and began integrating with the US government. While Google's public relations team did its best to keep the company
wrapped in a false aura of geeky altruism, company executives pursued an aggressive strategy to become the Lockheed Martin of the
Internet Age. "We're functionally more than tripling the team each year," a Google exec who ran Google Federal, the company's military
sales division, said in 2008.
It was true. With insiders plying their trade, Google's expansion into the world of military and intelligence contracting took
off.
"In 2007, it partnered with Lockheed Martin to design a visual intelligence system for the NGA that displayed US military
bases in Iraq and marked out Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad -- important information for a region that had experienced
a bloody sectarian insurgency and ethnic cleansing campaign between the two groups."
"In 2008, Google won a contract to run the servers and search technology that powered the CIA's Intellipedia, an intelligence
database modeled after Wikipedia that was collaboratively edited by the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other federal agencies."
"In 2010, as a sign of just how deeply Google had integrated with US intelligence agencies, it won a no-bid exclusive $27
million contract to provide the NGA with "geospatial visualization services," effectively making the Internet giant the "eyes"
of America's defense and intelligence apparatus."
"In 2008, Google entered into a three-way partnership with the NGA and a quasi-government company called GeoEye to launch
a spy satellite called GeoEye-1. The new satellite, which was funded in large part by the NGA, delivered extremely high-resolution
images for the exclusive use of NGA and Google."
A few years ago it started working with PredPol, a California-based predictive policing startup. "PredPol did more than simply
license Google's technology to render the mapping sys- tem embedded in its product but also worked with Google to develop customized
functionality, including 'building additional bells and whistles and even additional tools for law enforcement.'"
More from the book:
"Google has been tightlipped about the details and scope of its contracting business. It does not list this revenue in a separate
column in quarterly earnings reports to investors, nor does it provide the sum to reporters. But an analysis of the federal contracting
database maintained by the US government, combined with information gleaned from Freedom of Information Act requests and published
periodic reports on the company's military work, reveals that Google has been doing brisk business selling Google Search, Google
Earth, and Google Enterprise (now known as G Suite) products to just about every major military and intelligence agency: navy,
army, air force, Coast Guard, DARPA, NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, NGA, and the State Department. Sometimes Google sells directly to the
government, but it also works with established contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and SAIC (Science
Applications International Corporation), a California-based intelligence mega-contractor that has so many former NSA employees
working for it that it is known in the business as 'NSA West.'"
"... I use Bing and only resort to google for difficult searches, say 7% of the time. Also using the trackmenot extension which keeps bing and google from tracking your searches. ..."
"... I use DDG for regular searches myself since several years; it's usually good enough not to bother with the Goolag. ..."
I use Bing and only resort to google for difficult searches, say 7% of the time. Also using
the trackmenot extension which keeps bing and google from tracking your searches.
On a Google search for only "Unz" I get clean and untainted results. No warnings or
cautions from ADL or anyone else.
Perhaps the problem is that if DuckDuckGo becomes the next Google, ADL, Soros, & their
friends will go after DuckDuckGo for promoting "hate speech". To keep away SJWs, DuckDuckGo
would resort to similar measures.
We shouldn't forget at one time Twitter was the "free speech wing of the free speech
party." Today, after "abuse" allegations, it has "trust & safety council".
Progressivism is like a virus. It is attracted to healthy organizations & networks and
forces them to act according to progressive values.
"... The initiative described in this article reminds me of how the World Bank pushed hard for emerging economies to develop capital markets, for the greater good of America's investment bankers. ..."
"... By Burcu Kilic, an expert on legal, economic and political issues. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... Today, the big tech race is for data extractivism from those yet to be 'connected' in the world – tech companies will use all their power to achieve a global regime in which small nations cannot regulate either data extraction or localisation. ..."
"... One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants. ..."
"... Out of idle curiosity, how could you accurately deduce my country of origin from my name? ..."
December 14, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Notice that Costa
Rica is served up as an example in this article. Way back in 1997, American Express had
designated Costa Rica as one of the countries it identified as sufficiently high income so as
to be a target for a local currency card offered via a franchise agreement with a domestic
institution (often but not always a bank). 20 years later, the Switzerland of Central America
still has limited Internet connectivity, yet is precisely the sort of place that tech titans
like Google would like to dominate.
The initiative described in this article reminds me of how the World Bank pushed hard
for emerging economies to develop capital markets, for the greater good of America's investment
bankers.
By Burcu Kilic, an expert on legal, economic and political issues. Originally published
at
openDemocracy
Today, the big tech race is for data extractivism from those yet to be 'connected' in
the world – tech companies will use all their power to achieve a global regime in which
small nations cannot regulate either data extraction or localisation.
To avoid a 'failure ministerial," some countries see the solution as pushing governments to
open a mandate to start conversations that might lead to a negotiation on binding rules for
e-commerce and a declaration of the gathering as the "digital ministerial". Argentina's MC11
chair, Susana Malcorra, is actively pushing for member states to embrace e-commerce at the WTO,
claiming that it is necessary to " bridge the gap between the
haves and have-nots ".
It is not very clear what kind of gaps Malcorra is trying to bridge. It surely isn't the
"connectivity gap" or "digital divide" that is growing between developed and developing
countries, seriously impeding digital learning and knowledge in developing countries. In fact,
half of humanity is not even connected to the internet, let alone positioned to develop
competitive markets or bargain at a multilateral level. Negotiating binding e-commerce rules at
the WTO would only widen that gap.
Dangerously, the "South Vision" of digital trade in the global trade arena is being shaped
by a recent alliance of governments and well-known tech-sector lobbyists, in a group called
'Friends of E-Commerce for Development' (FED), including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, and, most recently, China. FED
claims that e-commerce is a tool to drive growth, narrow the digital divide, and generate
digital solutions for developing and least developed countries.
However, none of the countries in the group (apart from China) is leading or even remotely
ready to be in a position to negotiate and push for binding rules on digital trade that will be
favorable to them, as their economies are still far away from the technology revolution. For
instance, it is perplexing that one of the most fervent defenders of FED's position is Costa
Rica. The country's economy is based on the export of bananas, coffee, tropical
fruits, and low-tech medical instruments, and almost half of its population
is offline . Most of the countries in FED are far from being powerful enough to shift
negotiations in favor of small players.
U.S.-based tech giants and Chinese Alibaba – so-called GAFA-A – dominate, by
far, the future of the digital playing field, including issues such as identification and
digital payments, connectivity, and the next generation of logistics solutions. In fact, there
is a no-holds-barred ongoing race among these tech giants to consolidate their market share in
developing economies, from the race to grow the advertising market to the race to increase
online payments.
An e-commerce agenda that claims unprecedented development for the Global South is a Trojan
horse move. Beginning negotiations on such topics at this stage – before governments are
prepared to understand what is at stake – could lead to devastating results, accelerating
liberalization and the consolidation of the power of tech giants to the detriment of local
industries, consumers, and citizens. Aware of the increased disparities between North and
South, and the data dominance of a tiny group of GAFA-A companies, a group of African nations
issued a statement opposing the digital ambitions of the host for MC11. But the political
landscape is more complex, with China, the EU, and Russia now supporting the idea of a
"digital" mandate .
Repeating the Same Mistakes?
The relationships of most countries with tech companies are as imbalanced as their
relationships with Big Pharma, and there are many parallels to note. Not so long ago, the
countries of the Global South faced Big Pharma power in pharmaceutical markets in a similar
way. Some developing countries had the same enthusiasm when they negotiated intellectual
property rules for the protection of innovation and research and development costs. In reality,
those countries were nothing more than users and consumers of that innovation, not the owners
or creators. The lessons of negotiating trade issues that lie at the core of public interest
issues – in that case, access to medicines – were costly. Human lives and
fundamental rights of those who use online services should not be forgotten when addressing the
increasingly worrying and unequal relationships with tech power.
The threat before our eyes is similarly complex and equally harmful to the way our societies
will be shaped in the coming years. In the past, the Big Pharma race was for patent
exclusivity, to eliminate local generic production and keep drug prices high. Today, the Big
Tech race is for data extractivism from those who have yet to be connected in the world, and
tech companies will use all the power they hold to achieve a global regime in which small
nations cannot regulate either data extraction or data localization.
Big Tech is one of the most concentrated and resourceful industries of all time. The
bargaining power of developing countries is minimal. Developing countries will basically be
granting the right to cultivate small parcels of a land controlled by data lords -- under their
rules, their mandate, and their will -- with practically no public oversight. The stakes are
high. At the core of it is the race to conquer the markets of digital payments and the battle
to become the platform where data flows, splitting the territory as old empires did in the
past. As
the Economist claimed on May 6, 2017: "Conflicts over control of oil have scarred
the world for decades. No one yet worries that wars will be fought over data. But the data
economy has the same potential for confrontation."
If countries from the Global South want to prepare for data wars, they should start thinking
about how to reduce the control of Big Tech over -- how we communicate, shop, and learn the
news -- , again, over our societies. The solution lies not in making rules for data
liberalization, but in devising ways to use the law to reduce Big Tech's power and protect
consumers and citizens. Finding the balance would take some time and we are going to take that
time to find the right balance, we are not ready to lock the future yet.
One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants. To paraphrase
from a comment I made recently regarding a similar topic : "with markets in the developed
world pretty much sewn up by the tripartite tech overlords (google, fb and amazon), the next
3 billion users for their products/services are going to come from developing world". With
this dynamic in mind, and the "constant growth" mantra humming incessantly in the background,
it's easy to see how high stakes a game this is for the tech giants and how no resources will
be spared to stymie any efforts at establishing a regulatory oversight framework that will
protect the digital rights of citizens in the global south.
Multilateral fora like the WTO are de facto enablers for the marauding frontal attacks of
transnational corporations, and it's disheartening to see that some developing nations have
already nailed the digital futures of their citizens to the mast of the tech giants by
joining this alliance. What's more, this signing away of their liberty will be sold to the
citizenry as the best way to usher them into the brightest of all digital futures.
One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants.
Vast sums of money are already being thrown at bringing Africa online, for better
or worse. Thus, the R&D aimed at providing wireless Internet via giant
drones/balloons/satellites by Google, Facebook, etc.
You're African. Possibly South African by your user name, which may explain why you're a
little behind the curve, because the action is already happening, but more to the north --
and particularly in East Africa.
The big corporations -- and the tech giants are competing with the banking/credit card
giants -- have noted how mobile technology leapt over the dearth of last century's telephony
tech, land lines, and in turn enabled the highest adoption rates of cellphone banking in the
world. (Particularly in East Africa, as I say.) The payoffs for big corporations are massive
-- de facto cashless societies where the corporations control the payment systems
–and the politicians are mostly cheap.
In Nigeria, the government has launched a Mastercard-branded national ID card that's also
a payment card, in one swoop handing Mastercard more than 170 million potential customers,
and their personal and biometric data.
In Kenya, the sums transferred by mobile money operator M-Pesa are more than 25 percent of
that country's GDP.
You can see that bringing Africa online is technically a big, decade-long project. But
also that the potential payoffs are vast. Though I also suspect China may come out ahead --
they're investing far more in Africa and in some areas their technology -- drones, for
instance -- is already superior to what the Europeans and the American companies have.
Hoisted from a comment I made here recently: "Here in South Africa and through its Free
Basics programme, facebook is jumping into bed with unsuspecting ISPs (I say unsuspecting
because fb will soon be muscling in on their territory and becoming an ISP itself by
provisioning bandwidth directly from its floating satellites) and circumventing net
neutrality "
I'm also keenly aware of the developments in Kenya re: safaricom and Mpesa and how that
has led to traditional banking via bank accounts being largely leapfrogged for those moving
from being unbanked to active economic citizens requiring money transfer facilities. Given
the huge succes of Mpesa, I wouldn't be surprised if a multinational tech behemoth (chinese
or american) were to make a play for acquiring safaricom and positioning it as a triple-play
ISP, money transfer/banking services and digital content provider (harvesting data about
users habits on an unprecedented scale across multiple areas of their lives), first in Kenya
then expanded throughout east, central and west africa. I must add that your statement about
Nigeria puts Mark Zuckerberg's visit there a few months back into context somewhat, perhaps a
reconnaissance mission of sorts.
Out of idle curiosity, how could you accurately deduce my country of origin from my
name?
As you also write: "with markets in the developed world pretty much sewn up by the
tripartite tech overlords (google, fb and amazon), the next 3 billion users for their
products/services are going to come from developing world."
Absolutely true. This cannot be stressed enough. The tech giants know this and the race is
on.
"... Growth becomes the overriding motivation -- something treasured for its own sake, not for anything it brings to the world. Facebook and Google can point to a greater utility that comes from being the central repository of all people, all information, but such market dominance has obvious drawbacks, and not just the lack of competition. As we've seen, the extreme concentration of wealth and power is a threat to our democracy by making some people and companies unaccountable. ..."
"... Out of curiosity, the other day I searched "cellphones" on Google. Before finding even a mildly questioning article about cellphones, I paged down through ads for phones and lists of phones for sale, guides to buying phones and maps with directions to stores that sell phones, some 20 results in total. Somewhere, a pair of idealistic former graduate students must be saying: "See! I told you so!" ..."
Growth becomes the overriding motivation -- something treasured for its own sake, not
for anything it brings to the world. Facebook and Google can point to a greater utility that
comes from being the central repository of all people, all information, but such market
dominance has obvious drawbacks, and not just the lack of competition. As we've seen, the
extreme concentration of wealth and power is a threat to our democracy by making some people
and companies unaccountable.
In addition to their power, tech companies have a tool that other powerful industries
don't: the generally benign feelings of the public. To oppose Silicon Valley can appear to be
opposing progress, even if progress has been defined as online monopolies; propaganda that
distorts elections; driverless cars and trucks that threaten to erase the jobs of millions of
people; the Uberization of work life, where each of us must fend for ourselves in a pitiless
market.
As is becoming obvious, these companies do deserve the benefit of the doubt. We need
greater regulation, even if it impedes the introduction of new services. If we can't stop
their proposals -- if we can't say that driverless cars may not be a worthy goal, to give
just one example -- then are we in control of our society? We need to break up these online
monopolies because if a few people make the decisions about how we communicate, shop, learn
the news, again, do we control our own society?
Out of curiosity, the other day I searched "cellphones" on Google. Before finding even a
mildly questioning article about cellphones, I paged down through ads for phones and lists of
phones for sale, guides to buying phones and maps with directions to stores that sell phones,
some 20 results in total. Somewhere, a pair of idealistic former graduate students must be
saying: "See! I told you so!"
SAN FRANCISCO -- Google will invest $1 billion over the next five years in nonprofit
organizations helping people adjust to the changing nature of work, the largest philanthropic
pledge to date from the Internet giant.
The announcement of the
national digital skills initiative, made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Thursday, is a tacit acknowledgment from one of the world's most valuable companies that it
bears some responsibility for rapid advances in technology that are radically reshaping
industries and eliminating jobs in the U.S. and around the world.
Pichai's pitstop in an old industrial hub that has reinvented itself as a technology and
robotics center is the first on a "Grow with Google Tour." The tour that will crisscross the
country will work with libraries and community organizations to provide career advice and
training. It heads next to Indianapolis in November.
"The nature of work is fundamentally changing. And that is shifting the link between
education, training and opportunity," Pichai said in prepared remarks at Google's offices in
Pittsburgh. "One-third of jobs in 2020 will require skills that aren't common today. It's a big
problem."
Google will make grants in its three core areas: education, economic opportunity and
inclusion. Already in the last few months, it has handed out $100 million of the $1 billion to
nonprofits, according to Pichai.
The largest single grant -- $10 million, the largest Google's ever made -- is going to
Goodwill, which is creating the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator. Over the next three years
Goodwill, a major player in workforce development, aims to provide 1 million people with access
to digital skills and career opportunities. Pichai says 1,000 Google employees will be
available for career coaching.
In all, Google employees will donate 1 million volunteer hours to assist organizations like
Goodwill trying to close the gap between the education and skills of the American workforce and
the new demands of the 21st century workplace, Pichai said.
The announcements, which drew praise from state and local politicians including Pennsylvania
governor Tom Wolf, come as Google scrambles to respond to revelations that accounts linked to
the Russian government used its advertising system to interfere with the presidential
election.
Google is embroiled in a growing number of other controversies, from a Labor Department
investigation and a lawsuit by former employees alleging systemic pay discrimination, to the
proliferation of misinformation in search results and extremist content on YouTube. As the
controversies have multiplied, so too have calls for Washington to regulate Google because of
its massive scale and global reach.
"This isn't the first time we've seen massive, market-creating and labor market-disrupting
companies try to address growing public pressure and possible regulatory limits in this way.
But it often has been individual corporate titans who've gotten into philanthropy -- Andrew
Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller -- as a way to rehabilitate their own images, tarnished by
anxiety about the size of their companies and treatment of workers," said Margaret O'Mara, a
history professor at the University of Washington.
"What's interesting here is what this signals about how Google's future business ambitions.
It is betting that its next era will be one not of search and apps but of devices and labor
market interventions."
Google's not alone fending off critics. A recent headline in tech news outlet TechCrunch
read: "Dear Silicon Valley: America's fallen out of love with you."
The tech industry, once a shiny symbol of American innovation and pride, has found itself on
the defensive after the election of Donald Trump, which telegraphed the deepening
disillusionment of everyday Americans who have watched the gains of the economic recovery pass
them by.
While whole communities in the nation's heartland have fallen into economic decline, the
tech industry, clustered in vibrant coastal hubs like San Francisco and New York, has grown
wealthy off new developments that are disrupting how Americans live and work.
The pace of that innovation is quickening. For years tech companies could not deliver on
promises of hyper-intelligent machines capable of performing human tasks. Now the technology is
catching up to the aspirations.
In recent years, Google and other companies have made long strides, from self-driving cars
that whisk you to your destination to digital assistants who answer your questions. This new
wave of automation that aids consumers in their everyday lives has a dark side: It's killing
off traditional jobs and stranding workers, still struggling after the recession, who are
unprepared for the shift.
Google, says O'Mara, will have "undeniably disruptive impacts on the jobs people do and the
skills they need for them."
In the 1960s when computer-aided automation worried the nation, presidential and
congressional commissions and government agencies tackled the challenge.
"Now it's the private sector. And even though $1 billion sounds like a lot, it is a small
number compared to government education programs or, for that matter, the balance sheets of
large tech companies," O'Mara said.
When Pichai came to the United States from his native India 24 years ago, it was the first
time he had been on a plane. Pittsburgh was the first city he saw. Though Pittsburgh was moored
to its early 20th century roots as a steel town, Carnegie Mellon University was already
propelling the city into the future.
"As a new arrival, I was homesick but struck by something new: the sense of optimism," he
said. "I remain a technology optimist."
Pichai envisions that transformation for Pittsburg as a blueprint for the country to make
the transition to a new industrial era. On Thursday, Pichai detailed other programs Google is
undertaking.
- Grow with Google is a free online program to help Americans secure the skills they need to
get a job or grow their business. Job seekers, business owners and teachers can learn the
basics of working with tech, from spreadsheets to email, get training and certificates through
google.com/grow. Google says it has rolled it out to 27,000 middle and high school students and
now plans to expand it to community colleges and vocational programs.
- In January, Google will launch an IT certificate program developed with online education
provider Coursera that includes hands-on labs to prepare people for jobs in eight to 12 months
and then connects graduates with potential employers. Google will sponsor 2,600 full
scholarships through nonprofit organizations.
- Working with Udacity, Google is creating the Google Developer Scholarship Challenge. The
top 10% of applicants who enroll in Google developer courses will receive scholarships.
- Google will give away 20,000 vouchers to get G Suite
certification.
"We don't have all the answers. The people closest to the problem are usually the people
closest to the solution," Pichai said. "We want to help them reach it sooner."
This is particular dirty campaign to implicate Trump and delegitimize his victory is a part of
color revolution against Trump.
The other noble purpose is to find a scapegoat for the
current problems, especially in Democratic Party, and to preserve Clinton neoliberals rule over
the party for a few more futile years.
Notable quotes:
"... Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. ..."
"... The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue. ..."
"... A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized. ..."
"... This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it. ..."
"... We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites: ..."
"... The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice. ..."
"... After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube. ..."
"... Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum". ..."
"... "Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes). ..."
"... The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation . ..."
"... Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for. ..."
"... Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites. ..."
"... The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues. ..."
Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of
Trump.
It now turns out that these Facebook ads had nothing to do with the election. The mini-ads
were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then
promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the
issue.
Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on
Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button
issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
...
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign,
which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and
boost Donald J. Trump during the election.
Like any Congress investigation the current one concerned with Facebook ads is leaking like
a sieve. What oozes out makes little sense.
If "Russia" aimed to make Congress and U.S. media a laughing stock it surely achieved
that.
Today the NYT says that the ads
were posted "in disguise" by "the Russians" to promote variously themed Facebook pages:
There was "Defend the 2nd," a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with
firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, "LGBT
United." There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies
that spread across the site with the help of paid ads
No one has explained how these pages are supposed to be connected to a Russian "influence"
campaign. It is unexplained how these are supposed to connected to the 2016 election. That is
simply asserted because Facebook said, for unknown reasons, that these ads may have come from
some Russian agency. How Facebook has determined that is not known.
With each detail that leaks from the "Russian ads" investigation the propaganda framework of
"election manipulation" falls further apart:
Late Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in
question. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after,
the company said
The original story propagandized that "Russia" intended to influence the election in favor
of Trump. But why then was the majority of the ads in questions run later after November 9? And
how would an animal-lovers page with adorable puppy pictures help to achieve Trumps election
victory?
Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That's because advertising auctions are
designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as
a result.
...
For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.
Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed.
Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private
pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads
ran after the election.
All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign ...
designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?
No.
But the NYT still finds "experts" who believe in the "Russian influence" nonsense and find
the most stupid reasons to justify their claims:
Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in
Philadelphia, said Russia had been entrepreneurial in trying to develop diverse channels of
influence. Some, like the dogs page, may have been created without a specific goal and held
in reserve for future use.
Puppy pictures for "future use"? Nonsense. Lunacy! The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not a political
influence op.
The for-profit scheme runs as follows: One builds pages with "hot" stuff that attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on
these pages and fills it with Google ads. One promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook
mini-ads for them.
A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or
the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads.
Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort
for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be
automatized.
This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates
"news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to
advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs
reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it.
We learned after
the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly
attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political
direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of
dollars by selling advertisements on their sites:
The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country
where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he
dropped nuggets of journalism advice.
"You have to write what people want to see, not what you want to show," he said, scrolling
through The Political Insider's stories as a large banner read "ARREST HILLARY NOW."
The 3,000 Facebook ads Congress is investigating are part of a similar scheme. The mini-ads
promoted pages with hot button issues and click-bait puppy pictures. These pages were
themselves created to generate ad-clicks and revenue. As Facebook claims that "Russia" is
behind them, we will likely find some Russian teens who simply repeated the scheme their
Macedonian friends were running on.
With its "Russian influence" scare campaign the NYT follows the same business model. It is
producing fake news which attracts viewers and readers who's attention is then sold to
advertisers. Facebook is also profiting from this. Its current piecemeal release of vague
information keeps its name in the news.
After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been
solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably
the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube.
Russian Car Crash
Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase
road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify
divisive political issues across the political spectrum".
The car crash compilations, like the puppy pages, are another sign that Russia is waging war
against the people of the United States!
You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!
This gets more chilling daily : now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by
"demographics, geography, gender & interests," across websites & devices, reached
millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo
It indeed gets more chilling. It's fall. It also generates ad revenue.
Posted by b on October 3, 2017 at 02:09 PM |
Permalink
"Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from
the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the
oligarchs.
This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes).
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation .
You're presenting a very good concept/meme to understand: Fake news is click bait for
gain.
The same can be said for any sensationalism or shocking event - like the Kurdish
referendum, like the Catalonia referendum, like the Vegas shooting - or like confrontational
or dogmatic comments in threads about those events.
Everywhere we turn someone is trying to game us for some kind of gain. What matters is to
step back from the front lines where our sense is accosted and offended, to step back from
the automatic reflex, and to remember that someone triggered that reflex, deliberately, for
their gain, not ours.
We have to reside in reason and equanimity, because the moment we indulge in our righteous
anger or our strong convictions, the odds are extremely good that someone is playing us.
It's a wicked world, but in fact we live in an age when we can see its meta
characteristics like never before.
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
What we see is the biggest psyop., propaganda disinformation campaig ever in the western
media, far more powerful than "nuclear Iraq" of 2003.
Still, and this should be a warning, majority of people in EU/US believe this
nonsense.
I lol'd. But seriously the next step is a false flag implicating Russia. They're getting
nowhere assassinating Russian diplomats and shooting down Russian aircraft, both military and
civilian. Even overthrowing governments who are Russia-friendly hasn't seem to provoke a
response.
But I consider the domestic Russia buzz to be performance art, and I imagine it's become
even grating to some of its participants. How could it not be, unless everyone is heavily
medicated(a lot certainly are)? Anyway it's by design that the western media and the
political classes they serve need a script, they're incapable of discussing actual issues.
Independence has been made quaint.
The line between politics and product marketing has gone.
But no matter if "the Russians" influenced the US election or not - after all that is what
most countries do to each other - the FBI is correct that to be able to target audiences
according to demographics and individual traits is a powerful tool.
The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the
Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming
a serious competitor in providing news and advertising. "Radio is new but it has adult
responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses," said the editorial
leader comment on November 1 1938. In an excellent piece in Slate magazine in 2013,
Jefferson Pooley (associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College) and
Michael J Socolow (associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of
Maine) looked at the continuing popularity of the myth of mass panic and they took to task
NPR's Radiolab programme about the incident and the Radiolab assertion that "The United
States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we've never seen before." Pooley and
Socolow wrote: "How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America's newspapers.
... AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . . In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and
Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito
in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town
to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was
fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths,
including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio,
a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of
unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the
ground.
Jackrabbit 2
No - the two words the Capital system fears the most are SURPLUS VALUE , the control of the
'profit principle' for social not private ends .
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9 The American panic was a myth, the Equadorian panic in 1949 not so much. I listened to this
Radiolab podcast about same ... the details of how they pulled it off in a one-radio station
country pre-internet are interesting and valuable (they widely advertised a very popular music
program which was then "interrupted" by the hoax to ensure near-universal audience (including
the police and other authorities). Very very fews were "in on the joke" and it wasn't a
joke.
whole page on WooW:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/
Great article.
I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM
business model.
Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for.
"Lankford shocked the world this week by revealing that "Russian Internet trolls" were
stoking the NFL kneeling debate. ... Conservative outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and
Fox played up the "Russians stoked the kneeling controversy" angle because it was in their
interest to suggest that domestic support for kneeling protests is less than what it
appears....
The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's"
tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing
on antifa stereotypes "More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at
stadiums We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee." ...
The group was most
likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. "
Pity Rolling Stone got caught up in that fake college rape allegation, they have actually
done some solid reporting. Every MSM outlet has had multiple fake stories, so should RS be
shunned for life for one bad story?
It is time that sane part of independent media understood that there is no more need to
rationally respond to psychotic delusions of Deep State puppets in Russia gate, since it is
unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation
and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes
news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites.
There are only two effective responses to provocation namely silence or violence, anything
else plays the book of provocateurs.
Now they're seriously undermining their claims of intentionality ... as well as their wildly
inflated claims effect on outcome or even effective "undermining" ... again, compared to
Citizens United and the long-count of 2000 ... negligible....
And still insisting that Hillary Clinton is Russia's Darth Vader against whom unlimited
resources are marshalled because she must be stopped ... even though she damn near won... and
the reasons she lost seems unrelated to such vagaries as the DNC e-mails or facebook
campaigns (unless you believe she had a god-given right to each and every vote)
Why do you think this is important enough to make the effort to write another blog entry B?
Everyone who wants to know that this is all fantasy knows by now.
'Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor
of Trump.
This is the same US congress that regularly marches off to Israel to receive orders
This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the
increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...
Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ...
and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and
not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the
"remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can
only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ...
all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...
It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account
... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?
Sorry to be off topic but yesterday the Saker of the Vineyard published a couple of articles
about Catalonia. The first was a diatribe, a nasty hatchet job on the Catalan people which
included the following referring to the Catalan people:
"The Problems they have because with their corruption, inefficiency, mismanagement,
inability and sometimes the simplest stupidity, are always the fault of others (read
Spaniards here) which gives them "carte blanche" to keep going on with it."
"... They (the independistas) are NATIONAL SOCIALIST (aka NAZI) in their Ideology"
Then Saker published an article by Peter Koenig that was reasonable and what we have come
to expect. Then he forbade all comments on either of the two articles. My comment was banned,
which simply said in my opinion from working for fourteen years in Spain that the Catalans
were extremely efficient in comparison with their Madrid counterparts.
I must admit that I became a fan of watching those Russian car crashes that were captured by
the cams many russian drivers keep on their dash boards. Some of these were very funny. I was
not aware that made me a victim of Putin propaganda. In any case, they are not that
interesting anymore once they were commercialized. That was about 10 years ago.
The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media
juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what
it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these
companies will bleed ad revenues.
OT - more from comedy central - daily USA press briefing from today...
"QUESTION: On Iran, would you and the State Department say, as Secretary Mattis said
today, that staying in the JCPOA would be in the U.S. national interest?
MS NAUERT: Yeah.
QUESTION: Is this a position you share?
MS NAUERT: So I'm certainly familiar with what Secretary Mattis said on Capitol Hill
today. Secretary Mattis, of course, one of many people who is providing expertise and counsel
to the President on the issue of Iran and the JCPOA. The President is getting lots of
information on that. We have about 12 days or so, I think, to make our determination for the
next JCPOA guideline.
The administration looks at JCPOA as – the fault in the JCPOA as not looking at the
totality of Iran's bad behavior. Secretary Tillerson talked about that at length at the UN
General Assembly. So did the President as well. We know that Iran is responsible for terror
attacks. We know that Iran arms the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which leads to a more miserable
failed state, awful situation in Yemen, for example. We know what they're doing in Syria.
Where you find the Iranian Government, you can often find terrible things happening in the
world. This administration is very clear about highlighting that and will look at Iran in
sort of its totality of all of its bad behaviors, not just the nuclear deal.
I don't want to get ahead of the discussions that are ongoing with this – within the
administration, as it pertains to Iran. The President has said he's made he's decision, and
so I don't want to speak on behalf of the President, and he'll just have to make that
determination when he's ready to do so."
Numerous Slashdot readers are reporting that they are facing issues access Google Drive, the productivity
suite from the Mountain View-based company. Google's dashboard confirms that
Drive is facing outage
.
Third-party web monitoring tool DownDetector also
reports thousands of similar complaints from users. The company said, "Google Drive service has
already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future.
Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Google Drive is not loading files and
results in a failures for a subset of users."
"... The latest allegation against Google? Jon von Tetzchner, creator of the web browser Opera, says the search giant deliberately undermined his new browser, Vivaldi ..."
"... Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticized big tech companies' attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?" ..."
In a blogpost titled, "
My friends at
Google: it is time to return to not being evil ," von Tetzchner accuses the US firm of blocking
Vivaldi's access to Google AdWords, the advertisements that run alongside search results, without
warning or proper explanation. According to Von Tetzchner, the problem started in late May.
Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticized big tech companies'
attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two
days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just
a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?"
He concludes: "Timing spoke volumes." Von Tetzchner got in touch with Google to try and resolve
the issue. The result? What he calls "a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and
conditions." The particular issue was the end-user license agreement (EULA), the legal contract between
a software manufacturer and a user. Google wanted Vivaldi to add one to its website. So it did.
But Google had further complaints. According to emails shown to WIRED, Google wanted Vivaldi to
add an EULA "within the frame of every download button." The addition was small -- a link below the
button directing people to "terms" -- but on the web, where every pixel matters, this was a potential
competitive disadvantage.
Most gallingly, Chrome, Google's own web browser, didn't display a EULA on its landing pages.
Google also asked Vivaldi to add detailed information to help people uninstall it, with another link,
also under the button.
"... As I recall it -- and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory -- a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google's crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly. ..."
From her report: I published a story headlined, "Stick Google Plus Buttons
On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers," that included bits of conversation from the meeting.
(An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can
still be found here .) Google promptly flipped out.
This was in 2011, around the same time that
a congressional antitrust committee was looking into whether the company was abusing its powers.
Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that
I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed
there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no
such agreement, hadn't been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)
It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives
called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that
it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through
Google searches and Google News. [...] Given that I'd gone to the Google PR team before publishing,
and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately,
though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down -- a decision I will always
regret. Forbes declined comment about this.
As I recall
it -- and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory -- a cached version
remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results.
That was unusual; websites captured by Google's crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.
As soon as DuckDuckGo shows ads and you have Javascript enabled your privacy evaporate the same
way it evaporated in Google, unless you use VPN. But even in this case there are ways to "bound" your
PC to you via non IP based methods.
There are other search engines, browsers, email services, etc. besides those operated by the
giants. DuckDuckGo, protonmail, and the Opera browser (with free built-in VPN!) work well for
me.
The problem is, if these other services ever do get popular enough, the tech giants will either
block them by getting their stooges appointed to Federal agencies and regulating them out of existence,
or buy them.
I've been running from ISP acquisitions for years, as the little guys get bought out I have
to find an even littler one.
Luckily I've found a local ISP, GWI, that I've used for years now. They actually came out against
the new regulations that would allow them to gather and sell their customers' data. Such anathema
will probably wind up with their CEO publicly flayed for going against all that is good and holy
according to the Five Horsemen.
"... It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. ..."
"... According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. ..."
"... In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in "supernormal returns on capital" at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. ..."
"... There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition - Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat. ..."
"... The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations. ..."
"... Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900. ..."
"... Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, "If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government." We ignore his words at our peril. ..."
In just 10 years, the world's five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed,
save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple,
Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.
They're all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent
market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger)
owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market.
In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.
We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about "the curse of bigness"
were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson's counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him
to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer
Melvin Urofsky) "in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous
to the continuing vitality of a free people." We need look no further than the conduct of the largest
banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the "fake news" business
to know that Brandeis was right.
While Brandeis generally opposed regulation - which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption
of the regulator - and instead advocated breaking up "bigness," he made an exception for "natural"
monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have
one or a few companies in control of an industry.
DenisPombriant
April 26, 2017
You don't need to look as far back as Brandise or as far forward as Google to see the pernicious
effects of monopoly. Just look at airlines...
fortress
April 26, 2017
I have no awareness of how google harms me, I use Bing for searches, and yes they are an octopus,
but with efficiencies of scale that...
SR
April 26, 2017
"True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability."...but not for want of trying.
The old Microsoft Network-MSN-was a...
Could it be that these companies - and Google in particular - have become natural monopolies by
supplying an entire market's demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by
two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?
Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.
In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires
attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked
with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.
The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry
by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network - a natural monopoly. The government
permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.
AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed
percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate
subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also
to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital
age - the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony
- all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.
In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly,
the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company)
royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the
creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.
Changes at the Top
The five largest companies in 2006
Exxon Mobil $540 General Electric 463 Microsoft 355 Citigroup 331 Bank of America 290
BILLION MARKET CAP
and now
Apple $794 Alphabet (Google) 593 Microsoft 506 Amazon 429 Facebook 414
All figures in 2017 dollars; 2017 companies as of April 20. Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices By The
New York Times
True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google's route to dominance
is different from the Bell System's. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public
utility.
We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of
natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending
that unfettered monoliths don't inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.
It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad
scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for
the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues
in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70
percent.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees
between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners
of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google
or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.
It's not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag
and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in "supernormal returns on capital" at
firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists
Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, "it has become
increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant."
There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition - Google
buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just
a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to
acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.
The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring
it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and
other key innovations.
The third alternative is to remove the "safe harbor" clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google's YouTube to free ride on the content produced
by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield
revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content
on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous.
But that's preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.
Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content
posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the
performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would
earn them about $900.
I'm under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump's
inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may
have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will
be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.
Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, "If monopoly persists, monopoly will always
sit at the helm of the government." We ignore his words at our peril.
(theverge.com)
101
Posted by msmash
on Wednesday December 21, 2016 @01:40PM
from
the
company-policies
dept.
An anonymous reader writes:
A Google product manager has
filed a lawsuit
against the company for its confidentiality policies on the
grounds they violate California labor laws. California labor laws give
employees the right to discuss workplace issues with law enforcement,
regulators, the media, and other employees. Google is accused of firing the
employee for exercising his rights, then smearing his reputation in an internal
email sent to the rest of the company. These policies are put in place to
allegedly prevent the leaking of potentially damaging information to regulators
or law enforcement. They in turn prohibit employees from speaking out about
illegal activity within the company, even to its own lawyers, and encourage
them to report other employees suspected of leaking information. The Verge has
obtained a copy of the complaint, linked below in full. "Google's motto is
'don't be evil.' Google's illegal confidentiality agreements and policies fail
this test," the lawsuit reads. One policy allegedly even prevents employees
from writing a novel about working for a large Silicon Valley corporation --
like, for instance, Dave Eggers' dystopian novel, The Circle -- without first
getting final draft approval from Google. The Information confirmed that this
lawsuit was filed by the same individual, known in the suit only as "John Doe,"
who filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year
over many of the same confidentiality policies.
"... "Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation," Whittaker wrote. "The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room." ..."
"... Isn't it inevitable that Google will end up like Microsoft. A brain-dead dinosaur employing sycophantic middle class bores, who are simply working towards a safe haven of retirement. In the end Google will be passed by. It's not a design-led innovator like Apple: it's a boring, grey utilitarian, Soviet-like beast. Google Apps are cheap - but very nasty - Gmail is a terrible UI - and great designers will never work for this anti-design/pro-algorithms empire. ..."
"... All of Google's products are TERRIBLE except for Gmail, and even that is inferior to Outlook on the web now. ..."
"... I used Google Apps for years, and Google just doesn't listen to customers. The engineers that ran the company needed some corporate intervention. I just think Larry Page tried to turn Google into a different company, rather than just focusing the great ideas into actually great products. ..."
"... It seems the tech titans all have this pendulum thing going on. Google appears to be beginning its swing in the "evil" direction. ..."
"... You claim old Google empowered intelligent people to be innovative, with the belief their creations would prove viable in the marketplace. You then go on to name Gmail and Chrome as the accomplishments of that endeavour. Are you ****** serious? ..."
"... When you arrived at Google it had already turned the internet into a giant spamsense depository with the majority of screen real estate consumed by Google's ads. The downhill spiral did not begin with Google+, but it may end there. On a lighter note, you are now free. Launch a start-up and fill the gaping hole which will be left by the fall of the former giant. ..."
"... Great post. Appreciate the insights the warning about what happens when bottom-up entrepreneurship loses out to top-down corporate dictums. ..."
"... The ability to actually consume shared content in an efficient and productive manner is still as broken as ever. They never addressed the issue in Buzz and still haven't with G+ despite people ranting at them for this functionality forever. ..."
"... Sounds like Google have stopped focusing on what problem they're solving and moving onto trying to influence consumer behaviour - always a much more difficult trick to pull off. Great article - well done for sharing in such a humble and ethical manner. Best of luck for the future. ..."
Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly
divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After."
"After" is pretty terrible, in his view.
Google (GOOG,
Fortune 500) once gave its engineers the time and resources to be creative. That experimental
approach yielded several home-run hits like Chrome and Gmail. But Google fell behind in one key area:
competing with Facebook.
That turned into corporate priority No. 1 when Larry Page took over as the company's CEO. "Social"
became Google's battle cry, and anything that didn't support Google+ was viewed as a distraction.
"Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed," wrote Whittaker, referring to Google's famous policy of letting
employees spend a fifth of their time on projects other than their core job. "The trappings of entrepreneurship
were dismantled."
Whittaker is not the first ex-Googler to express that line of criticism. Several high-level employees
have left after complaining that the "start-up spirit" of Google has been replaced by a more mature
but staid culture focused on the bottom line.
The interesting thing about Whittaker's take is that it was posted not on his personal blog, but
on an official blog of Microsoft (MSFT,
Fortune 500), Google's arch nemesis.
Spokesmen from Microsoft and Google declined to comment.
The battle between Microsoft and Google has heated up recently, as the Federal Trade Commission
and the European Commission begin to investigate Google for potential antitrust violations. Microsoft,
with its Bing search engine, has doubled its share of the search market since its June 2010 founding,
but has been unsuccessful at taking market share away from Google.
Microsoft is increasingly willing to call out Google for what it sees as illicit behavior. A year
ago, the software company released a long list of gripes about Google's
monopolistic actions, and last month it said Google was
violating Internet Explorer users' privacy.
Despite his misgivings about what Google cast aside to make Google+ a reality, Whittaker thinks
that the social network was worth a shot. If it had worked -- if Google had dramatically changed
the social Web for the better -- it would have been a heroic gamble.
But it didn't. It's too early to write Google+ off, but the site is developing a reputation as
a ghost town. Google says
90 million people have signed up, but analysts and anecdotal evidence show that fairly few have
turned into heavy users.
"Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built
his own party in retaliation," Whittaker wrote. "The fact that no one came to Google's party became
the elephant in the room."
Ian Smith:
Isn't it inevitable that Google will end up like Microsoft. A brain-dead dinosaur employing
sycophantic middle class bores, who are simply working towards a safe haven of retirement. In
the end Google will be passed by. It's not a design-led innovator like Apple: it's a boring, grey
utilitarian, Soviet-like beast. Google Apps are cheap - but very nasty - Gmail is a terrible UI
- and great designers will never work for this anti-design/pro-algorithms empire.
Steve
I have to be honest with you. All of Google's products are TERRIBLE except for Gmail, and
even that is inferior to Outlook on the web now.
I used Google Apps for years, and Google just doesn't listen to customers. The engineers
that ran the company needed some corporate intervention. I just think Larry Page tried to turn
Google into a different company, rather than just focusing the great ideas into actually great
products.
Matt:
It seems the tech titans all have this pendulum thing going on. Google appears to be beginning
its swing in the "evil" direction. Apple seems like they're nearing the peak of "evil".
And Microsoft seems like they're back in the middle, trying to swing up to the "good"
side. So, if you look at it from that perspective, Microsoft is the obvious choice.
Good luck!
VVR:
The stark truth in this insightful piece is the stuff you have not written..
Atleast you had a choice in leaving google. But we as users don't.
I have years of email in Gmail and docs and youtube etc. I can't switch.
"Creepy" is not the word that comes to mind when Ads for Sauna, online textbooks, etc
suddenly begin to track you, no matter which website you visit.
You know you have lost when this happens..
David:
A fascinating insight, I think this reflects what a lot of people are seeing of Google from
the outside. It seems everybody but Page can see that Google+ is - whilst technically brilliant
- totally superfluous; your daughter is on the money. Also apparent from the outside is the desperation
that surrounds Google+ - Page needs to face facts, hold his hands up and walk away from Social
before they loose more staff like you, more users and all the magic that made Google so great.
Best of luck with your new career at Microsoft, I hope they foster and encourage you as the
Google of old did.
Raymond Traylor:
I understand Facebook is a threat to Google search but beating Facebook at their core competency
was doomed to fail. Just like Bing to Google. I was so disappointed in Google following Facebook's
evil ways of wanting to know everything about me I've stopped using their services one at a time,
starting with Android.
I am willing to pay for a lot of Google's free service to avoid advertising and harvesting
my private data.
root
You claim old Google empowered intelligent people to be innovative, with the belief their
creations would prove viable in the marketplace. You then go on to name Gmail and Chrome as the
accomplishments of that endeavour. Are you ****** serious?
Re-branding web based email is no more innovative than purchasing users for your social networking
site, like Facebook did. Same for Chrome, or would you argue Google acquiring VOIP companies to
then provide a mediocre service called Google Voice was also innovative?
When you arrived at Google it had already turned the internet into a giant spamsense depository
with the majority of screen real estate consumed by Google's ads. The downhill spiral did not
begin with Google+, but it may end there. On a lighter note, you are now free. Launch a start-up
and fill the gaping hole which will be left by the fall of the former giant.
RBLevin:
Great post. Appreciate the insights the warning about what happens when bottom-up entrepreneurship
loses out to top-down corporate dictums.
Re: sharing, while I agree sharing isn't broken (heck, it worked when all we had was email),
it certainly needs more improvement. I can't stand Facebook. Hate the UI, don't care for the culture.
Twitter is too noisy and, also, the UI sucks. I'm one of those who actually thinks Google+ got
21st century BBSing right.
But if that's at the cost of everything else that made Google great, then it's a high price
to pay.
BTW, you can say a lot of these same things about similar moves Microsoft has made over the
years, where the top brass decided they knew better, and screwed over developers and their investments
in mountains of code.
So, whether it happens in an HR context or a customer context, it still sucks as a practice.
bound2run:
I have made a concerted effort to move away from Google products after their recent March 1st
privacy policy change. I must say the Bing is working just fine for me. Gmail will be a bit tougher
but I am making strides. Now I just need to dump my Android phone and I will be "creepy-free"
... for the time being.
Phil Ashman:
The ability to actually consume shared content in an efficient and productive manner is
still as broken as ever. They never addressed the issue in Buzz and still haven't with G+ despite
people ranting at them for this functionality forever.
Funny that I should read your post today as I wrote the following comment on another persons
post a couple days back over Vic's recent interview where someone brought up the lack of a G+
API:
"But if it were a social network.......then they are doing a pretty piss poor job of managing
the G+ interface and productive consumption of the stream. It would be nice if there was at least
an API so some 3rd party clients could assist with the filtering of the noise, but in reality
the issue is in the distribution of the stream. What really burns me is that it wouldn't be that
hard for them to create something like subscribable circles.
Unfortunately the reality is that they just don't care about whether the G+ stream is productive
for you at the moment as their primary concern isn't for you to productively share and discuss
your interests with the world, but to simply provide a way for you to tell Google what you like
so they can target you with advertising. As a result, the social part of Google+ really isn't
anything to shout about at the moment."
You've just confirmed my fear about how the company's focus has changed.
Alice Wonder:
Thanks for this. I love many of the things Google has done. Summer of code, WebM, Google Earth,
free web fonts, etc.
I really was disappointed with Google+. I waited for an invite, and when I finally got one,
I started to use it. Then the google main search page started to include google+ notifications,
and the JS crashed my browser. Repeatedly. I had to clear my cache and delete my cookies just
so google wouln't know it was me and crash search with a notification. They fixed that issue quickly
but I did not understand why they would risk their flagship product (search) to promote google
plus. The search page really should be a simple form.
And google plus not allowing aliases? Do I want a company that is tracking everything I do
centrally to have my real name with that tracking? No. Hence I do not use google+ anymore, and
am switching to a different search engine and doing as little as I can with google.
I really don't like to dislike google because of all they have done that was cool, it is really
sad for me to see this happening.
Mike Whitehead
Sounds like Google have stopped focusing on what problem they're solving and moving onto
trying to influence consumer behaviour - always a much more difficult trick to pull off. Great
article - well done for sharing in such a humble and ethical manner. Best of luck for the future.
jmacdonald 14 Mar 2012 4:07 AM great write-up
personally i think that google and facebook have misread the sociological trend against the
toleration of adverts, to such an extent that if indeed google are following the 'facebook know
everything and we do too' route, i suspect both companies may enter into issues as the advertising
CPMs fall and we're left with us wretched consumers who find ways around experiences that we don't
want
more on this stuff here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com
and here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com
for anyone that cares about that kinda angle
Mahboob Ihsan:
Google products are useful but probably they could have done more to improve the GUI, Standardization
and Usability. You can continue to earn business in short term enjoying your strategic advantage
as long as you don't have competitors. But as soon as you have just one competitor offering quality
products at same cost, your strategic advantage is gone and you have to compete through technology,
cost and quality. Google has been spreading its business wings to so many areas, probably with
the single point focus of short term business gains. Google should have learnt from Apple that
your every new offering should be better (in user's eye) than the previous one.
Victor Ramirez:
Thanks for the thoughtful blog post. Anybody who has objectively observed Google's behavior
and activity over the past few years has known that Google is going in this direction. I think
that people have to recognize that Google, while very technically smart, is an advertising company
first and foremost. Their motto says the right things about being good and organizing the world's
information, but we all know what Google is honestly interested in. The thing that Google is searching
for, more than almost anything else, is about getting more data about people so they can get people
better ads they'll be more likely to click on so they make more money. Right now, Google is facing
what might be considered an existential threat from Facebook because they are the company that
is best able to get social data right now. Facebook is getting so much social data that odds are
that they're long-term vision is to some point seriously competing in search using this social
data that they have. Between Facebook's huge user-base and momentum amongst businesses (just look
at how many Super Bowl ads featured Facebook pages being promoted for instance, look at the sheer
number of companies listed at www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com that do nothing other than promote
Facebook business pages, and look at the biggest factor out there - the fact that Facebook's IPO
is set to dominate 2012) I think that Facebook has the first legitimate shot of creating a combination
of quality results and user experience to actually challenge Google's dominance, and that's pretty
exciting to watch. The fact that Google is working on Google+ so much and making that such a centerpiece
of their efforts only goes to illustrate how critical this all is and how seriously they take
this challenge from Facebook into their core business. I think Facebook eventually enters the
search market and really disrupts it and it will be interesting to see how Google eventually acts
from a position of weakness.
Keith Watanabe:
they're just like any company that gets big. you end up losing visibility into things, believe
that you require the middle management layer to coordinate, then start getting into the battlegrounds
of turf wars because the people hired have hidden agendas and start bringing in their army of
yes men to take control as they attempt to climb up the corporate ladder. however, the large war
chest accumulated and the dominance in a market make such a company believe in their own invulnerability.
but that's when you're the most vulnerable because you get sloppy, forget to stop and see the
small things that slip through the cracks, forget your roots and lose your way and soul. humility
is really your only constant savior.
btw, more than likely Facebook will become the same way. And any other companies who grow big.
People tend to forget about the days they were struggling and start focusing on why they are so
great. You lose that hunger, that desire to do better because you don't have to worry about eating
pinches of salt on a few nibbles of rice. This is how civilization just is. If you want to move
beyond that, humans need to change this structure of massive growth -> vanity -> decadence
-> back to poverty.
Anon:
This perceived shift of focus happens at every company when you go from being an idealistic
student to becoming an adult that has to pay the bills. When you reach such a large scale
with so much at stake, it is easy to stop innovating. It is easy to get a mix of people who don't
share the same vision when you have to hire on a lot of staff. Stock prices put an emphasis on
perpetual monetization. Let's keep in mind that Facebook only recently IPO'd and in the debate
for personal privacy, all the players are potentially "evil" and none of them are being held to
account by any public policy.
The shutdown of Google Labs was a sad day. Later the shutdown of Google Health I thought was
also sad as it was an example of a free service already in existence, akin to what Ontario has
wasted over $1 billion on for E-Health. Surely these closures are a sign that the intellectual
capital in the founders has been exhausted. They took their core competencies to the maximum level
quickly, which means all the organic growth in those areas is mostly already realized.
There needs to be some torch passing or greater empowerment in the lower ranks when things
like this happen. Take a look at RIM. Take a look at many other workplaces. It isn't an isolated
incident. There are constantly pressures between where you think your business should go, where
investors tell you to go, and where the industry itself is actually headed. This guy is apparently
very troubled that his name is attached to G+ development and he is trying to distance himself
from his own failure. Probably the absence of Google Labs puts a particular emphasis on the failure
of G+ as one of the only new service projects to be delivered recently.
After so much time any company realizes that new ideas can only really come with new people
or from outside influences. As an attempt to grow their business services via advertising, the
idea that they needed to compete with Facebook to continue to grow wasn't entirely wrong. It was
just poorly executed, too late, and at the expense of potentially focusing their efforts on doing
something else under Google Labs that would have been more known as from them (Android was an
acquisition, not organically grown internally). There is no revolution yet, because Facebook and
Google have not replaced any of each others services with a better alternative
The complaints in the final paragraph of the blog regarding privacy are all complaints about
how much Google wants to be Facebook. Thing is that Google+ just like all the aforementioned
services are opt-in services with a clear ToS declared when you do so, even if you already have
a Google account for other services. The transparency of their privacy policy is on par
if not better than most other competing service providers. The only time it draws criticism is
when some changes have been made to say that if you use multiple services, they may have access
to the same pool of information internally. It's a contract and it was forced to be acknowledged
when it changed. When advertising does happen it is much more obvious to me that it is advertising
via a Google service, than when Facebook decides to tell me who likes what. Not to give either
the green light here; but the evolution is one of integrating your network into the suggestions,
and again, it isn't isolated to any one agency.
One way to raise and enforce objections to potential mishandling of information is to develop
a blanket minimum-requirement on privacy policy to apply to all businesses, regarding the handling
of customer information. We are blind if we think Google+ and Facebook are the only businesses
using data in these ways. This blanket minimum requirement could be voluntarily adopted via 3rd
party certification, or it could be government enforced; but the point is that someone other than
the business itself would formulate it, and it must be openly available to debate and public scrutiny/revision.
It is a sort of "User License Agreement" for information about us. If James Whittaker left to
partake in something along these lines, it sure would make his blog entry more credible, unless
Microsoft is focused so much more greatly on innovation than the profit motive.
It is also important for customers and the general public not to get locked into any
kind of brand loyalty. One problem is Facebook is a closed proprietary system with no
way to forward or export the data contained within it to any comparable system. Google is a mish-mash
of some open and some closed systems. In order for us as customers to be able to voice our opinions
in a way that such service providers would hear, we must be provided alternatives and service
portability.
As an example of changing service providers, there has been an exodus of business customers
away from using Google Maps as they began charging money to businesses that want to use the data
to develop on top of it. I think that this is just the reality of a situation when you have operating
costs for a service that you need to recoup; but there is a royalty-free alternative like Open
Street Map (which Apple has recently ripped off by using Open Street Map data without attribution).
Google won't see the same meteoric growth ever again. It probably is a less fun place
for a social media development staffer to work at from 2010 to present, than it was from 2004
- 2010 (but I'm betting still preferable to FoxConn or anything anywhere near Balmer).
Linda R. Tindall :
Thank you for your honest comments Mr. Whittaker. And yes, Google is not like it was before..
It is Scary, Google may destroy anyone online business overnight!
Google penalize webmasters if they don't like a Website for any reason. They can put out anyone
they want out of business. How does Google judge a webmaster's?
Google's business isn't anymore the search engine. Google's business is selling and displaying
ads.
GOOGLE becomes now the Big Brother of the WWW. I think it is scary that Google has so much
power. Just by making changes, they can ruin people's lives.
As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn't
part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook
never materialized. I couldn't even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, "social
isn't a product," she told me after I gave her a demo, "social is people and the people are on Facebook."
Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his
own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the
room.
"... The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again. ..."
"... Had Google been right, the effort would have been heroic and clearly many of us wanted to be part of that outcome. I bought into it. I worked on Google+ as a development director and shipped a bunch of code. But the world never changed; sharing never changed. It's arguable that we made Facebook better, but all I had to show for it was higher review scores. ..."
It wasn't an easy decision to leave Google. During my time there I became fairly passionate about
the company. I keynoted four Google Developer Day events, two Google Test Automation Conferences
and was a prolific contributor to the Google testing blog. Recruiters often asked me to help sell
high priority candidates on the company. No one had to ask me twice to promote Google and no one
was more surprised than me when I could no longer do so. In fact, my last three months working for
Google was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back.
The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate.
The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.
Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company,
but for the better part of the last three years, it didn't feel like one. Google was
an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts
advertisers.
Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory,
empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder's awards, peer bonuses and 20% time. Our
advertising revenue gave us the headroom to think, innovate and create. Forums like App Engine, Google
Labs and open source served as staging grounds for our inventions. The fact that all this was paid
for by a cash machine stuffed full of advertising loot was lost on most of us. Maybe the engineers
who actually worked on ads felt it, but the rest of us were convinced that Google was a technology
company first and foremost; a company that hired smart people and placed a big bet on their ability
to innovate.
From this innovation machine came strategically important products like Gmail and Chrome, products
that were the result of entrepreneurship at the lowest levels of the company. Of course, such runaway
innovative spirit creates some duds, and Google has had their share of those, but Google has always
known how to fail fast and learn from it.
In such an environment you don't have to be part of some executive's inner circle to succeed.
You don't have to get lucky and land on a sexy project to have a great career. Anyone with ideas
or the skills to contribute could get involved. I had any number of opportunities to leave Google
during this period, but it was hard to imagine a better place to work.
But that was then, as the saying goes, and this is now.
It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one
place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook. Informal efforts produced a couple of antisocial dogs
in Wave and Buzz. Orkut never caught on outside Brazil. Like the proverbial hare confident enough
in its lead to risk a brief nap, Google awoke from its social dreaming to find its front runner status
in ads threatened.
Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more
about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information, so much
so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own.
Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike,
a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook's? No company
has ever done that for Google and Google took it personally.
Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became
state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the
feeling that Google alone wasn't enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube,
once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation
had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the
universe were a distraction.
Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine
fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for
a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the "old Google" and
its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a "new Google" that promised "more
wood behind fewer arrows."
The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was
gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten
it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.
Officially, Google declared that "sharing is broken on the web" and nothing but the full force
of our collective minds around Google+ could fix it. You have to admire a company willing to sacrifice
sacred cows and rally its talent behind a threat to its business.
Had Google been right, the effort
would have been heroic and clearly many of us wanted to be part of that outcome. I bought into it.
I worked on Google+ as a development director and shipped a bunch of code. But the world never changed;
sharing never changed. It's arguable that we made Facebook better, but all I had to show for it was
higher review scores.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social
issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which
such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free)
site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should
be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors
of this site
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or
referenced source) and are
not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society.We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be
tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without
Javascript.
Content that incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization
USA TODAY Jessica Guynn 3 days ago SHARE SHARE TWEET SHARE EMAIL
Samsung Galaxy S9 May Feature iPhone X Face ID Rival
© Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses media at the MadebyGoogle event at the SF Jazz Center in San Francisco.
Fans Stunned As Loretta Swit Blurts Out Why She Left M*A*S*H See More Sponsored by Definition.org
![USA TODAY logo]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBqR7Pn.img?h=50&w=50&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&f=png"} "USA TODAY logo")
![USA TODAY]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBqR7Ps.img?h=24&w=24&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&f=png"})
![]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAtn1Q2.img?h=75&w=100&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&x=1928&y=1009"})
Samsung Galaxy S9 May Feature iPhone X Face ID Rival![Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses media at the MadebyGoogle event at the SF Jazz Center in San Francisco.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"73","h":"49","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAtmn7u.img?h=486&w=728&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1949&y=1192"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAtmn7u.img?h=417&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1949&y=1192"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAtmn7u.img?h=417&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1949&y=1192"}})
© Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses media at the
MadebyGoogle event at the SF Jazz Center in San Francisco.