Is Google Really Evil?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Many Internet users swear they are up to no good, making evil preparations to take over the world..... and a lot of Internet users also have an assortment of tin-foil hats in their closet. :D Google has gone out of its way to be a big part of everyone’s daily life, to the point of being intrusive, some think. Is Google really the evil giant people imagine?

"Privacy is dead--get over it." I respectfully disagree. Aggregating private information is not a policy that should be encouraged, regardless of business climate and slogans like "don't be evil."
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It's a question of scale. If the people stealing our information are the owners of major corporations, it can't be piracy by definition. ;)
 
The "slogan" went out of style when Google went public, which means the founders are no longer calling the shots, but rather a large pool of investors who will always prefer to make money at any cost, including privacy costs.
 
Google is better than most primarily because they pretty much tell you what they're going to do. Most other companies in the same position just change their privacy policies without near the amount of "in your face" notifications that Google does. The recent changes have been news precisely because Google was very up-front about what it was doing. If they took the typical MS or Apple approach you'd just get a click-through one day that you ignored and kept on using the service. Then, a week later, articles would begin to appear about the changes which would largely get ignored by the users. But, since Google is pushing it in the user's face constantly trying to make them aware ... well, they get more attention.

That is the primary reason that I feel Google is, by far, the better in terms of privacy. Like any company, you can leave at any time ... Google is just far better at giving you advance notice so you can make an informed decision.
 
You have flagged the evil search engine flags

evil ninja swerls have been dispatched....

prepare to die.....while searching.....:D
 
Ididar said:
Google is better than most primarily because they pretty much tell you what they're going to do. Most other companies in the same position just change their privacy policies without near the amount of "in your face" notifications that Google does. The recent changes have been news precisely because Google was very up-front about what it was doing. If they took the typical MS or Apple approach you'd just get a click-through one day that you ignored and kept on using the service. Then, a week later, articles would begin to appear about the changes which would largely get ignored by the users. But, since Google is pushing it in the user's face constantly trying to make them aware ... well, they get more attention.

That is the primary reason that I feel Google is, by far, the better in terms of privacy. Like any company, you can leave at any time ... Google is just far better at giving you advance notice so you can make an informed decision.
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Actually, I think it's smart. It has a sort of silencing effect when you volunteer the info first, rather than someone else discovers and points out, "Hey look at what google is doing now!" They get their words in first. All the "google is being sneaky" steam is taken out of critics mouth. If I were an evil corp, I'd do what google is doing. They aren't dumb. There is a lot still going on that we don't know.
 
The real tinfoil hat crowd likes to claim that one of the original angel investors for Google is/was a CIA financed investment vehicle.
 

Probably no more than other websites?
I just went there and searched for "Google Tracking Cookies", went to their "Opt Out" menu, which it turned out that I was already "Opted Out" of, for what ever that is worth?
Goggle only tried to set one cookie for each webpage I went to, whereas others have tried to set up to 10, or more cookies on the first webpage?
 
Meh... that point is moot...

Google already had more information on me than I probably have... And apparently it's legal so they can't be evil then.
 
Let's all remember that corporations don't exist. They are just make-believe.

People exist. And like most big corporations Google is ruled by evil people.
 
Show me one corporation that is not evil.

New Google logo for their search page: G$$GLE
 
TheArTcher said:
Let's all remember that corporations don't exist. They are just make-believe.

People exist. And like most big corporations Google is ruled by evil people.
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No, evil people are easy to spot. They live (and die) by fear. Corporations and other large profit organizations are filled with people who rationalize that if something the company does is really wrong, the law will step in. In the mean time, I got mine and screw you because the "company" is responsible and not us individual cogs. The majority of wrong doing is not caused by evil people but, by people who stand by and let bad things happen.
 
Lets see... You might be on to something for a new logo...

GOOGLE

£$$£¥€

G$$G£€

Lets be creative people...
 
LonerVamp said:
The "slogan" went out of style when Google went public, which means the founders are no longer calling the shots, but rather a large pool of investors who will always prefer to make money at any cost, including privacy costs.
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The founders still have controlling share. Investors aren't running the company, Larry and Sergey are.

And the new privacy policy doesn't have much to do with ads at all - they already had access to way more information than needed to do targeted advertising. It doesn't actually take much to target advertising, and it's not like this new privacy policy is resulting in a ton of ads all over the place now.

No, the new policy is to allow services to interact with each other seamlessly as people are demanding these days. If as consumers you demand a seamless experience between a company's products, you really can't be surprised when that company says "OK" and adjusts the privacy policy to make that possible. Imagine if Siri and iOS had different privacy policies and couldn't talk to each other - Siri would be damn near useless as a result. That is what Google's old privacy policies were like.

This whole "no opt out" thing is a bit ridiculous as well. Google has had off switches and controls for all this stuff for years, including http://www.dataliberation.org/ if you don't want to use Google anymore. How can you really call a company that makes it transparent what they are doing, give you control over what they can do, AND make it easy for you to leave "evil"?
 
Totally agreed. It eludes me why bloggers continue to think they're so clever when they write headlines like "Is Google Evil?"
 
Yakk said:
Lets see... You might be on to something for a new logo...

GOOGLE

£$$£¥€

G$$G£€

Lets be creative people...
Click to expand...

:D

googleiswatchingyou.png



somebodywatchingme.png
 
Arrest the google CEOs and shave their heads! See if they bear the mark of the beast!

Against what sinners like hollywood make out (to hide the truth! :eek:) it is actually a symbol of a half eaten fruit. Representing the inflicted having taken a bite from the fruit of the tree of dellusion (the tree of knowledge's lesser known cousin, the tree of knowledge itself was a quince.). Which as we all know, mr, snakey satan caused humans to do! :eek:

:D
 
MrGuvernment said:
is it really private if you voluntarily give it to someone?
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Exactly.

I really don't understand what the outcry is about. I wouldn't consider anything I input into any Google service to be top secret super private like these people are talking about. I'd rather look at targeted ads than ads for makeup or tampons while I search for something.

Plus nobody said you HAVE to use Google. If you are going to use their services, you have to play by their rules. If you don't like their rules, go play somewhere else. These guys act like the water or power company changed their privacy policy and will now be selling customer financial information to the Chinese.

They really need to get over themselves...myself personally - nothing I do on the internet requires maximum privacy. I can't imagine anyone else being much different unless it is their daily business to e-mail social security numbers and driver's license numbers back and forth for fun. That, or porn.
 
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