Google Is Evil {AutoDebate}

• their motto says "Don't be evil"
  • I can say Im an elephant, it doesn't make me one
• Google founders are really nice guys
  • when the founders leave (with their initial ideal), most corporation changes
• Google has information but they retain it only for X months
  • they are supposed to store personal data in the US for 18 months, refined data we can not know
    • "de-personalized data" was few months ago showed to be able to get un-de-personalized data cf Wikipedia:Differential privacy#Massachusetts_Group_Insurance_Commission_.28GIC.29_medical_encounter_database
• Im the user, if I don't like something they will change it
  • you are the user indeed but you are not the consumer, cf Wikipedia:Two-sided market, your data is what is being sold, that's precisely why you get the service for "free"
• everything Google does is public
  • Erich Schmit, CEO of Google for a little while, removed results about his own life after saying publicly that if you don't want something bad to be displayed, you shouldn't do it in the first place
• Google took some strong political position against censorship in China
  • Google.cn is still up as when writing this page (March 2010)
• Google books, green tech, Google.org/ they are mostly doing good
  • Google philanthropist branch http://www.google.org/ isn't purely philanthropic, it's also a major communication tool (and I wont even talk about tax evasion or such mechanisms).
  • green tech not because it's "positive" or whatever hippie thing, they invest in it because it lowers their margin, they are some of the biggest energy spending corporations better PUE (cf Wikipedia:Power usage effectiveness) means less waste but means even more largest profits (especially thanks to subsidiaries paid by... citizens)
    • a lot of others very large corporation are part of similar "NGO" http://www.thegreengrid.org/
• it is still better than the government having it all
  • the government being evil or not doesn't make Google any better
  • Google having personal information does not in any way limit the government desire (and required actions) to gather personal data, one could even consider it as an insurance in case of major trouble
• all those are just hypotheses or your opinions
  • please do check legal cases including Google's List of Class-Action Lawsuits by InfoNIAC 2007, class-actions in your own country, the Wikipedia:Criticism of Google page and finally the very active since few years Open Book Alliance
• Google is so innovative, by using it we favor innovation
  • PageRank: Stand on the shoulders of giants by Massimo Franceschet, arXiv February 2010
    • mentioning the 1941 work of Harvard economist and Nobel prize winner Wassily Leontief

In conclusion

Google may not be evil, but they have a pretty dangerously high "evil potential".

Note

Google can be replaced by nearly any large corporation. Your grand-mother home business is in fact different because it is restricted to a local scale and does not have the resources to study the law and even less to modify it thanks to lobbyist and pressure groups (see also Legal Strategies : How Corporations Use Law to Improve Performance). The only twist is that most of us are interacting with Google one way or another and that each interaction is a trace to use for profit..

Alternatives

• the Data Liberation Front central location for information on how to move your data in and out of Google products.
• Wikipedia:Google Maps#Comparable_services
• TNW Search The Next Web
  • including former AltSearchEngines by Charles S. Knight
• Distributed Web Search
  • Wikipedia:Template:Distributed_search_engines
  • YaCy Distributed Web Search with Peer-to-Peer Index Sharing
  • Distributed Search Engines, O'Reilly OpenP2P
    • surprisingly poor listing
  • MINERVA: P2P Distributed Web Search by Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
  • FAROO Peer-to-peer Web Search Engine
  • Seeks Project real-time, decentralized, websearch
  • centralized and commercial Eurekster Swicki custom search portal around the topic of your choice powered by your community
• TrackMeNot lightweight browser extension that helps protect web searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines.
  • discovered with TrackMeNot: Injecting Reasonable Doubt in Everyone’s Queries @ HOPE
• Open Source Alternatives to Google by Matt Hartley, Datamation.com February 2011
• UNG Project by the Free Cloud Alliance
  • most possible complete list of alternatives to proprietary cloud computing solutions

To do

• FOSS leverage
  • funding project (GoogleOS, Chrome, VP8, Android, ...) vs. community free labor, is the dependency on corporations a curse or a blessing for the FOSS movement?
  • beside free monitoring, contact within the FOSS community and advertisement, for Google I want to know what they gain
    • license changes?
      • http://code.google.com/soc/ http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs#owns_code http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/tos
    • discussions
      • seedeabitlbee/felipesanches 24/06/2010 at 05:35
      • freenode/#gsoc 24/06/2010 at 05:40
  • no result through Stanford Web Search
  • http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/guidelines.html
  • http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/
  • global stats on FOSS funding, not just for Mozilla, but overall, how much large vendors like IBM, Google, Sun, ... spend on it
    • evolution over time
  • Error Message: Google Research Director Peter Norvig on Being Wrong, The Wrong Stuff, Slate August 2010
    • "We do a lot of open-source projects, because if we release code and some other company makes something really cool that makes the Internet better, we benefit, too. About half of Internet users are using Google search, so if another company builds something and two people start using the Internet because of it, we're going to get one of them. "
• actual R&D
  • what has been out of Google labs lately? at what price?

See also

• GoogleSharing A Special Kind Of Proxy
  • aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit.
• Scroogle Scraper by Google Watch
• Inside the Mind of Google by Maria Bartiromo, CNBC 2010
• Information Rules : A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian (current Google Chief Economist Officer as of 2010)
  • Information Rules
• Wikipedia:List of acquisitions by Google
• 5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Google by Robert Evans, Cracked.com May 2010
• Google's Lights and Shadows : Past and Future of Metadata Industry by ippolita, Feltrinelli 2007
• Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring by Noah Shachtman, Wired.com July 2010
• The Dark Side Of Google
• A Review of Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal by Cindy Cohn, Electronic Frontier Foundation August 2010
• List of Subsidiaries of Google Inc., a Delaware corporation, SEC
• Search neutrality? How Google became a "neutrality" target by Nate Anderson, ars technica May 2010
  • Chapter 10 Information Policy of Information Rules
• Don't Be Evil?, ConsumerWatchdog September 2010
• Leave Google Behind Don't give Google control over your online life
• William Gibson on Google’s Earth by Mr Roboto, Cyberpunk Review September 2010
• World of Goo on Google by Greg Linden, Geeking with Greg March 2010
• Google Confirms That It Fired Engineer For Breaking Internal Privacy Policies by Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch September 2010
• http://www.BuzzClassAction.com promoted by Google itself through Gmail
• Le Dieu Google / les mutations de la lecture with Ariel Kyrou, Place de la Toile, France Culture October 2010
• http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1vz63d/i_love_google_cmv/

Inspired by

• countless conversations about Google
• discussion with a former Yahoo! employee
• Google, The Beast File March 2010