AutoDebate

Google Is Evil

Some basic rules on Google as a corporation

  1. a corporation first and foremost goal is to generate increasing profits
  2. a corporation can be bought, sold and change its staff
  3. a corporation motto is not its goal or a legal binding
  • 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
  • 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)
  • 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
  • Google is so innovative, by using it we favor innovation

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

Google toolsAlternatives
search (cf under)Seeks, CommonCrawl ...
MapsOpenStreeMaps, ...
GMailRoundCube, ...
GtalkJabber, Status.Net, ...
cacheInternet Archive
DocsFengOffice, ...
ReaderNewsBlur, ...
sitesUNHOSTED

To do

See also

Inspired by

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

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