google vs evil
Interesting article about how Google chooses its advertisers and basically uses one of the creators as their moral guide. Wired 11.01: Google vs. Evil
The world’s biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don’t be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business.
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But a funny thing is happening on the way to Internet adulthood - Google’s awkward teen years. The company’s growth spurt has spawned a host of daunting questions that no data-retrieval system can easily answer. Should Google play ball with repressive foreign governments? Refuse to link users to "hate" sites? Punish marketers who artificially inflate site rankings? Fight the Church of Scientology’s attempts to silence critics? And what to do about the cache, Google’s archive of previously indexed pages? In April, the German national railroad threatened legal action to remove an obsolete site containing sabotage instructions.
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But a funny thing is happening on the way to Internet adulthood - Google’s awkward teen years. The company’s growth spurt has spawned a host of daunting questions that no data-retrieval system can easily answer. Should Google play ball with repressive foreign governments? Refuse to link users to "hate" sites? Punish marketers who artificially inflate site rankings? Fight the Church of Scientology’s attempts to silence critics? And what to do about the cache, Google’s archive of previously indexed pages? In April, the German national railroad threatened legal action to remove an obsolete site containing sabotage instructions.
It has been my favorite search engine for some time, and I did know about the China thing, but the rest of it was news to me. I can see how they are in a tough place on some of this. But I think that so far, they’ve done a good balancing act. I’ve never been this loyal to a search engine for this long until this point. But it consistantly finds me good results.
Comments
Google has quickly become my favorite and it’s the only one I use anymore.
Posted by: Kymberlie R. McGuire | December 17, 2002 09:27 AM
Google rocks. I’ve even gotten my grandmother to use it now
Posted by: chicky | December 17, 2002 02:56 PM