Google: From being great and loved, to becoming dangerous.

Priam · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:25 am

This is gonna be a huge read, but it might be worth it from the discussion that might arrise.

Im studying Interactive Media. And for a course i've recently read a lot of things about 'Search Engine Marketing'.

Of course this immediatly lead to Google. And i started reading about google as an organisation. I was horrified, The search engine we all once loved so dearly, has become a monster.

Some facts:

Quote:

Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California.[5] They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page.[6] Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[7] A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.[8] Source: wikipedia

Ever since the start of Google in 1996, google has now taken over 50+ companies and concepts, in several segments of several markets. Amounts paid vary a lot, Some huge aquisitions are Youtube for USD 1.65 Billion, and Ad-tycoon Doubleclick for USD: 3.1 Billion. Just to name two, of the most well know takeovers.

Funny fact, even with all those companies take over, 80% of google's profit still emerges from advertising. One of they're original products. (AdSense etc). This immense buying of companies. had lead to the sentence: 'Whom will Google buy next?', A question asked on several logs on the intarweb.

</ briefing>

In my opinion, google's becoming dangerous. Yes, a horiffic statement, i know. Let me explain.

Google is getting too big to function properly. They want in on everything, and they are in on everything. They know everything about us, not just on the search platform (which will give them a great deal of info about every person using it, and yes ofc they are logging data.) but also on several other markets. They have gotten companies whom are active in online payment (giving them info about our purchases), and a lot more area's. If they combine these streams of data, they can actually make a pretty detailed character profile on anyone. And regardless of what they're saying, or what the law is restricting them to, they are doing this.

Recently even the CIA approached Google, they want google to share it's database with them. Which imo, is a huge privacy breach.

But not only this. Being such a huge company atm, has lead to them being less secure, and making more mistakes, which have a pretty large impact.

Example given:

The myspace debacle.
This i've read about a couple of weeks ago, some i'm a little rusty on it. Tried to find some info on the matter, but failed. Anyways, this is what i remember. Google had placed links te people's myspace account on whether facebook or youtube, and didn't secure these links. Account info, due to this, got sent in the URL while loading the pages, a lot of accounts were hijacked that day.

furthermore.

There Desktop addon has had several security leaks.
The news business is scared to death, for google.
The search engine allowed site's to be hacked through it in several ways.

I'd come up with some more examples, but i'm at work, and loads of things are blocked.

---------------------

In my opinion, google is becoming more and more of a risk to the outside world. The focus is not on they're search engine anymore, they're becoming bigger every day.

I think people will eventually go from loving google, to hating it's guts. And so they should.

Google should've stayed small(er), and should've kept on perfecting it's original products, giving us the best stuff on the internet. My 2 cents.

/discuss and add/improve this huge read where needed.

Draquish · **Joined:** Mar 2006 **Posts:** 6423 **Location:** ____

Our saviour!

Priam · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:37 am

<3 drags

i'm currently using clusty.com

Draquish · **Joined:** Mar 2006 **Posts:** 6423 **Location:** ____

It's a link to http://www.dogpile.com , which is the search engine of my choice.

Note: I always read everything in a thread before posting.

Priam · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:43 am

[SD]draquish wrote:

It's a link to http://www.dogpile.com , which is the search engine of my choice.

Note: I always read everything in a thread before posting.

edited.

My sincere apoligies.

satman83 · **Joined:** Oct 2006 **Posts:** 9541 **Location:** London

right....you do know that when the US government told Google to give them their
database they said no. and as such are now facing illegal action right?

also most of what your saying is complete crap ok. Google is still the only "free"
search engine not owned by a larger parent company.

Draquish · **Joined:** Mar 2006 **Posts:** 6423 **Location:** ____

Hmm, I'm liking Clusty's "Clustering."

Barely anyone in my household uses Google anymore.
I believe it has expanded far beyond it's container. Therefore breaking the glass and spreading all over the floor...instead of it staying the cool, refreshing, glass of water that it should have been.

Priam · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:52 am

satman83 wrote:

right....you do know that when the US government told Google to give them their
database they said no. and as such are now facing illegal action right?

also most of what your saying is complete crap ok. Google is still the only "free"
search engine not owned by a larger parent company.

It's actually based on facts. It's not crap. Yes google initially said no to the cia/government, but they're gonna be forced to co-operate anyway. Which still makes google the dangerous one, since they are farming all the data.

Furthermore, the part i highlighted is totally off. Google's search engine has stopped being there main product years ago. It's now a search engine owned by a 'larger companie' called: Google enterprises.

And there ARE other free search engines, hell me and Draquish allready offered 2.

I don't like you throwing words like 'crap' around in a post which clearly states based on fatcs Satman, l2 read.

fena · **Joined:** May 2007 **Posts:** 4441 **Location:** Life

Ugh. I agree. This all just goes back to the argument of how much privacy we really have on the internet. In reality, it's disappearing under the radar, but it's disappearing quick. With a bunch of data farming companies being the top ten most known websites, how much are you willing to bet that someplace, somewhere, there's a list of every single page we've visited, every single product we've bought, and every single music file we've downloaded?
Take Facebook for example. I use it. Yet I know that when I log into their site, every single search I make is probably being collected. Any ad I click on is probably being logged. Every single comment I make is saved off somewhere.

And yet I still use it. The problem is, I think that most people are alert to these concerns and privacy breaches. Yet, like me, most people have the attitude that it won't happen to [i]them[i]. Just like how when you go off to war, you always think the guy next to you is going to die - not you.

satman83 · **Joined:** Oct 2006 **Posts:** 9541 **Location:** London

Priam wrote:

satman83 wrote:

right....you do know that when the US government told Google to give them their
database they said no. and as such are now facing illegal action right?

also most of what your saying is complete crap ok. Google is still the only "free"
search engine not owned by a larger parent company.

It's actually based on facts. It's not crap. Yes google initially said no to the cia/government, but they're gonna be forced to co-operate anyway. Which still makes google the dangerous one, since they are farming all the data.

Furthermore, the part i highlighted is totally off. Google's search engine has stopped being there main product years ago. It's now a search engine owned by a 'larger companie' called: Google enterprises.

And there ARE other free search engines, hell me and Draquish allready offered 2.

I don't like you throwing words like 'crap' around in a post which clearly states based on fatcs Satman, l2 read.

if a huge multi-billion company like Google has to give in to the US demands for
data then do you think some small search engine stands a chance of saying no?
Lets face it...theres no such thing a private internet anymore.
Everything we do is monitored.

Priam · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 1:58 pm

satman83 wrote:

if a huge multi-billion company like Google has to give in to the US demands for
data then do you think some small search engine stands a chance of saying no?
Lets face it...theres no such thing a private internet anymore.
Everything we do is monitored.

Not every search engine works like Google. Clusty for example keeps a low profile. And google as a stand-alone search engine wouldn't have been as valuable to any government as they are now. The got themselves into this position by buying all those companies, and becoming active on every market.

I don't like my world turning into George Orwell's '1984'. So i'm not willing to 'face it'.

Jstar1 · **Joined:** Mar 2007 **Posts:** 4757 **Location:**

I hate how businesses start out great and everyone likes them, and then when they become popular and start making more money, they get greedy and start lowering their standard, raising prices, disgusting customer support, and general rudeness. Its like that for almost every business around my area. I hate businessmen, they suck because ther so greedy

Swindler · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 5:10 pm

Midori · **Joined:** Mar 2007 **Posts:** 3425 **Location:**

Jstar1 wrote:

I hate how businesses start out great and everyone likes them, and then when they become popular and start making more money, they get greedy and start lowering their standard, raising prices, disgusting customer support, and general rudeness. Its like that for almost every business around my area. I hate businessmen, they suck because ther so greedy

oh my, you just described joymax.

i don't know about yall, but im not scared of this so called monster called google. every search engine out there logs searches (and other search engines gave up that information to the goverment before google did). now what yu should be afriad of is if they are logging ip's.

sounds like a conspiracy to me tbh

Innovacious · **Joined:** Sep 2006 **Posts:** 2446 **Location:**

Google is full of crap now anyway. It used to be easy to find what you want but now its just terrible. Im not sure thats all googles fault though. There are ALOT of redundent webpages on the net but google bots dont care, they scan them all unless told otherwise. Because of this you can get a whole page of links that all have exactly the same information (probably not the information you want) but just on different websites.

Also, alot of the links in google are now just links to other search engines (the generic ones you get on websites nobody owns that nobody ever uses) and crappy youtube videos. There also used to be ebay links on pretty much every search that went "get cheap (your keywords here) on ebay!". So you search for "African midget slave children" and the first result is "get cheap African midget slave children on ebay!" but they have fixed that now i think.

So basically, because of the sheer amount of crap on the internet google has gone to crap because it dosnt think "this website is crap, i wont scan it", its just scans it all.

I dont really care about all the other crap they do, the search engine alone is putting me off now.

I remember when google was new, it was good, you typed your keywords and you got some useful links. now you get the same crap link 10 times with a few unrelated vidoes and generic search engines thrown into the mix.

(usually i will check spelling, grammar etc. in my larger posts but this is more like a rant and i cant really be bothered so excuse any errors)

heroo · **Joined:** Sep 2006 **Posts:** 6618 **Location:**

this what you get when a company grows bigger and bigger.

they become more greedy.

CrimsonNuker · **Joined:** Aug 2006 **Posts:** 13791 **Location:**

HejsaN wrote:

[pic]

Thats getting old >_>

XemnasXD · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:40 pm

I thought time warner or FOX bought google by now....

Reise · **Joined:** May 2006 **Posts:** 6650 **Location:**

Who cares, let them buy out the internet.

Priam · **Posted:** Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:19 am

Google used to scout for redundant webpages in the beginning. I guess they can't anymore.

Crumpets · **Joined:** Aug 2006 **Posts:** 7800 **Location:**

satman83 wrote:

Priam wrote:

satman83 wrote:

right....you do know that when the US government told Google to give them their
database they said no. and as such are now facing illegal action right?

also most of what your saying is complete crap ok. Google is still the only "free"
search engine not owned by a larger parent company.

It's actually based on facts. It's not crap. Yes google initially said no to the cia/government, but they're gonna be forced to co-operate anyway. Which still makes google the dangerous one, since they are farming all the data.

Furthermore, the part i highlighted is totally off. Google's search engine has stopped being there main product years ago. It's now a search engine owned by a 'larger companie' called: Google enterprises.

And there ARE other free search engines, hell me and Draquish allready offered 2.

I don't like you throwing words like 'crap' around in a post which clearly states based on fatcs Satman, l2 read.

if a huge multi-billion company like Google has to give in to the US demands for
data then do you think some small search engine stands a chance of saying no?
Lets face it...theres no such thing a private internet anymore.
Everything we do is monitored.

Please piss off out of this thread if you can't read what the dear man has to say OK Satman?

Yeah Priam I agree, specially seeing as they wanted to buy Yahoo and failed. God knows what new scheme they are going to think of to finalize that takeover.

I mean take google earth for example, you've seen the street views done by drive-by vans. Imagine them putting up massive beacons to stream live images over a massive area. Or live satellite images lol >.<

Viola:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10251
Government ran cam: http://cam1.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/view/index.shtml Easy huh ?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060111-5952.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/ma ... media.news

Here Priam, I guess you were looking for this?
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/20/ ... le.php?rss

Sorry for my extension but hey, interested in it too : >

Priam · **Posted:** Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:16 am

Yer i was, thanks.

Google is becoming very dangerous imo, even Streetview poses a privacy threat. (thanks for mentioning that)

Draquish · **Joined:** Mar 2006 **Posts:** 6423 **Location:** ____

I have recently switched to Clusty.com .

Dogpile started giving me bad results. >_>

I've been Google-free for a while now...

Sharp324 · **Joined:** Jan 2007 **Posts:** 4383 **Location:**

X-Lax wrote:

Jstar1 wrote:

I hate how businesses start out great and everyone likes them, and then when they become popular and start making more money, they get greedy and start lowering their standard, raising prices, disgusting customer support, and general rudeness. Its like that for almost every business around my area. I hate businessmen, they suck because ther so greedy

oh my, you just described joymax.

i don't know about yall, but im not scared of this so called monster called google. every search engine out there logs searches (and other search engines gave up that information to the goverment before google did). now what yu should be afriad of is if they are logging ip's.

sounds like a conspiracy to me tbh

You act like nothing logs IPs now lol.

Valkasdar · **Joined:** Jul 2007 **Posts:** 359

Ive seen even more bad things about google... I try to not use it but :| After 3 weeks I start using it again... :roll:

John_Doe · **Joined:** Mar 2007 **Posts:** 2094 **Location:**

I went to dinner with google, was fun, ^^ hehe no privacy? All I had to do was tell google in the face, remember the second amendement of the Bill of Rights, The right to keep and bear arms, stay outta my way or I'll blow your head away. Google went home and never called me back. I felt hurt >< it was our first date.

Pan_Raider(`_´) · **Joined:** Jul 2006 **Posts:** 4737 **Location:**

indeed, google is getting bigger by the minute.

i can already picture kids in 20 years playing hide and seek over google earth via satellite

AngelEyes · **Joined:** Jan 2008 **Posts:** 633 **Location:**

Look, it doesn't matter if it's Google, or Yahoo, or one of the smaller engines your information is stored in a database, this is the information age, and information is power, why would any company give up information on you, it gives them power. They can sell it, analyze it, direct it, it really doesn't matter because they will keep it. If Google had stayed small, they would've been gobbled up by one of the other larger companies. Regardless of any idealist thoughts of staying small to offer an alternative, with a few exceptions, most people start a company to either become the next Microsoft or a 'la YouTube sell it so they never have to work again. If you're paranoid about being data mined, you can follow the advice on this site, although it will slow down your web experience. http://filesharefreak.com/2008/03/04/ho ... g-brother/

We aren't far removed from the age of Minority Report where all advertising in public will gear itself towards you specifically, they use the RFID technology, currently it's being used on skids to inventory product, but it's real close to being put on clothing so that a store knows when something is out of stock instantly and can be replenished, currently the RFIDs deactivate when passing through the scanners, but it's not difficult to change that so that they stay active outside the store once a few hurdles are jumped and palms are greased.

All I'm saying is this how the world works, if it wasn't Google doing this, it would be Microsoft, or Sony or Disney or some other large company. Hey you can use whatever engine you want, if your on the internet, your being spied upon. Read below an excerpt from the EFF's lawsuit

Mark Klein is a retired AT&T telecommunications technician who blew the whistle on the government's warrantless surveillance program. When news reports of the illegal spying surfaced in December of 2005, Klein realized that he had been witness to -- and participated in setting up -- massive surveillance technology that violated the rights of millions of Americans. In early 2006, Klein brought EFF authenticated documents showing how AT&T diverted customers' communications to a room controlled by the National Security Agency. EFF now represents AT&T customers in a class-action lawsuit over the illegal spying. http://www.eff.org/

Priam · **Posted:** Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:24 pm

Sadly yes, this is the data mining age. But it's up to ourselves right now to look into it, and ask ourselves if we are happy about the whole situation.

Granted it's not only Google, but google has become a major player now, on several fronts, which is the main thing. Hell google even has plans to get into mobile telephony. Which gives them yet another market, to datamine to bits.

Fact is, with all the info on several fronts google is receiving, they can build a very accurate character profile on anyone. Which can be used to create new products, but can also be used for a damn lot of bad things. So might day it's over-reacting, but where does it stop. Clearly there is no line atm, but there should be. I for one don't like being monitored about every single thing i do, whether it's calling on my cell, or browsing on the internet.

Google and it's several subsection monitor 80% of our internet usage, microsoft, yahoo and other fill in for the rest.

I disagree with you on the staying small part, Google in fact was picked up by millions of people mainly because of they're small status, easy to use, accurate results, and lovely image.

imo, they have lost all that.

AngelEyes · **Joined:** Jan 2008 **Posts:** 633 **Location:**

Actually one of the reasons I still use Google is because of it's un-cluttered webpage. When I load a search engine, I don't want what the weather is 500miles from me, or some news article about albino baby crocodiles found in a toaster or some junk like that. I want to find what I'm looking for and be gone. With a few firefox plugin's I don't get annoyed by googles ads and irrelevant searches. So they have my data stored away, in the real world I'm such an uninteresting person I'll blend in with the 5.5 billion other uninteresting people in the world. Is there a chance that some cracker is going to step in and steal my identity? sure, why would he want to though, my credit sucks, I don't have any money, the time they did something I could undo it. Besides, there is a chance I could get into a car accident, it doesn't stop me from driving.

I'll agree with you that the whole situation is a little disconcerting about what is available about you out there, but really, if someone really wants to get to know all about you, they can easily do it through social engineering or dumpster diving.

Any large corporation becomes dangerous, I'm yet to see one that hasn't gotten into trouble for some shady dealings. Just check out wikileaks.org if you really want to see some interesting things done by large corporations. I used to be paranoid about all this stuff, then I realized, you know what, despite my delusions of grandeur, I'm just not that important to the continued functioning of the world for someone to show a personal interest me (other than my wife, she'd like to see my bank account statments)

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