As a google fan, i feel obliged to answer your posts. Fyi: this is just my opinions.
Thanks for the response. I wasn't intending to post today, but I'll take a few minutes to respond to this one.
I will say, outright, that you don't seem to be precisely the type of person I'm pointing at with my message. Your post evidences a couple of things that suggest this. First, there seems to be an acceptance of Google not having the slightest claim to morality (which WAS a big factor with Google for a while - the Google Groupies who said "Well, they're not evil like Microsoft or Apple") - meaning you know you're dealing with a self serving company that has zero interest in your well being beyond how it affects their profit margin. Second, you're aware that Google is bringing about some bad stuff, and you've more or less resigned yourself to this - so, you're somewhat like a person who is opposed to the two party system but doesn't believe they can change it, so the vote R or D. Third, you're aware that what they are giving you isn't free - and you're not blowing smoke about how other companies are greedy and bad, not like good old Google.
Just to be clear, plenty of Google fans are still holding on to their ideas about Google's goodness, generosity, and other misunderstandings about precisely what Google is. They see something like Google fiber and think "What a generous company!" rather than seeing a very creative business model by which they creep in to gain a greater control of the flow of information. Much of what Google does is convenient, very novel, creative, intelligent, and forward thinking, but it has been a long time since Google has been anything but a giant multinational corporation that has zero genuine interest in your wellbeing ahead of appeasing its shareholders.
I adopted googles services because of convenience, ease of use and results. I was never under the impression these things are free. I never cared about the do no evil slogan, corporations are created to make money, morals are rarely the primary or even secondary concern.
This is actually a lot like my relationship with Amazon. I recognize that, every time I buy something on Amazon, I move the notch the tiniest fraction towards shutting down a local store, something which I ultimately don't want - but it's convenient, and much like you with Google, I've thrown my hands up and said "it's happening anyway." I respect someone's right to pick their battles, and I don't begrudge you doing this at all. My main issue is when people complain about Google, scoring some sort of moral points for their talk, while their actions support Google. If Google complaining about patent trolling while being the first ever convicted patent troll themselves bothers you and you still use their products wholesale? That bothers me. If you say "Meh, I don't like it, but these companies are all kind of the same" then, have at it. At least you know what you're doing and what you’re supporting.
Personally i dont think they should cave to Chinas demands but thats a huge market that represents a lot of money and corporations are created to make money so i understand why they would submit to China to get some of that market share.
More of the above.
Every trch company by virtue of location will have a left leaning slant to it. Personally i dont care, i dont just take googles word for it when researching important topics. As for influencing elections to me its no different then those dumbass tv ads or the signs you see in everyones yards. If thats what people are basing their political views on than i cant help them anyways.
This is part of why I try and avoid Google products - why this is where I take my general stance of "avoid Google products where I can" - and I do, though I do use youtube for audiobooks and lecture series. My issue is the idea of “
I don’t just take googles word for it when researching important topics” because Google is in a historically unique situation – it is closer to obtaining something approximating a monopoly on how people gather information than any other entity in history, with the exception of things like, say, the Catholic Church at some times in European history, and the comparison is a complicated one to make in that case. If Google continues on the path it is on, with people using it as their go-to source for almost any incidental information, then “Google’s word for it” becomes the prevailing view of the masses.
I’m an academic who teaches. Usually after my first assigned paper comes back, I see a fairly uniform list of sources cited for first and second year students. When I see this, every year, I ask them “So, tell me a bit about your research practices?” and it always comes back the same – “Well, I went on Google and looked up ‘Shakespeare The Tempest Criticism’ and scanned the first three or so pages and grabbed the sources that popped up.” We have a discussion about the uniformity of the sources that they’ve gathered from using Google for their research – and then I ask them to think, how would a college student in Florida do their research for an assignment on The Tempest? They respond – “Run a Google search.” What about one in Toronto or Manchester? “They’ll run a Google Search.” The problem starts to dawn on them – all the world over, a
tremendous number of students will approach their research the exact same way, and students the world over will be citing precisely the same sources. Granted, many of them are good sources, but the problem is that they’re all the same sources taken from the same pool. I then tell them how I used to research in my early university days – which was go into the library looking for a book and grab a half dozen other related items from the shelves on the campus library. That campus library had a – to a degree – unique lineup of critical works on hand based on the relevant department and librarians. The result of this is that, anyone going to my school would be starting from a different position from a student at any other school, and as they progressed from school to school, they would get a unique research environment in this small, but surprisingly significant, way. Scholars’ careers have been shaped by something as simple as the books on the shelf at the place they did their undergrad – and uniformity in how students gather research materials becomes a threat to diversity of scholasticism. Google becoming that one “library shelf” that everyone in the world goes to first, and perhaps only, is a threat to diversity of scholasticism.
The research issues is a microcosm of how humans acquire knowledge as a whole, because the number of younger people who learn virtually everything from Google is astonishingly high. Google is the veritable oracle of Delphi that they all have access to – so when you say “I don’t just take Google’s word for it,” that’s a luxury you have now because Google doesn’t quite have the stranglehold it wants to have on how we gather information that it could have. I’ve had discussions with people where they Google something and, if to doesn’t show up on Google, they will not accept something as even plausible. Google has become the benchmark of truth for some – and probably a lot more as time goes on. That’s a lot of power to place on one company, on one algorithm – and ultimately, one lens through which to filter information, however marvelously powerful and capable it is. Do you start to see the problem?
Now, I’m not naïve enough to think myself, or any number of people concerned about it, is going to take down Google, defeat search engines as how we gather knowledge, etc – nor would I want to. Search engines, the internet, and a lot of what Google and other companies are doing, stands to revolutionize how humans know things – but what I’m concerned about is managing the costs as we go forward with it. The problem becomes one of markets – and, in a unique way in history, search engines are making acquisition of knowledge a market problem, in a neoliberal environment. Google is, in essence, competing to be the primary product by which people gather information, and they’re winning right now. Granted, they’re winning because they have a damned good product – but what is the cost of having
any single organization win that particular market? That cost is very, very high. The way I think one can resist this is to, wherever possible, use an alternative product not under Alphabet’s umbrella. Maybe it doesn’t work quite as well, but the more you exclusively use Google and their products, the more the gap widens, and the closer we get to everyone learning virtually everything from that single source. That end is a profound threat to the diversity of human knowledge the likes of which humanity has never faced before – but it’s convenient, powerful, and seems like it’s free, so it’s essentially winning the market of human knowledge.
Im mildly concerned with the information gathering that ALL tech companies are doing but overall ive just accepted it as a cost of doing business. Sort of like cameras everywhere. They invade our privacy but if they solve more murders and prevent more crime im ok with that.
Ive just accepted that everything about me is out there somewhere and than i quit worrying about it.
This is why you’re not the one I’m talking to in my previous post, so much. You’re aware of many of the costs of this practice and are saying “Screw it – it’s worth it” or “I just don’t really care.” What bothers me is people who are aware of the problems, claim to care, but just rationalize away supporting Google.
AI is the future, theres no stopping it. All we can do is try to guide it. Good luck with that.
The problem with Google is that there seems to be a bit of an apathy about guiding anything they do – because they’re convenient and “it’s going to happen anyway.” People express concerns, but justify doing nothing. This is a problem that could bear bitter fruits in time.
I wasnt a fan of the devision but respect the right of a company to fire an employee based on their own rules.
As do I. The thing is, if I disagree with those rules, I may express my distaste for the company’s products by not supporting the company further. My issue with many Google users is that they do claim they care a great deal about Google’s practices – but where it matters, in terms of use of their products, they don’t budge their position an inch and use Android, Google search, and Youtube, exclusively, without a second thought. Their protestations and concerns are the “thoughts and prayers” of effective activism in this case.
Overall Google is a company, not good, not evil.
But ill still use their products.
That’s fine. Be aware though – if you do care about Google gaining what amounts to a virtual monopoly on how people come to know things, with no other organization in existence being in a position to challenge whatever narrative Google puts forward, then you should seriously consider alternatives. Generations to come will be far more “plugged in” than we are and, if they look at Google, or any single company like it, as the font of all knowledge, then that organization gets to decide
what knowledge is. Every person who fights a single organization gaining a monopoly on the means by which we come to know the world is important, because so many essentially don’t care about the outcome.
I want to be clear – I’m not against using Google products. I use them where I don’t have an even partially viable alternative. They make excellent products in many areas, and I think people should use them. I also think people should consider the cost of using Google, exclusively or near to it, for gathering information, because the long term cost of this becoming a direction that society moves in general is going to be much higher than we think. Support competitors, support more classic ways of gaining knowledge, and be willing to challenge what a search engine tells you. As soon as you, and everyone around you, internally adopts the idea of “Google it!” as being the answer to every question, we’ve willingly conceded a type of freedom that is more important to the diversity of human knowledge than most people will ever realize, and let a gentle tyranny that Orwell never dreamt of slip over us. Sometimes the answer to a question is to buckle down and, in the silence of one’s own thoughts, contemplate and overcome it through one’s own ingenuity and reasoning. The ability to Google a solution for virtually everything strips this expression of agency and self-reliance away and replaces it with a doodle covered prosthesis replacing the tools by which we formulate knowledge.
