Google hits back at 'Dear Rupert' over search dominance claims Google has penned a response to News Corp’s accusations that the web firm is a “platform for piracy” and its exhortation to Europe to crack down on on the search firm even further. In a post on the Choc Factory’s official blog, Rachel Whetstone, head of global comms, rebutted News Corp’s points one by one while taking a few …
The sooner your filthy rags all close down the better. For too long have your nasty tabloid toilet paper rags peddled lies, political bias, exaggeration, jingoism and propaganda to the world to manipulate public opinion for your own benefit. (It'd be nice if all the other papers would close down as well. They're either as bad or worse.)
It is pretty obvious that a population free to search for many points of view on a subject and perform objective research on world events rather than relying on the shit you publish goes against your interests.
Google may not be whiter than white but at least it does provide a service where people can search for information from various sources to enable them to make objective decisions on their own.
+1 For the removal of political bias from the rags!
The only problem is that when most people search on [engine] they are only searching for their points of view and the results they get will only reinforce that - esp with the personalisation of search results that we get now...
Personalization is a bad thing. If a friend calls (a not-computer-literate friend) and asks me to find something online, I use google to do so. I used to be able to tell the friend what to type into the search box so that we'd both see exactly the same thing. With personalization, that's no longer possible. Thanks, you google idiots.
"It is pretty obvious that a population free to search for many points of view on a subject and perform objective research on world events rather than relying on the shit you publish goes against your interests."
The only problem is that, thanks to Google, people can't perform an "objective search". If you are accepting Google cookies then your future search results are biased using your past search result viewing habits; if you visit mostly right wing-biased media sites Google will bias its results to give you more of the same. If you are left wing-biased, the same goes for you, too.
So, between Rupert's pablum and Google's auto-search bias the world has become a giant self-feedback loop: people only see what they WANT to see and do not experience much outside the bubble of their own design.
Yet another reason that (a) Google has become dangerous to general freedoms as their business practices have wide repercussions and, (b) you shouldn't really be accepting Google cookies in the first place, if you know what's good for you.
But personalisation is usually a good thing. If you regularly search for products and all of the sites you click on are for prices then Google would be more likely to show you sites with prices. If you always click on review sites then your results will be personalised for reviews.
If most of the type of results you are looking for are usually on page 3 because it is a fringe topic but has a more popular meaning, this personalisation can bring you niche results back onto page 1.
Also most right-wingers want to see right-wing articles and most left-wingers want to see left wing articles. Pushing results to the contrary under their nose (by those who have better SEO staff rather than better points of view) is not necessarily the job of a search engine. If you want a contrary point of view you can find it yourself - no hand holding required.
I do not agree at ALL. The idea of a search engine is to return SEARCHES, not be a "back patter" and reinforce your ego by telling you that the world works according to your personal bias. A "search engine" that isn't returning OBJECTIVE searches and allowing you, the user, to decide what to view or not to view is, therefore and essentially, censoring the world for your comfort.
It is like trying to pick up a encyclopaedia but instead getting fully interviewed by the librarian to see if you qualify for this version. If you don't, you get a version that suits your tastes with no access possible to any other version. The English Protestant encyclopadedia holds no descriptions for words with foreign etymology; the French version holds no references for English-derived objects; the Chinese version holds no history for actions or items with Japanese origin, etc.etc. etc.
It's a completely bullsh#t theory. When a government decides what you can or can't view, you get your knickers in a knot; when a company does it, you give them an upvote and a "Thank you!". You've applied, and allowed to be applied to yourself, a double-standard and you're cheering them on. You've become so enamored with your tech, and its suppliers, that you are willing to kowtow to their decisions without a single thought.
Except, half the time, Google seem to be taking them down of their own volition, without waiting for a takedown notice. In Germany they got taken to court by the equivalent of the MIAA, GEMA, because YouTube was displaying a link saying the GEMA had asked for the video to be removed, only they hadn't.
Google lost the case and now they say that they have removed the video as a precaution, because they haven't asked GEMA, whether they would object or not.
what is worrying is the way that Google is starting to deliver content, instead of results.
Try "how old is william shakespeare" (or any other well known personality) or similar sorts of search.
They are returning enough information, that you don't ever need to leave the Google results page. This is great for the user, in the short term, but the more Google do this sort of thing, the less original content there will be, because the sites that used to create such data won't get impressions and won't get their advertising revenue, so they will slowly die off.
"Try "how old is william shakespeare"..."
"the sites that used to create such data..."
Surely William Shakespeare's Mother created that data?
The website that displays it has taken that data from somewhere else - it is a collection of facts, so they only have unoriginal content. The thing with facts is that they don't belong to anyone, hence there is no copyright surrounding them (with some exceptions).
As Google take most of their facts from Wikipedia, who don't mind them using them for their knowledge engine then I don't see the problem. If someone wants to search for a "fact" then that is exactly what they want (hopefully from a reliable source). The user wasn't looking for a large number of sites which host that fact. If you were looking for the life story of W. Shakespeare or an original article examining the controversy of his works then Google would not show you that directly, it would deliver page results that might.
Not strictly true also I'm afraid.
Google show map data from Google Maps when you search for a map on Google. The 'EU claimants' you should should show map data from a selection of other sites (how they will all synchronise their APIs I don't know). So that when you search for map content you don't always see Google's data (even though they have no control over the quality of the thrid party mapping data!).
With Google news, they din't set up a Google Newspaper (very easy to do as most news is just reporting on someone elses new story or taken from a subscription to a news agency). Instead they show an link to thousands of different and random news outlets around the world. Try it go to Google News.
There is a tiny single sentence sub header as well. So Google aren't showing their own service they are actively promoting everyone else and giving massive publicity for people to follow that newspaper and click on that topic to read about it (If anyone doesn't like it they can block Google in a couple of minutes).
So they are doing it both ways and neither is appreciated and has complaints.
I can't help to agree with big_D here. I agree not because the information is available wrongfully (which it isn't), but because without meticulous inspection, Google is presenting this information as their own contribution of content. If people like the presentation of what Google shows them, then they will surely know the name Google. But what they might not know is that the work of others has made Google's presentation possible, and they might never know the names of who did the work, only Google's.
Dunno. In the end, I guess it is how many people still disallow Google to do something, rather than allow. Of course, is Google seriously considering others considerations when you read...
"...Google had spent tens of millions of dollars on its ContentID tech,"
A whole "tens of millions"? They intentionally loose more than that per day for artists for their own advertising.
Murdock would never dream of trying to manipulate opinion, would never employ people who hacked into private communications and never did any thing his lot did not warn you about in advance. Of course has TV stations do not charge you a subscription and still bombard you with adverts.
Whereas Google tell you what they are doing, don't charge a fee, do expect to make money to stay in business and don't hack into your phone - unless doing what they said they would do counts as hacking.
So I can see he has a really strong case; well I hope he has so he can pack up his strong case and go off home.
Google don't need to hack your phone, they already own it. (if it's Android)
What they do regularly do is install malware. New Google apps get installed by default whether you want them or not and they want permission to access everything. It is starting to really piss me off. I don't want any of the apps Google has installed without my permission but because they are Google apps you can't remove them, only remove the patches leaving you with a worse security nightmare than the one you are trying to avoid. At this pont I think there's more Google apps I don't use on my phone than ones I do use.
What Android phone are you using, as I check my Samsung S3 regularly. Went through a spate of disabling apps a while back as I worked out what I really didn't need but I don't see anything new on there for a long time now. You DO have to revert to factory version and then disable but it can be done.
Unless the new apps are hidden?
@irongut
Either you don't actually have an Android phone or you have changed some settings. All apps can be made to auto-update or not, including Google ones apart from Google Play Services. Apps can be disabled even Google ones just by going to the app information and disabling the app. Any app that needs new permissions, even Google ones, will not install unless you agree to those new permissions.
>Why would you leave yourself vulnerable if apps you don't use aren't updated?
Just because something isn't on the screen it doesn't mean it doesn't have exploit vectors.
Your example of IE6 is crap because of the components from IE6 that other apps can use.. so you might use that copy of IE6 as a browser but there's nothing stopping other applications from using components from it and thus becoming exploitable.
"Murdock would never dream of trying to manipulate opinion, would never employ people who hacked into private communications and never did any thing his lot did not warn you about in advance"
It is ironic that this type of yellow journalism is happening all over again and that all too many people are surprised by it. As a non-American, I doubt you have heard of William Randolph Hearst - if not, you need to do yourself the [in]justice of looking up his history; he was guilty of this type of "journalism" before all of us were born. The movie Citizen Kane is a partial fictionalization of his life and times and, for those of us of historical leanings, it seems that the lessons of past (in this case Hearst) are never learned.
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