It doesn't really matter how many of us gripe about Google, nothing can stop it printing billions of dollars

Google-parent Alphabet generated $55.3bn in the first three months of 2021, a 34 per cent increase from the year-ago quarter that exceeded financial analysts' expectations and lifted company shares in after-hours trading today. Net income from Q1 more than doubled, rising from $6.8bn a year ago to $17.9bn, putting earnings per …

[RM Myers]

"As we look ahead to the rest of 2021,

four big themes continue to guide us," said Pichai. "First, building and providing the most helpful products and services that allow us to scrape every morsel of private information we can get from users . Second, continuing to earn the trust of our users by investing in high quality information and keeping users' data safe and private so only we can sell it to the advertisers. Third, strong execution as a company, particularly as we start to reopen our offices and fire any employees who question are ethics. And forth, building sustainable value in our own business and for our partners , or at least the partners that our bots don't kick out of the play store or off Youtube without any explanation ."

There, I fixed that for Mr. Pichai.

[Claverhouse]

"Providing Authoritative Information"

Whenever I seek authoritative information I always turn to Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Providing Authoritative Information"

Whenever it's been 10 minutes and I need to read a massive terms of service and privacy agreement. I use Google.

For everything else, there is DuckDuckGo.

[Anonymous Coward]

"keeping users' data safe and private"

After that they had to mute the mike for a moment so everyone could finish laughing.

[oiseau]

Bad. From wherever you look at it.

... beyond our perception of reality and scrutiny of society.

Hmm ...

Not a good sign, not at all.

Some time around 2010 (?) I read an interesting albeit disturbing paper about European government concerns with respect to the amount of money certain sectors of society were amassing at an exponential rate and as there was not much else to do with it, simply buying anything that was on the market while puting the idea of governance itself at risk.

Needless to say, it is quite obvious that world hunger, inequality or climate change was not in their agenda as was funding political groups that happily (for their slice of the pie) upheld the status quo so that this power <-> money <-> power merry-go-round would keep running.

It's 2021 and it would seem that the situation has deteriorated considerably.

ie: now it is not cartain sectors of society, now we are looking at mammoth corporations that wield the monetary power of a small/medium size nation.

This is going to get much worse before the world reacts.

The world has had the bloodiest wars waged for much less, more than once.

Intesting times indeed.

O.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule number one of digital life

Fuck google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another false narative, "There's nothing we can do to stop Google". The truth is that nothing can stop us when we unite. Really.

I've stopped using their products. The alternatives are just as good.

[diodesign]

Narrative

For the avoidance of doubt, we're being flippant in the framing of this article.

C.

[RM Myers]

Re: Narrative

Very impressively done. I'm not sure how anyone could keep a straight face while reading the "googly" quotes. Do these people really believe what they say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to SRI, NSA and CIA

Gotta hand it to SRI, NSA, and the CIA, create a monster surveillance system that pays for itself under the cover story of two college students starting it in a garage.