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Google Grim Reaper: The latest killed projects - Network WorldA fall spring clean, September 2011

In February 2010, Google bought social networking site Aardvark for $50 million, and canned it 19 months later. Users submitted questions to Aardvark via the Web, IM, or email. Aardvark hooked the requests up with friends-of-friends who might have the answer.

The seven-year-old Google Desktop Search bit the dust. Once the envy of XP-era desktop search, Google’s product worked on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Fast Flip, a precursor to flippable news magazines like Flipboard (which appeared on iOS in late 2010), bit the dust after two years. Google Pack, which bundled apps like Desktop, Picasa, Google Earth, Chrome, and the toolbar for IE, got unglued. Google also axed Maps APIs for Flash, Web Security, Notebook (which may come back as Google Keep),...

 

A fall sweep, October 2011

Google Buzz, an odd social networking feature in Gmail, strove to take on Facebook and Twitter but failed, except in its influence on Google+. Integration with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger, and Twitter presaged the let's-dump-everything-here tendency of more recent aggregators. Buzz lasted 20 months.

If you were a programmer back then, you probably remember the demise of Code Search, the remarkable attempt to make open source code more accessible, no matter where it resides. Ohloh has taken up the mantle.

Google bought Jaiku, a Twitter-like networking service, in 2007, stopped new development in 2009, and finally gave up the ghost in 2011, as tweets overwhelmed jaiks. iGoogle, which features prominently in the July 2012 spring-cleaning announcement, lost its social features

More spring cleaning out of season, November 2011

Perhaps the most-loved Google orphan, Google Wave, defies description: Start with a re-imagining of email, with the message and its replies in a single location, augmented by real-time multi-user editing capabilities. And that’s just the beginning. Google released Wave to the public in May 2010. By August 2010, Google stopped development, and killed it officially in November 2011.

Google Gears also went belly-up. Once the storage engine behind Gmail, YouTube, Docs, Reader, and many more Google products, Gears was best known for mirroring cloud files onto the local computer via the browser. Google decided to add the features to HTML5.

While Google wanted Knol to turn into a Wikipedia competitor, it didn’t happen. Google turned the content over to Annotum, an open-source academic site.

Renewing old resolutions for the new year, January 2012

In March 2010, Google bought Picnik -- best known as the default photo editor inside Flickr -- for between $40 and $80 million. In January 2012, Google announced that it was shutting Picnik down, moving the photo editing team to work on Picasa and Google+.

In October 2011, Google spent $700 million for Needlebase, a highly regarded program that scrapes data off Web databases (it was the engine behind Orbitz). In January 2012, Google announced it was killing Needlebase on June 1, absorbing the technology into other Google products.

That same month, Google killed

Spring cleaning … in spring! April 2012

April’s crop of cuts contained few that anyone would lament. The most interesting was an online mapping app developed by Google called the Flu Vaccine Finder. Google handed over all of its development tools to the HealthMap effort at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.

We also saw the usual demise of a bunch of APIs, a browsing assistant nobody ever used called Google Related, a mobile version of Google Talk, the long-lamented Picasa for Linux (which had maybe 10 users), and the One Pass payment method for online publishers.

 

Spring cleaning in summer, July 2012

July brought the single worst Google evisceration in history. iGoogle, the build-it-yourself blocky interface for RSS feeds, got the axe. I’ve taught thousands of people (tens of thousands?) how to work with RSS feeds using iGoogle. Google didn’t summarily kill iGoogle, granting a 16-month stay of execution until Nov. 1, 2013. I will miss it.

Google Video also hit the skids. Google started merging Google Video and YouTube in 2007, finally blocking uploads to Google Video in May 2009, but retaining Video’s search functions. In April 2011, Google announced it was killing Google Video, but then backed off two weeks later. This was the coup de grace. The fat lady also sang for Google Mini enterprise search, Google Talk Chatback, and Symbian Search.

 More spring cleaning, September 2012

Just two months after the last spring-cleaning, Google lopped off eight more heads, simultaneously. The most ominous: AdSense for Feeds. Nobody was using AdSense to make money from their RSS feeds, which is why Google killed it, but few people realized at the time that Google had pretty much given up on RSS feeds: AdSense for Feeds was Google’s only way to make money from RSS.

More roadkill: Google Classic Plus let you use any image as a background for the Google search screen. Spreadsheet Gadgets were covered by the native Charts app. Google News Badges rewarded reading news items (!). Places Directory was rolled into Google Maps. Storage in Picasa and Google Drive was consolidated. Insight for Search melded into Trends.

 

Winter cleaning, December 2012

Google announced it would no longer support syncing via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync by preventing customers from setting up new devices with Google Sync. Except, that is, for paid Google accounts. There’s little apparent reason for the axing, except to goad Microsoft into supporting CalDAV (calendar) and CardDAV (contacts) on Windows Phone, Win8, and Windows RT. The move took effect Jan. 30, 2013; there was a reprieve for Windows Phone users until July 31, but a recent Metro app update has made everything murky. MS has posted a Google Sync work-around for Windows 8 and Windows RT customers.

Google also announced that it was discontinuing some Google Calendar features, the Issue Tracker API, and a practically unknown retail customer loyalty scheme called...

 

A second spring of cleaning, March 2013

The demise of RSS aggregator Google Reader sent cries wailing in the blogosphere, with many accusing Google of corporate malfeasance, crass indifference, and a closet targeting of tech writers, who were among Reader’s most vocal victims. Of course, Reader was in decline: Tech Crunch’s MG Siegler says Reader referrals to its site were down two-thirds in the past 18 months.

Google Apps Script GUI Builder hit the skids. Google restricted direct access to the CalDAV API to select developers. Building Maker, an app that let people build 3D models for certain cities in Google Earth went, too, as did Cloud Connect, which provides a direct way to access Google Drive from Office apps. Now you need to install Google Drive separately....

 More wood, and an arrow in Google Labs’ back, July 2011

Before “spring cleaning” became an enduring Google meme 18 months ago, Google signaled the start of its serious pruning effort by cancelling Google Labs, in a July 2011 blog entitled “More wood behind fewer arrows.” Before you shed a belated tear for the group that brought us, among many others, Gmail and many of its features, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Body, and Google Goggles, consider the not-so-surprising fact that many of the old Google Labs projects live on. They’ve just been moved to different divisions, presumably transforming them from cost centers to parts of operational divisions. The old logo’s gone, but the rest lives on. NetworkWorld has a list, compiled in October 2011.

 

What’s going to happen to Feedburner?

I fully expect Google’s next spring cleaning post will announce the demise of FeedBurner. Why? Because Google has systematically killed off every RSS-based app in its arsenal except for FeedBurner, the engine that drove them all. iGoogle went in July 2012, although it’s been granted a reprieve until November 2013, and FeedBurner will no doubt stick around until then. AdSense for Feeds crumbled last September. Google Reader bit the bucket earlier this month. Google declared the FeedBurner API deprecated in June 2011, but left the door open with “no scheduled date for shutdown.”

Google bought FeedBurner in June 2007, for a reported $100 million. If it goes down the tubes, FeedBurner will be one of the biggest products Google ever bought, then explicitly...

 The latest likely cremation candidate: Google Keep

Just five days ago, Google announced its latest creation, Google Keep. Although Google would like you to think that it’s an Evernote competitor, in fact, Keep doesn’t play in the same league. A very straightforward note-keeping app, Keep may have aspirations to compete with Microsoft’s OneNote, but even that comparison’s more than a little strained.

Keep owes a little bit to its conceptual predecessor, Google Notebook, which was killed in September 2011.

Clearly, Google created Keep to answer critics of the Google Apps suite who couldn’t find a OneNote competitor. Just as clearly, the product needs a lot of work. Will it succumb to spring-cleaning as rapidly as the others in this list? Time will tell.

 

The latest likely cremation candidate: Google Keep

Just five days ago, Google announced its latest creation, Google Keep. Although Google would like you to think that it’s an Evernote competitor, in fact, Keep doesn’t play in the same league. A very straightforward note-keeping app, Keep may have aspirations to compete with Microsoft’s OneNote, but even that comparison’s more than a little strained.

Keep owes a little bit to its conceptual predecessor, Google Notebook, which was killed in September 2011.

Clearly, Google created Keep to answer critics of the Google Apps suite who couldn’t find a OneNote competitor. Just as clearly, the product needs a lot of work. Will it succumb to spring-cleaning as rapidly as the others in this list? Time will tell.


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[Jul 26, 2020] Big Tech Wants to Own You by JEFFREY WERNICK

Notable quotes:
"... Jeffrey Wernick is strategic investor in Parler. He is also an early bitcoin adopter, advocate and acquirer. Additionally he is a seed investor and an angel investor. Wernick is a frequently invited lecturer and speaker including at his alma mater, the University of Chicago. ..."
Jul 25, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

How major social media companies threaten our most basic freedoms.

It is no secret that the dominant social media companies now monetize what is not theirs: our personal data. In none of the agreements between social media users and these companies is there a transfer of property. Yes, users (and consumers in general) often agree to relinquish some privacy in exchange for a service or a good. But privacy and property are completely different. They should not be conflated.

Privacy is at the core of who we are as free and sovereign individuals. An individual is composed of many attributes. Some are public and open, others we keep to ourselves. All of them define who we are.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13045197114175078?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13045197114175078-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com&rid=www.theamericanconservative.com&width=838

Apparently, there is great commercial value in understanding our attributes and then using what is learned. Sometimes this is in our interest, but many times it is not.

In the digital world, companies dissect us and package us for commercial gain without compensating us -- and too often without our consent. That is not merely an invasion of our privacy, but in actuality is a theft of our personal property.

In any free society, respect for the individual is predicated upon his or her sovereignty. Our most important property right is our right to ourselves. If we lose ownership of ourselves, we become the property of others.

Social media companies, and other platforms that sell or monetize our data without permission are appropriating aspects of the sovereign individuals who are their users, and it is a violation of our rights.

me title=

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.398.1_en.html#goog_1683085215 Ad ends in 8s Next Video × Next Video J.d. Vance Remarks On A New Direction For Pro-worker, Pro-family Conservatism, Tac Gala, 5-2019 Cancel Autoplay is paused

But selling or monetizing your personal information isn't the only way tyrannical tech seeks to own you.

In 2019, Facebook's Mark Zuckerbe rg explicitly said, "We are a tech company, not a media company."

He later gave Congress a more nuanced answer:

"I view us as a tech company because the primary thing we do is build technology and products," Zuckerberg testified. "I agree that we're responsible for the content, but we don't produce the content. I think when people ask us if we're a media company or a publisher, my understanding of what they're really getting at is do we feel responsible for the content on our platform."

"The answer to that, I think, is clearly yes," he continued. "But I don't think that's incompatible with fundamentally at our core being a technology company."

Zuckerberg's view of his company raises a crucial question: is Facebook a technology company that promotes free speech and exists as a public forum that should be held exempt from liability in connection with the content posted on its platform? Or is it a publisher with the right to edit content at its discretion, whatever the methodology -- but must then assume responsibility and liability for that content?

To say you assume responsibility for content, and then declare yourself exempt from liability in connection with it is an absurd contradiction. An assumption of liability is an indispensable component of statement of responsibility. It is the price one pays for being able to take credit for something, or to exercise control over it.

As troubled as I am regarding Zuckerberg's hypocri sy, as shown by the contradictions between his words and Facebook's policies and practices, it is even more troubling to me that many of my fellow Zuckerberg critics -- both in the technology community and in the progressive movement–hold a very different conception of free speech than I do. Their view of the range of speech that should be protected is, unfortunately, much narrower.

Essentially, many of them believe technology should be used to censor content, accord ing to criteria established by whoever controls the technology company. And today, most of the technology companies handling our content have decided to develop these criteria in partnership with those operating on a kind of mob mentality that sees dissent as something that is dangerous, something to be repressed.

A mere platform or "tech company" would not take it upon itself to do this. But publishers would and do, usually in the name of being "responsible." Unfortunately, almost all of today's technology is developed under the auspices of a controlling authority acting as a censor.

This would be acceptable -- if they acknowledged themselves as publishers. But Zuckerberg, during his congressional testimony, walked that not-even-remotely-fine line for a reason. Many of today's tech companies, doing the bidding of the various mobs that want to dictate what speech is allowed, wield the power they have according to their own perspective on what is right, just, and moral. They anoint themselves as the modern version of Torquemada. Yes, I said it: It is an Inquisition. These tech companies, and the mobs whose favor they curry, seek a strategy to dehumanize, delegitimize, and digitally exterminate those with whom they disagree.

Those in academia are often told they must "publish or perish." If platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others dared to verbalize what they were doing in the form of an expression, an appropriate expression might be: "If we decide not to publish you, you will virtually perish. You will be erased."

These companies really aren't "social media." They are not public forums. An actual public forum respects the First Amendment, in spirit, and does not monetize content or personal data. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tyrannical tech giants are private companies operating opaquely in the digital domain, exempt from discovery or accountability, gifted by Congress with a liability exemption that allows them to do whatever they want. Including deplatforming you.

Rabbi Hillel said, "that which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow."

If you want the right to speak, to express your ideas and opinions, it would be despicable to you if someone prevented you from doing so. You would not want someone else to persecute, dehumanize, deplatform or digitally exterminate you.

Such behavior is abhorrent to the ideal of free speech. It is unfathomable that, in the twenty-first century, "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it," has, somehow mutated into, "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will digitally exterminate you if you dare try to say it."

A true public forum eschews censorship of any kind. Freedom of expression, and the exchange of knowledge that goes along with it, can flourish only in an environment where there is no authoritative entity or controlling party, where one speaks by right, not by permission.

Jeffrey Wernick is strategic investor in Parler. He is also an early bitcoin adopter, advocate and acquirer. Additionally he is a seed investor and an angel investor. Wernick is a frequently invited lecturer and speaker including at his alma mater, the University of Chicago.

[Jul 01, 2020] Think The Cancel Mobs Can't Get Any Worse? Think Again by Harlan Hill

Jun 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Think The "Cancel" Mobs Can't Get Any Worse? Think Again


Authored by Harlan Hill via RealClearPolitics.com,

America is in the midst of one of the great moral panics in our nation's history. If we don't stand up for our nation's core values, the situation could get even worse – and soon. If you've spent any time on social media in the last three weeks, you've probably noticed the organized campaigns to get college and even high school students expelled or denied admission based on their political views. You've also seen gleeful mobs celebrating as Americans lose their jobs for running afoul of someone's momentary political obsessions.

In every sector of American society, people are having their careers destroyed to the pitiless baying of the "woke" masses. It's happening in business. CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman spent 20 years building the fitness brand into a multi-billion dollar company, only to be thrown out of the empire he built for declining to go along with the "racism is a public health crisis" dogma.

It's happening in journalism. New York Times editor James Bennet, a liberal, was fired for publishing an op-ed by a sitting Republican senator advocating for a military response to nationwide rioting -- a position the majority of Americans agreed with. The same fate befell Philadelphia Inquirer editor Stan Wischowski, who was terminated for approving an article that condemned looting and arson.

It's happening in entertainment , in academia , and pretty much anywhere someone can be found who is not sufficiently supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It's even happening to people who didn't do anything at all. An L.A. Galaxy soccer player was forced to resign because his wife tweeted that rioters should be shot. A lawyer in San Francisco was fired because his wife was rude to a man she thought was spray-painting BLM propaganda on a building that wasn't his (it was). On Thursday, this Stasi-esque trend reached another level when a company called Equity Prime Mortgage fired the stepmother of the officer charged in the controversial shooting of drunk driver Rashad Brooks after he fought with and fired a taser at police. The stepmother was apparently fired for no reason other than family loyalty.

On Monday, the panic reached what one can only hope will be its peak when a San Diego Gas and Electric employee lost his job for "making a white supremacist hand gesture." We've long since debunked the notion that the OK sign is somehow racist -- that was just a fiction perpetrated by internet trolls -- but in this case, this man lost his livelihood despite the fact he wasn't even making an OK sign . He was apparently cracking his knuckles as he drove.

What America is going through right now is not merely another, more intense round of "cancel culture." We're now in the midst of a full-force, totalitarian remolding of our society, one that seeks to place the petty resentments of an outraged minority of leftist activists above everything else in American life.

Because of their willingness to riot, loot, and assault anyone they perceive to be insufficiently sympathetic to their cause, leftists are able to bully ordinary people into submission. As a result, television shows such as " Cops " and " Live PD ," classic films such as "Gone With the Wind," and iconic brands such as Aunt Jemima , Mrs. Buttersworth , and Uncle Ben's rice are consigned to the "dustbin of history."

I used to speak frequently to nervous conservatives who were convinced that if we only allowed the left to tear down Confederate war memorials, they would be satisfied. How quickly events have disproved that wishful thinking. From Christopher Columbus , George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , and the western pioneers , activists are now coming after cartoon sports mascots and college fight songs . Everything -- from the core of our country's history to the values and norms undergirding American culture -- must be uprooted to appease the mob.

They are tearing down dozens of statues and facing no consequences whatsoever for vandalizing our public spaces -- including memorials to our nation's greatest heroes. When private citizens try to do the job the government won't and protect our culture, our history, and our public property from destruction, local officials step in and remove the statues on behalf of the vandals, lest they injure themselves while imitating Iraqis celebrating the fall of Saddam Hussein.

These people are not seeking change at the margins. They are demanding a total cultural revolution, and cowardly public officials are giving it to them. If you look at this national outpouring of hatred and recrimination with horror verging on despair, I assure you that you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel exactly the same way.

President Trump is doing exactly what an American president should do in a crisis like this. He is working to maintain law and order and prevent cowed local officials from allowing political violence to flare again. He issued an executive order to add to his legacy of reform and address legitimate concerns about law enforcement in this country. He also issued a separate executive order targeting the systemic bias in Silicon Valley's censorship offices, which has allowed our social media platforms to become echo chambers for left-wing extremism and "cancel culture."

The only thing that could make the situation worse at this moment would be handing the White House to a doddering and unprincipled establishment politician beholden to the "cancel culture" mob. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would immediately delegate de facto control over the vast justice, civil rights, and regulatory apparatus of the federal government to the loudest voices in his coalition: the woke activist class.

At this moment, there is a veritable army of lawyers and bureaucrats who have spent the last three and a half years subsisting on resentment and salivating at the prospect of regaining power. Things are bad enough now, but conditions will become much worse if the "cancel culture" born on social media is augmented with the force of law and given the full attention of Biden appointees imbued with the sweeping powers of the federal bureaucracy.

Dark forces have been unleashed in this country. Even now, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If we don't want to find out how much damage it can inflict on the ship of state, we must prevent those forces from taking control of the federal government.

Delay , 5 minutes ago

FTA: there is a veritable army of lawyers and bureaucrats who have spent the last three and a half years subsisting on resentment and salivating at the prospect of regaining power.

They are not merely subsisting, they have paid themselves well and have accumulated substantial tangible wealth. Their homes are similar to oases in a desert of despair. The army of lawyers and bureaucrats think they have all their problems under control by giving tax money to their black servants. The fact is Latinos, Chinese, Moldovans and even their viziers say to themselves, "When you see an amazing opportunity for looting, but you are not sure you can do it, just do it."

Secret Weapon , 53 minutes ago

BLM/Antifa is a replay of Mao's Red guards. They revved up the college students and set them loose upon the countryside. It worked in China. Will it work here? Second Amendment is the wild card in the deck. Funny thing was, once Mao was done with the Red Guard, he had all of them executed. He did not trust them.

Blondefire , 1 hour ago

The cancel culture is emboldened because they are, for the most part, getting away with it. They saw Hillary's classified email debacle go unpunished, the Uranium One sale go unpunished, Fast and Furious go unpunished, Benghazi go unpunished, the attempted coup go unpunished, and they realized they can literally get away with anything. Now vandalism, theft, riot, arson and anarchy are not only unpunished but glorified in the msm while police officers are being led away in handcuffs. Tomorrow is not the day to regain control, Q isn't going to release some new documents next week and save us. We need to act today, right now, with overwhelming force, against all enemies foreign and domestic.

[Feb 01, 2020] Pages that Google AI classifies as "Dangerous or derogatory content"

That tells us something about Google
Notable quotes:
"... Yes, that's right Pope speeches are dangerous ;-) ..."
Feb 01, 2020 | adsense.googleblog.com
www.softpanorama.org/Populism/Christian_populism/index.shtml Yes Dangerous or derogatory content Yes, that's right Pope speeches are dangerous ;-)
www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Casino_capitalism/index.shtml Yes Dangerous or derogatory content
www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/index.shtml Yes Dangerous or derogatory content
www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Two_party_system_as_poliarchy/index.shtml Yes Dangerous or derogatory content

[Jan 04, 2020] Inappropriate content - google advertising policies

Jan 04, 2020 | support.google.com

We value diversity and respect for others, and we strive to avoid offending users, so we don't allow ads or destinations that display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance, discrimination, or violence.

Below are some examples of what to avoid in your ads. Learn about what happens if you violate our policies .

Dangerous or derogatory content

The following is not allowed:

Content that incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization

Examples : Content promoting hate groups or hate group paraphernalia; content that encourages others to believe that a person or group is inhuman, inferior, or worthy of being hated

Content that harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals

Example : Content that singles out someone for abuse or harassment; content that suggests a tragic event did not happen, or that victims or their families are actors, or complicit in a cover-up of the event.

Content that threatens or advocates for physical or mental harm on oneself or others

Examples : Content advocating suicide, anorexia, or other self-harm; promoting or advocating for harmful health or medical claims or practices; threatening someone with real-life harm or calling for the attack of another person; promoting, glorifying, or condoning violence against others; content made by or in support of terrorist groups, or transnational drug trafficking organizations, or content that promotes terrorist acts, including recruitment, or that celebrates attacks by transnational drug trafficking or terrorist organizations.

Content that seeks to exploit others

Examples : Extortion; blackmail; soliciting or promoting dowries

Learn how to fix a disapproved ad or extension . Shocking content

The following is not allowed:

Promotions containing violent language, gruesome or disgusting imagery, or graphic images or accounts of physical trauma

Examples : Crime scene or accident photos, execution videos

Promotions containing gratuitous portrayals of bodily fluids or waste

Examples : Blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste

Promotions containing obscene or profane language

Examples : Swear or curse words, slurs relating to race or sexuality, variations and misspellings of profane language

Note : If the official name of your product, website, or app includes profane language, request a review and provide details of the name. Think about the target audience for your campaigns, and develop your keywords to fit the user's likely intent when searching.

Promotions that are likely to shock or scare

Examples : Promotions that suggest you may be in danger, be infected with a disease, or be the victim of a conspiracy

Learn how to fix a disapproved ad or extension . Sensitive events

The following is not allowed:

Content that may be deemed as capitalizing on or lacking reasonable sensitivity towards a natural disaster, conflict, death, or other tragic event

Examples : Appearing to profit from a tragic event with no discernible benefit to the victims

Learn how to fix a disapproved ad or extension . Animal cruelty

The following is not allowed:

Content that promotes cruelty or gratuitous violence towards animals

Examples : Promoting animal cruelty for entertainment purposes, such as cock or dog fighting

Content that may be interpreted as trading in, or selling products derived from, threatened or extinct species

Examples : Sale of tigers, shark fins, elephant ivory, tiger skins, rhino horn, dolphin oil

Learn how to fix a disapproved ad or extension .

[Apr 02, 2019] Shadowbanning

See also Shadow banning - Wikipedia
Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting[1]) is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.
By making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site.
Apr 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lozion , Mar 31, 2019 4:33:21 PM | link

< More and more "resistance" type Twitteratti get shadowbanned, that is, their posts dont appear in the Twitter feed though they are visible on their profiles. Find out if you are shadowbanned here:>

https://shadowban.eu/

Zachary Smith , Mar 31, 2019 5:24:53 PM | link

@ Lozion #12

Until recently I didn't know the word "shadowbanning", but that was what happened to me several years ago. The managers of the Indianapolis Star had given their forum to the tender care of a mix of Libertarians, rightwingnuts, and devoted followers of the Holy Cesspool south of Syria. Gradually I realized nobody was responding to my posts, and only by accident did I learn those posts were invisible to everybody else. Only when I was logged in could I see them myself.

So that's why I have gone cold turkey on the only Indianapolis newspaper. I'd recommend it only for folks whose parakeets need a lining for the bottom of the bird's cage. Their editorial page works best for that application.

Lozion , Mar 31, 2019 7:55:34 PM | link
@12 Zachary.

Yeah I first encountered the phenom during the last days of the 2014 Euromaidan while reposting info on Facebook about sniper fire coming from opp held rooftops. I couldnt understand why interaction on the subject stopped until someone confirmed via the chat that none of my posts with the word "Ukraine" appeared in the feed. They must've triggered FBs early filter algorithm. I have since left the Ministry of Truth..

[Mar 26, 2019] When Are We Going To Tackle The For-Profit Monopolies Which Censored RussiaGate Skeptics? by Charles Hugh Smith

Notable quotes:
"... The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con. ..."
"... The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter. ..."
Mar 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.

The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con.

This site got a taste of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship back in 2016 when a shadowy fake-news site called PropOrNot aggregated every major alt-media site that had published anything remotely skeptical of the coronation of Hillary Clinton as president and labeled us all shills for Russian propaganda.

Without any investigation of the perps running the site or their fake-news methodology, The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos' plaything) saw fit to promote the fake-news on Page One as if it were journalistically legitimate. Why would a newspaper that supposedly values the integrity of its content run with such shameless fake-news propaganda? Because it fit the Post's own political agenda and biases.

This is the essence of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship: sacrifice accepted journalistic practice, free speech and transparency to promote an absurdly obvious political and social agenda.

If there was any real justice in America, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai should be wearing prison jumpsuits for what Facebook and Google have done to American democracy. Both of these monopolies have manipulated news feeds, search results and what individuals are shown in complete secret, with zero public oversight or transparency .

The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter.

What matters is that no one can possibly know how Facebook and Google have rigged their algorithms and to what purpose. The typical corporation can buy political influence, but Facebook and Google are manipulating the machinery of democracy itself in three ways:

1. They are secretly censoring alternative media and skeptics of the status quo narratives.

2. They are selling data and ads to anyone interested in manipulating voters and public opinion.

3. They are providing data to the National Security organs of the state which can then use this data to compile dossiers on "enemies of the people," i.e. skeptics and dissenters who question the "approved" context and narrative.

That's a much more dangerous type of power than buying political influence or manipulating public opinion by openly publishing biased "commentary."

We all understand how America's traditional Corporate Media undermines democracy: recall how every time Bernie Sanders won a Democratic primary in 2016, The New York Times and The Washington Post "reported" the news in small typeface in a sidebar, while every Hillary Clinton primary win was trumpeted in large headlines at the top of page one.

But this sort of manipulation is visible; what Google and Facebook do is invisible. What their algorithms do is invisible, and the shadow banning and other forms of invisible censorship cannot be easily traced.

A few of us can trace shadow banning because we have access to our site's server data. Please consider the data of Google searches and direct links from Facebook to oftwominds.com from November 2016 and November 2018:

Nov. 2016: Google Searches: 36,779
Nov. 2016: links from Facebook: 9,888

Nov. 2018: Google Searches: 12,671
Nov. 2018: links from Facebook: 859

Oftwominds.com has been around since 2005 and consistently draws around 250,000 page views monthly (via oftwominds.com and my mirror site on blogspot, which is owned/operated by Google. Interestingly, traffic to that site has been less affected by shadow banning ; Coincidence? You decide....).

Given the consistency of my visitor traffic over the years, it's "interesting" how drastically the site's traffic with Google and Facebook has declined in a mere two years. How is this shadow banning not Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship? It's akin to China's Orwellian Social Credit system but for private profit .

It wouldn't surprise me to find my photo airbrushed out of group photos on Facebook and Google just as the Soviet propaganda organs did when someone fell out of favor in the 1930s.

Fortunately, oftwominds.com isn't dependent on Facebook or Google for its traffic; other content creators who were skeptical of RussiaGate are not so fortunate. One of the implicit goals of shadow banning and filters is to destroy the income of dissenting sites without the content creators knowing why their income plummeted.

Strip dissenters of their income and you strip them of the ability to dissent. Yea for "free speech" controlled by for-profit monopolies!

Where's the "level playing field" of free speech? As long as Facebook and Google are free to censor and filter in secret, there is no free speech in America. All we have is a simulacrum of free speech in which parroting "approved" narratives is promoted and dissent is censored/banned--but without anyone noticing or even being able to tell what's been filtered, censored or banned.

So when are we going to tackle privately held monopolies which are selling user data to the highest bidder, obliterating free speech in secret and manipulating news feeds and search to promote hidden agendas? I've argued (see links below) that the solution is very simple:

1. Regulate Facebook and Google as public utilities. Ban them from collecting and selling user data to anyone, including federal agencies.

2. Allow a modest profit to each firm via display adverts that are shown equally to every user.

3. Require any and all search/content filters and algorithms be made public, i.e. published daily.

4. Any executive or employee of these corporations who violates these statutes will face criminal felony charges and be exposed to civil liability lawsuits from users or content providers who were shadow-banned or their right to free speech was proscribed or limited by filters or algorithms.

There is no intrinsic right for privately held corporations to establish monopolies that can manipulate and filter free speech in secret to maximize profits and secret influence. We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.

I recently addressed these invisible (but oh-so profitable) mechanisms in a series of essays:

* * *

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook ): Read the first section for free in PDF format. My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF) . My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com .

[Mar 11, 2019] Google s Page Allegedly Gave Rubin $150 Million Stock Award

Notable quotes:
"... Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page didn't get board approval when he awarded a $150 million stock grant to Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software who was under investigation by the company for sexual harassment at the time, according to a lawsuit. ..."
"... The new allegations shed light on Page's power to compensate top executives and could add fuel to criticism that the company's board isn't strong enough to keep management accountable to shareholders. ..."
"... Alphabet initially required shareholders' lawyers to conceal information in the complaint about the $150 million stock award to Rubin, on grounds it was confidential, according to Renne. Alphabet then rescinded its demand. Google declined to comment on that decision. ..."
Mar 11, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page didn't get board approval when he awarded a $150 million stock grant to Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software who was under investigation by the company for sexual harassment at the time, according to a lawsuit.

Page later got "rubber stamp" approval for the equity compensation package from a board leadership committee eight days after he granted it in August 2014, according to a revised investor complaint made public on Monday in California state court in San Jose. Rubin used the grant as "leverage" to secure a $90 million severance agreement when he left the company almost three months later, according to the complaint.

The new allegations shed light on Page's power to compensate top executives and could add fuel to criticism that the company's board isn't strong enough to keep management accountable to shareholders. It could also pull Page deeper into the controversy around how Google has handled sexual harassment complaints. The Alphabet co-founder has generally stayed behind the scenes, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been left to deal with criticism of the company's culture.

Investors claim the board failed in its duties by allowing harassment to occur, approving big payouts and keeping the details private. The complaint targets the company's top executives and committee members, including co-founder Sergey Brin , venture capitalist John Doerr, investor Ram Shriram and Alphabet Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, among others.

"It's confirmation of the fact that there were these large payouts" to Google executives and that the company's "own internal investigation had shown there was misconduct and harassment," Louise Renne, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monday by phone.

"Nonetheless, rather than being just being terminated, they were terminated with hefty reimbursement and gifts," Renne said.

A lawyer for Rubin said the complaint mischaracterizes his departure from Google.

"Andy acknowledges having had a consensual relationship with a Google employee," attorney Ellen Stross said in an email. "However, Andy strongly denies any misconduct, and we look forward to telling his story in court."

Google Board Sued for Hushing Claims of Executive Misconduct

The $90 million severance package was first detailed by the New York Times in October 2018, and sparked a firestorm of criticism from both inside and outside the company. Soon after, thousands of Google employees walked out to protest how the company handles sexual harassment complaints. Since then, Google has changed its policies, including ending the practice of barring employees from suing the company and shunting them into private arbitration. People fired for sexual harassment haven't gotten severance payments in the past two years, Google has said.

"There are serious consequences for anyone who behaves inappropriately at Google," a spokeswoman for Google said in an emailed statement. "In recent years, we've made many changes to our workplace and taken an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority."

Alphabet initially required shareholders' lawyers to conceal information in the complaint about the $150 million stock award to Rubin, on grounds it was confidential, according to Renne. Alphabet then rescinded its demand. Google declined to comment on that decision.

"My hope is this is a step toward transparency," Renne said, referring to Alphabet's decision to not fight the information being unsealed. "The reason we brought this shareholder lawsuit was to have some transparency governing corporate affairs, as well as the behavior being completely inappropriate conduct toward women," she said.

One allegation unsealed Monday is that Amit Singhal, a top Google executive who left the company in 2016, was allowed to resign after accusations that he sexually harassed a female employee were found credible and he was given an exit package worth between $35 million and $45 million. Singhal would go on to work for Uber Technologies Inc., but resigned from the ride-hailing company after Recode reported that he hadn't told Uber about the reasons he left Google. Singhal, who has denied the harassment claims, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is Martin v. Page, 19-cv-343672, California Superior Court, Santa Clara County (San Jose).

-- With assistance by Kartikay Mehrotra

[Feb 02, 2019] Google Employees Are Fighting With Executives Over Pay

Notable quotes:
"... In July, Bloomberg reported that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of Google's workforce were temps, contractors, and vendors. ..."
Feb 02, 2019 | www.wired.com

... ... ...

Asked whether they have confidence in CEO Sundar Pichai and his management team to "effectively lead in the future," 74 percent of employees responded "positive," as opposed to "neutral" or "negative," in late 2018, down from 92 percent "positive" the year before. The 18-point drop left employee confidence at its lowest point in at least six years. The results of the survey, known internally as Googlegeist, also showed a decline in employees' satisfaction with their compensation, with 54 percent saying they were satisfied, compared with 64 percent the prior year.

The drop in employee sentiment helps explain why internal debate around compensation, pay equity, and trust in executives has heated up in recent weeks -- and why an HR presentation from 2016 went viral inside the company three years later.

The presentation, first reported by Bloomberg and reviewed by WIRED, dates from July 2016, about a year after Google started an internal effort to curb spending . In the slide deck, Google's human-resources department presents potential ways to cut the company's $20 billion compensation budget. Ideas include: promoting fewer people, hiring proportionately more low-level employees, and conducting an audit to make sure Google is paying benefits "(only) for the right people." In some cases, HR suggested ways to implement changes while drawing little attention, or tips on how to sell the changes to Google employees. Some of the suggestions were implemented, like eliminating the annual employee holiday gift; most were not.

Another, more radical proposal floated inside the company around the same time didn't appear in the deck. That suggested converting some full-time employees to contractors to save money. A person familiar with the situation said this proposal was not implemented. In July, Bloomberg reported that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of Google's workforce were temps, contractors, and vendors.

[Oct 15, 2018] Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise

Oct 15, 2018 | tech.slashdot.org

(techcrunch.com) 78 BeauHD on Monday October 15, 2018 @06:00PM from the interesting-narrative dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Morgan Knutson, a UI designer who seven years ago, spent eight months at Google working on its recently shuttered social networking product Google+ and who, in light of the shutdown, decided to share on Twitter his personal experience with how "awful the project and exec team was ." It's a fairly long read, but among his most notable complaints is that former Google SVP Vic Gundotra, who oversaw Google+, ruled by fear and never bothered to talk with Knutson, whose desk was "directly next to Vic's glass-walled office. He would walk by my desk dozens of times during the day. He could see my screen from his desk. During the 8 months I was there, culminating in me leading the redesign of his product, Vic didn't say a word to me. No hello. No goodbye, or thanks for staying late. No handshake. No eye contact."

He also says Gundotra essentially bribed other teams within Google to incorporate Google+'s features into their products by promising them handsome financial rewards for doing so atop their yearly bonuses. "You read that correctly, "tweeted Knutson. "A f*ck ton of money to ruin the product you were building with bloated garbage that no one wanted." Gundotra is today the cofounder and CEO of AliveCor , maker of a device that captures a "medical grade" E.K.G. within 30 seconds; AliveCor has gone on to raise $30 million from investors, including the Mayo Clinic. Asked about Knutson's characterization of him, Gundotra suggested the rant was "absurd" but otherwise declined to comment. Knutson goes on to paint "a picture of a political, haphazard, wasteful and ultimately disappointing division where it was never quite clear who should be working on what or why," reports TechCrunch.

Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise More | Reply Login Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise Comments Filter: All Insightful Informative Interesting Funny

Anonymous Coward writes:

So what was moot doing that whole time? ( Score: 1 )

I thought he was supposed to save Google+ from itself? [dailydot.com]

davecb ( 6526 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

Hint: we used to call this "vice-president wars". If you worked for the wrong VP in some companies, it could be a career-ending move.

bekeleven ( 986320 ) , Monday October 15, 2018 @06:09PM ( #57482608 )
"A Role" ( Score: 3 , Insightful)

I feel like the next hundred comments could each mention a different issue that played "a role" in google+'s demise.

I'll start: Invite-only rollout.

Anonymous Coward , Monday October 15, 2018 @06:33PM ( #57482784 )
Re:"A Role" ( Score: 5 , Informative)

former Google SVP Vic Gundotra, who oversaw Google+

While running Goog+, Mr. Gundrota implemented a policy of requiring everyone to use their "real name". Funny thing about that. Mr. Gundrota's real name is not Vic. Like many Indians who come to the U.S., he adopted a more "American" first name. So, the guy demanding that you you must use your real name, is using a fake name.

But wait, the lulz are just getting started.

Goog+ AUTOMATICALLY got linked to your G-Mail, YouTube, Goog Docs, everything.

So if, for some reason, Goog thought you were using a fake name (all hail the Mighty Algorithm) -- because of your Youtube name, or because you have an "obviously fake" name like Jake Butt [wikipedia.org]-- your Goog+ account got permanently suspended. With the standard Google appeal / recourse of "fuck you, no humans here".

This also took out your G-Mail account (and all your mail), and your YouTube account, and your Goog Docs...

Anyone who was even mildly curious about Goog+ dropped it like a toxic hotshit and never looked back.

Bourdain ( 683477 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

I myself actively avoided it for this very reason - why risk my google account when there were reports of it being disabled for no good reason and no room for appeal with the only benefit of using a nascent social media platform?

epine ( 68316 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

Yup, it was Google's real name policy and their policy of neutron bomb non-recourse to any errors on their side that caused me never even to consider learning the first thing about Google+.

And this from a position where I figure Google was already 100% under my personal privacy kimono, so I estimated my exposure to marginal privacy loss at close to zero. (For every other social media service, I either block cookies entirely, or use the service on a thin, sporadic basis at most.) So basically, Google+ was t

epine ( 68316 ) writes:
Indian telephone ( Score: 2 )

I copied my misspelling from an AC post I was replying too, who managed not to copy it correctly from a previous post where he had actually already quoted the correct spelling. It's properly Vic Gundotra.

Just what is it about AC that shaves off 30 IQ points, as a general starting point?

In any case, my post was entirely my own. My bad.

ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

> Vic Gundrota was a bad, bad hire.

He would have been more at home at Facebook. He was basically just trying to build another Facebook.

It's sad because it was so much wasted potential. The concept of circles for sharing your posts was excellent. You had a lot more control over your feed and content than Facebook got you. But they managed to screw it up.

swillden ( 191260 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

Goog+ AUTOMATICALLY got linked to your G-Mail, YouTube, Goog Docs, everything.

This is because Google+ was actually two different things: A unified Google login and a social media network. I'm told that people at Google had been thinking about the idea of a single login to all Google products for a while, so when the social media thing got started, it became that single login, too. People (quite reasonably) misinterpreted it as an attempt to force them into using Google+, but it was really a separate thing. I think if the notion of a unified Google login had been pitched a year or

ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

The real-name policy is what drove many of the people I know off the platform.

The policy basically made G+ another Facebook; if that's the case, why not use use Facebook?

Some of us don't like using our real names online, for a variety of reasons. I think even my reason, that I just like using a different name, is perfectly valid. Anyone can find my real name if they really want to. But it was the principle. Others used pseudonyms because they didn't feel safe using their real names online. For those people,

crow ( 16139 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

Lack of pages for businesses and celebrities at the initial roll-out was a significant factor. It would have been better to delay the launch and have everything ready at the start.

Darinbob ( 1142669 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

I dunno, but there were a lot of people furious about that. Possibly they were self important and wondered why they weren't allowed on. But this is standard procedure for many new products - roll them out slowly, try it out in a beta test, etc.

The thing I hated was linking it to other Google services. I liked Google+, but then one day I found out I had a Youtube account that I did not want and could not get rid of. Even today Youtube automatically logs me in if I am logged in to Google+.

Google+ had a go

DerekLyons ( 302214 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

I feel like the next hundred comments could each mention a different issue that played "a role" in google+'s demise.

I'll start: Invite-only rollout.

Yep. Being feature-incomplete compared to Facebook at the time didn't help either. It was essentially Twitter with screwy privacy settings and a crappy UI.

Narcocide ( 102829 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

That's a good question but I suspect the answer is "never" and the real story hidden beneath this facade of incompetence is whatever crimes Gundotra was committing that he was afraid this guy would find out about if he got involved too much in decision making.

bhcompy ( 1877290 ) , Monday October 15, 2018 @06:11PM ( #57482626 )
Might be right, but ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

This guy might be right, but he's also a huge narcissist. This guy thinks he shits gold

euxneks ( 516538 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

This guy might be right, but he's also a huge narcissist. This guy thinks he shits gold

He's a designer, it kind of comes with the territory, necessarily - if you don't believe in your designs you're not really putting your effort into it.

Narcocide ( 102829 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 1 )

You haven't hung around with many UI designers, have you? The mentality is a necessary part of the personality type.

Narcocide ( 102829 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 1 )

It doesn't matter whether it's unfounded or not. Artists tend to do their best work with positive reinforcement.

sgage ( 109086 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

It has been widely reported for at least a couple of weeks at least that Google is pulling the plug on Google +. I don't know how long the grace period will be, but you might want to prepare yourself for it going away soon.

sgage ( 109086 ) writes:
:It's a fairly long read," ( Score: 2 )

What, did Twitter up its character limit again?

sgage ( 109086 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

You know, when I worked in the industry back in the day (late 70' through the 80's) it wasn't so toxic. But then, we didn't really have UI/UX designers :-)

SuperKendall ( 25149 ) , Monday October 15, 2018 @06:44PM ( #57482858 )
Where he went wrong ( Score: 5 , Interesting)

I hate to second guess people in bad situations, but from my reading through his few hundred tweets earlier today I would say a few points jumped out to me as him doing the wrong thing at the time:

1) Should not have agreed to design review meeting the next morning. If a deadline is totally unrealistic, don't agree to it man. Tell them you need to delay It by whatever makes sense. If they hate you already they will not hate you any more or less because you push back.

2) When report of grandmother dying comes in, drop everything and send a message out noting you need a reschedule and why. If they say no, well wouldn't it be great to go to HR with a complaint that a manager would not let you attend to a dying nana? Regardless urgent family matters ALWAYS come first for anyone you care about.

3) When meeting was called off the next morning do not whine about that to whoever. Just roll with it. It would have been irrelevant anyway if the first two points I made had been followed. As it was it led to an HR complaint and since it made you look weak the people that hated him tried to take advantage and treated him even worse after.

4) If you are put under a manager you know "will not end well", GET OUT ASAP. Maybe finish up some important task you have but start figuring out your exit immediately, because you will be exiting anyway and better to do it while you have endured minimal stress.

Again, I know I was not in the situation at the time, but there is no situation I've ever been in where point 1 or 2 could not be followed all the time without repercussion. You should always always push back on very unreasonable things and not just pretend you can meet them, even if sometimes you can. Anyone worth working for can understand reasonable pushback, so if they can't you needed a new job anyway.

rtb61 ( 674572 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 1 )

How about a snap or reality. Alphabet aka Google, got caught with the grubby little fingers in the Democracy cookie jar, trying to bake election results by tainting searching, to generate their preferred flavour of corruption cookie. This put people off social mediaering with Google, simply tainted their brand as a pack of shit stains corrupting society. Now add in their fuckery with YouTube and well, didn't Google finnaly realise they are the people's bitch and not the other way around but Google+ is dead

kiminator ( 4939943 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

Yup. Reading through his story, it really seems like he put quite a lot on himself that he did not need to.

I generally don't doubt him at all about the shitty people he interacted with, but it really sounds like he sort of shot himself in the foot a number of times. There's no reason why he should have felt obligated to listen to his crappy manager's statement on not bothering to come back to work, for example. I'm pretty sure he could have pushed back on that and won without too much difficulty. It's ve

crow ( 16139 ) writes:
Sad ( Score: 2 )

I like Google+. I felt they really botched the roll-out when they had lots of excitement, but didn't have features for businesses and such. They had one shot at taking out Facebook, and they completely messed it up. I don't see anyone else having enough credibility to convince people to move to another platform, no matter how better it may be.

aberglas ( 991072 ) writes:
Google aint Google anymore ( Score: 2 )

They have gone through the transition from a small, cool, outwardly facing start up to a huge bureaucratic, inwardly facing monster. Happens to all successful companies.

The Damore memo incident is a good indicator of this. Not because I care about Damore but because it gave a rare insight into the thinking and priorities of Google's CEO.

Alphabet was a good idea as a way to try to escape it. Not sure whether it will succeed.

youngone ( 975102 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

My own company is going through this right now, having been bought by an investment firm a couple years ago.

I handed in my notice the day my old boss announced the company had been sold to an investment firm.
Most of the people I worked with were gone within a year, and the doors closed about a year after that. I am pretty easy going, but I won't work for an investment company, or an accountant.

smeghmeh ( 5350891 ) writes:
Film at eleven ( Score: 1 )

Breaking news - large bureaucracy has psychopathic narcissist climber as mid level boss - film at eleven tonight

ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) , Monday October 15, 2018 @08:11PM ( #57483402 )
Second Life ( Score: 3 )

So you're telling me...a company with the resources of Alphabet/Google were unable to put together a viable social platform but Second Life [secondlife.com] is still a thing?

ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 2 )

Second Life is still a thing because there is a steady user base that puts money into the system.

It's not really growing much anymore, but it's not shrinking either. It's stable, and Linden Labs is making a reliable profit.

The community is not that large, but it is very dedicated and many people live a decently large percentage of their lives in that virtual world.

I used to be a heavy user but haven't been lately. I still pop in from time to time, and I see a lot of the same names there. It's pretty fascina

OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) writes:
Bravo, Google! ( Score: 2 )

We thought that no company could as despicable as Microsoft, but you guys seem to be getting there pretty quickly.

raftpeople ( 844215 ) , Monday October 15, 2018 @08:43PM ( #57483544 )
Huh? ( Score: 3 )

What's Google+?

BrianMarshall ( 704425 ) writes:
Re: ( Score: 3 )

What's Google+?

It's a different version of Myspace.

[Sep 16, 2018] Firefox peaked at well over 30% [statcounter.com], people were leaving IE in droves taking it from 95%+ to the low 60s before Chrome even existed

Notable quotes:
"... I used the Chrome browser for about seven years. It's a great browser -- fast, snappy, good looking, responsive. Unfortunately, it's controlled by Google, an organization that can no longer be trusted. ..."
"... I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem. Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it. ..."
tech.slashdot.org

Kjella ( 173770 ) #57249058 ) Homepage

Re:This is the factual inaccuracy in the summary.. ( Score: 3 )
Sep 07, 2018 | tech.slashdot.org

IE 9 was the first non sucky IE browser and MS was forced to follow webstandards all thinks to Chrome's marketshare (...) All they know is Firefox was slow, and their worksites looked funny which is why it never took more than 15% marketshare.

What a load of bullshit history revisionism being modded up by moderators sucking Google's cock. Firefox peaked at well over 30% [statcounter.com], people were leaving IE in droves taking it from 95%+ to the low 60s before Chrome even existed. Mozilla and Firefox did all the hard work of getting sites to work in something other than IE6 and the decline continued even though Microsoft much improved standards compliance in IE7 and IE8. Yes, Chrome was good but it came long after writing MS specific HTML/CSS was dead.

which is why Google left Gecko

That never happened, Google chose Webkit from the very beginning. Perhaps because they found it better in the first place, but it's not like they built something around Gecko and then abandoned it. Don't get me wrong, Chrome was a good product that took users from Firefox and sent IE from a decline into a free fall. But it was way too late to the party to get any credit for breaking IE's monopoly and forcing Microsoft into standards compliance. Except for all the money Google funneled into Mozilla in return for search results of course, but Chrome basically walked in open doors Firefox had already knocked down.

IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @02:33PM ( #57246940 ) Homepage Journal

Unfortunately, it's Google. ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

I used the Chrome browser for about seven years. It's a great browser -- fast, snappy, good looking, responsive. Unfortunately, it's controlled by Google, an organization that can no longer be trusted.

This sent me back into the welcoming arms of Firefox (and yes, my search engine is DuckDuckGo).

Luckyo ( 1726890 ) , Tuesday September 04, 2018 @08:13AM ( #57249902 )
Re: Unfortunately, it's Google. ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

We're talking about chromium, and the fact that it in fact does not use system hardware or software decoders. And with semi-recent changes Google made to chomium code, you can no longer just drop in the decoders into appropriate folder to make it work. ›

Waccoon ( 1186667 ) , Thursday September 06, 2018 @07:14AM ( #57262508 )
Re:Unfortunately, it's Google. ( Score: 2 )

I wouldn't say that what they're doing is worse, but I can't stand their ad campaigns championing their respect for privacy.

Google doesn't try to hide the fact they collect data. Mozilla has been caught borderline lying (and semi-backtracking) on too many occasions.

Billly Gates ( 198444 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @03:02PM ( #57247050 ) Journal
Thanks KDE/Steve Jobs & Google ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

Webkit was a much needed improvement. Also IE 6 websites still dominated many many years after 2000 in 2007/2008 when the first iPhone came out.

Webkit was better and designed to be abstract and multi-platform unlike gecko which was why Chrome switched from gecko to webkit while it was still in alpha. Without Chrome and mobile app support IE 6 would still be here. I was one of those Firefox rebels but it was a geek thing 10 years ago. If I recall it had just 10 to 15% of the market and I had to keep IE around for some websites.

Grandma would see this site not render in Firefox and blame the browser and go back to IE which made webdevelopers scream in frustration.

Though webkit and it's blink cousin are default in all devices and platforms I think it's a good thing we the web returned to where it should be and is now an open standard. Thanks Google, Apple, and the Konqueror project for making this possible.

Anonymous Coward , Monday September 03, 2018 @03:27PM ( #57247148 )
Re:Thanks KDE/Steve Jobs & Google ( Score: 1 )

KHTML was chosen as the basis for WebKit due to being lightweight (140k LoC). After Apple seized control the number of lines of code quickly grew to 14 million (!) This was expected to be better than if Microsoft got control of the project (NaN LoC estimate).

DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @03:03PM ( #57247054 )
And after 8 Years ( Score: 2 , Insightful)

I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem. Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it.

Anonymous Coward , Monday September 03, 2018 @03:52PM ( #57247254 )
Re:And after 8 Years ( Score: 2 , Informative)
I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem.

Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it.

LOL....LOL....LOL

Apparently you don't understand where Mozilla gets all their money.

Almost 100% of Mozilla's revenue (currently about $350 Million a year) comes from . . . . . . . GOOGLE!

And Mozilla is just as "neoliberal fascist" as Google. (Forced their CEO to resign because he gave some money to a political campaign they don't like).

AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) writes: < {mojo} {at} {world3.net} > on Monday September 03, 2018 @04:48PM ( #57247446 ) Homepage Journal
Re:And after 8 Years ( Score: 3 )

Chrome doesn't have ads and Google respects Do Not Track, which you can enable in Chrome.

Firefox secretly installed an advertising plugin for a TV show without permission.

Your trust is misplaced. Also, "neoliberal fascist enterprise" makes you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist.

sremick ( 91371 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @04:58PM ( #57247468 )
Chrome is the new IE ( Score: 3 , Interesting)

Dumbed down anti-user interface. Arrogant background processes that spawn countless instances and take over your computer. Drive-by unwanted trojan installs as Google greases the palms of every freeware dev to sneak a Chrome install into their app installer. But worst of all now are the "Only works in Chrome" websites:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]

Microsoft got raked over the coals for doing all the same shit that Google is now getting a pass for. What the fuck?

All you so-called geeks who champion Chrome are either just out of highschool or you are hypocrites with very short memories.

Babout 7⃣6⃣ ( 5434818 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @05:42PM ( #57247578 )
amazing how quick ( Score: 3 , Insightful)

amazing how quick the fresh take on the browser became mundane and bloated.

Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) , Tuesday September 04, 2018 @10:11AM ( #57250414 )
Re:amazing how quick ( Score: 2 )
There's noting bloated about Chrome.

Tell that to my RAM usage monitor. I finally had enough headaches with Chrome's memory usage that I gave Firefox a fair shot for several weeks (I gave up due to a thousand small lacks of attention to detail), and now am giving Safari a fair shot for a few weeks.

At this point, I plan to stay with Safari. Though it isn't as full-featured, the current version feels snappier, uses less memory, and does enough of the stuff that I care about to have won me over from Chrome. ›

cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) , Monday September 03, 2018 @07:15PM ( #57247888 )
It was so much better than the competition, at the ( Score: 2 )

It was so much better than the competition, at the time.

I'm largely back to FF now. As FF seems to be regaining at least part of its sanity.

[Jun 01, 2018] Google Abandons Pentagon's AI-Drone 'Project Maven' After Employee Revolt

Notable quotes:
"... Remember "don't be evil"? Neither do they. ..."
"... The whiney employees will become drone targets. The project will continue, for the good of the Peeples. ..."
"... We have always been at war with Eurasia. ..."
Jun 01, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

toady -> greenskeeper carl Fri, 06/01/2018 - 18:50 Permalink

Remember "don't be evil"? Neither do they.

SILVERGEDDON -> vato poco Fri, 06/01/2018 - 20:46 Permalink

The whiney employees will become drone targets. The project will continue, for the good of the Peeples.

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

HRClinton -> Colonel Klinks Ghost Fri, 06/01/2018 - 19:04 Permalink

LOL, that's a convenient list of 4,000 revolting* people to be laid off soon.

* not to be confused with Deplorable people. ;-)

[Apr 02, 2018] The quality of Google translation from Russian is low

Apr 02, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

@bjd #86

Just a genera advice from a native Russian speaker, i still suggest you first trying dedicated language-specialized engine like ProMT/Stylus (my link of www.translate.ru) before stohastic engines like Google/Bing

The latter have much better vocabularies but are deaf on nuances and are affected by holywars on hot topics (to the extend of calling white black), so they better serve to clear places that dedicated engine failed at.

Posted by: Arioch | Mar 31, 2018 7:45:30 PM | 90

Just for comparison of the engines.

http://www.translate.ru/site/auto/ru-en/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mid.ru%2Fru%2Fforeign_policy%2Fnews%2F-%2Fasset_publisher%2FcKNonkJE02Bw%2Fcontent%2Fid%2F3150139

Granted, the dry official style of diplomatic notes is perhaps not one where the nuancing of live language matters. It is also funny how both engines failed at legalese "Case of Teh Skripals", though in different ways.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Questions of the Russian Side to France on the "business by Skripalya" fabricated by Great Britain against Russia

618-31-03-2018

On March 31 the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Paris sent to foreign policy department of France a note with the list of questions to the French party on the "business by Skripalya" fabricated against Russia:
1. On what basis France was involved in technical cooperation in investigation of incident by Great Britain in Salisbury?
2. Whether France sent the formal notice to OPCW on connection to technical cooperation in investigation of incident in Salisbury?
3. What proofs were transferred to France by Great Britain within rendering technical cooperation?
4. Whether there were French experts at a biomaterial intake at Sergey and Yulia Skripaley?
5. Whether research by the French experts of biomaterials of Sergey and Yulia Skripaley, if yes, that in what laboratory was conducted?
6. On the basis of what signs the French experts drew a conclusion on use of fighting toxic agent like "Beginner" (on the British terminology) or its analogs?
7. What expert knowledge France in the field of studying of fighting toxic agents of this type or its analogs has?
8. On the basis of what signs (markers) the French experts established "the Russian character" of an origin of the substance applied in Salisbury?
9. Whether there are for France control approved samples of fighting Beginner toxic agent (on the British terminology) or its analogs?
10. Whether samples of fighting toxic agent of this type or its analogs in France, if yes, that in what purposes were developed?

Posted by: Arioch | Mar 31, 2018 7:50:12 PM | 92

Piotr Berman , Mar 31, 2018 9:29:04 PM | 96
"The Case of the Violins"

skripki is the Russian word for violin, it has plural form

It is a bit of mystery why "of Skripals" = Skripalyev was deconstructed as the same as "of violins" = skripok. However, Google translate has the following method: remove grammatical endings and what remains, translate verbatim, if multiple possibilities exist, pick one at random. If everything fails, leave a word untranslated. This leads to such feats of translatory:

Bishops flood blood about their expensive fury

In the original, "flood" is a verb, 3rd person singular, present tense, so it has to be bloods that flood, not the bishops who are many. Bloods flood someone = that someone is very irritated. So bishops were very irritated, and the reason was "expensive fury". Fury (pronounced foo-ry) is plural of fura, a horse driven cart for transporting bulky stuff, say, hay, but in popular slang it means a car, the topic of an article with cited title was a reaction of higher clergy to papal order not to use luxury vehicles. For some reason Google did not find the word in its dictionary. Last comment: "their" was a lucky guess by Google, because the original is randomly translated as her, his, mine, their, our, yours -- what it really means is belonging to the subject.

[Apr 01, 2018] Trouble for big tech as consumers sour on Amazon, Facebook and co

Those companies are way too connected with intelligence agencies (some of then are essentially an extension of intelligence agencies) and as such they will be saved in any case. That means that chances that it will be dot com bubble burst No.2 exist. but how high they are is unclear.
Apr 01, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems too. Should the world's top tech firms be worried?

rump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.

Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling

Read more

The past two weeks have been difficult for the tech sector by every measure. Tech stocks have largely driven the year's stock market decline, the largest quarterly drop since 2015.

Facebook saw more than $50bn shaved off its value after the Observer revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of people's user data for political profiling. Now users are deleting accounts, and regulators may seek to limit how the company monetizes data, threatening Facebook's business model.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it was investigating the company's data practices. Additionally, Facebook said it would send a top executive to London to appear in front of UK lawmakers, but it would not send the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is increasingly seen as isolated and aloof.

Shares of Facebook have declined more than 17% from the close on Friday 16 March to the close on Thursday before the Easter break.

Amazon, meanwhile, long the target of President Trump's ire, saw more than $30bn, or 5%, shaved off its $693bn market capitalization after it was reported that the president was "obsessed" with the company and that he "wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law".

Shares of Apple, and Google's parent company Alphabet, are also down, dropping on concerns that tech firms now face tighter regulation across the board.

For Apple, there's an additional concern that following poor sales of its $1,000 iPhone X. For Google, there's the prospect not only of tighter regulation on how it sells user date to advertisers, but also the fear of losing an important Android software patent case with the Oracle.

Big tech's critics may be forgiven a moment of schadenfreude. But for shareholders and pension plans, the tarnishing of tech could have serious consequences.

Apple, Amazon and Alphabet make up 10% of the S&P 500 with a combined market capitalization market cap of $2.3tn. Add Microsoft and Facebook, with a combined market value of $1.1tn, and the big five make up 15% of the index.

Overall, technology makes up 25% of the S&P. If tech pops, the thinking goes, so pops the market.

"We're one week into a sell-off after a multi-year run-up," says Eric Kuby of North Star Investment Management. "The big picture is that over the past five years a group of mega cap tech stocks like Nvidia, Netflix, Facebook have gone up anywhere from 260% to 1,800%."


Confess -> Nedward Marbletoe , 1 Apr 2018 16:12

The post office is a service for citizens. It operates at a loss. Being able to send a letter across the country in two days for fifty cents is a service our government provides. Amazon is abusing that service. It's whole business model requires government support.
Byron Delaney , 1 Apr 2018 15:59
Amazon's spending power is garnered simply from its massively overalued stock price. If that falls, down goes Amazon. Facebook is entirely dependent on the postive opinion of active users. If users stop using, down goes Facebook's stock price, and so goes the company. It's extremely fragile. Apple has a short product cycle. If people lose interest in its newest versions, its stock price can tank in one year or so. Google and Microsoft seem quite solid, but are likely overvalued. (Tesla will most likwly go bankrupt, along with many others.) If these stocks continue to lose value, rwtirement funds will get scary, and we could enter recession again almost immediately. Since companies such as Amazon have already degraded the eatablished infrastructure of the economy, there may be no actual recovery. We will need to change drastically in some way. It seems that thw wheels are already turning, and this is where we are going now - with Trump as our leader.
lennbob , 1 Apr 2018 15:58
'Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley said: "We do not think attacking Amazon will be popular."'

Lloyd Walmsley hasn't spent much time in Seattle, apparently. The activities of Amazon and Google (but especially Amazon) have all contributed to traffic problems, rising rents and property prices, and gentrification (among other things) that are all making Seattle a less affordable, less attractive place to live. That's why Amazon is looking to establish a 'second headquarters' in another city: they've upset too many people here to be able to expand further in this area without at least encountering significant resistance. People here used to refer to Microsoft as 'the evil empire'; now we use it to refer to Amazon. And when it comes to their original business, books, I and most people I know actively avoid buying from Amazon, choosing instead to shop at the area's many independent book stores.

PardelLux , 1 Apr 2018 15:54
Dear Guardian,
why do you still sport the FB, Twitter, Google+, Instagramm, Pinterest etc. buttons below every single article? Why do you have to do their dirty work? I don't do that on my webpages, you don't need to do neither. Please stop it.
Alexander Dunnett , 1 Apr 2018 15:42
Not being a Trump supporter, however there is a lot of sense in some of the comments coming from Trump,. Whether he carries through with them , is another subject.


His comment on Amazon:- " Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state or local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US) and putting many thousands of retailers out of business."

Who can argue against that? Furthermore, the retailers would have paid some tax!

Talk about elephants in the room. What about the elephants who were let out of the room to run amuck ? Should it not have been the case of being wise before the event , rather than after the event?

Neovercingetorix , 1 Apr 2018 15:20
A quasi-battle of the billionaires. With Bezos, there's the immediate political element in Bezos' ownership of the clearly anti-Trump Washington Post, which has gone so far as to become lax in editorial oversight (eg, misspelling and even occasional incomplete articles published in an obvious rush to be first to trash POTUS), but there are other issues. Amazon's impact on physical retail is well-documented, and not so long ago (ie, before Trump "attacked" Amazon"), it was sometimes lamented by those on the American left, and Trump is correct in that critique, provided one believes it is valid in the first place. Amazon does have a lot of data on its customers, including immense expenditure information on huge numbers of people. What kinds of constraints are there in place to protect this data, aside from lawyer-enriching class action suits? Beyond that, there's also online defense procurement, worth hundreds of billions in revenue to Amazon in the years to come, that was included in the modified NDAA last year. Maybe that is on Trump's mind, maybe not, but it should probably be on everyone's mind. Maybe the Sherman Antitrust Act needs to be reinvigorated. It would seem that even Trump's foes should be willing to admit that he gets some things right, but that now seems unacceptable. I mean, look at the almost knee-jerk defense of NAFTA, which way back when used to be criticized by Democrats and unions, but now must be lionized.
Byron Delaney , 1 Apr 2018 14:46
If Amazon can get cheaper shipping than anyone else and enable manufactuers to sell direct, they can sell more than anyone else as long as consumers only buy according to total price. This means two things. One, all retailers as well as distributors may be put out of business. Two, the success of Amazon may rely almost entirely on shipping costs. American consumers also will need to forego the shopping experience, but if they may do so if they're sarisfied with remaining in their residences, workplaces, and cars most of the time. This is the case in many places. People visit Starbucks drive thrus and eat and drink in their cars. If Amazon owns the food stores such as Whole Foods and Starbucks, it's a done deal. Except for one thing. If this happens, the economy will collapse. That may have already happened. Bezos is no rocket scientist.

[Mar 27, 2018] Why Hiring the 'Best' People Produces the Least Creative Results

Mar 27, 2018 | news.slashdot.org

(qz.com) BeauHD on Saturday February 10, 2018 @09:54PM from the fallacy-of-merit dept. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report written by Scott E. Page, who explains why hiring the "best" people produces the least creative results : The burgeoning of teams -- most academic research is now done in teams, as is most investing and even most songwriting (at least for the good songs) -- tracks the growing complexity of our world. We used to build roads from A to B. Now we construct transportation infrastructure with environmental, social, economic, and political impacts. The complexity of modern problems often precludes any one person from fully understanding them. The multidimensional or layered character of complex problems also undermines the principle of meritocracy: The idea that the "best person" should be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance criteria. Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills. That team would more likely than not include mathematicians (though not logicians such as Griffeath). And the mathematicians would likely study dynamical systems and differential equations.

Believers in a meritocracy might grant that teams ought to be diverse but then argue that meritocratic principles should apply within each category. Thus the team should consist of the "best" mathematicians, the "best" oncologists, and the "best" biostatisticians from within the pool. That position suffers from a similar flaw. Even with a knowledge domain, no test or criteria applied to individuals will produce the best team. Each of these domains possesses such depth and breadth, that no test can exist. When building a forest, you do not select the best trees as they tend to make similar classifications. You want diversity. Programmers achieve that diversity by training each tree on different data, a technique known as bagging. They also boost the forest 'cognitively' by training trees on the hardest cases -- those that the current forest gets wrong. This ensures even more diversity and accurate forests.

[Mar 22, 2018] Know Your History Google Has Been a Military-Intel Contractor from the Very Beginning

Mar 22, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

by George Washington Wed, 03/21/2018 - 23:09 206 SHARES

By Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley .

Levine's investigative reporting on the connection between the Silicon Valley tech giants and the military-intelligence community has been praised by high-level NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and many others. [See my interviews of Drake here:

"Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google's involvement." -- Gizmodo / March 6, 2018

Gizmodo's report on Google's work for the Pentagon has been making headlines all day. It's also thrown the normally placid halls of Google's Mountain View HQ into chaos. Seems that Googlers can't believe that their awesome company would get involved in something as heinous as helping the Pentagon increase its drone targeting capability.

But the fact that Google helps the military build more efficient systems of surveillance and death shouldn't be surprising, especially not to Google employees. The truth is that Google has spent the last 15 years selling souped-up versions of its information technology to military and intelligence agencies, local police departments, and military contractors of all size and specialization -- including outfits that sell predictive policing tech deployed in cities across America today.

As I outline in my book Surveillance Valley , it started in 2003 with customized Google search solutions for data hosted by the CIA and NSA. The company's military contracting work then began to expand in a major way after 2004, when Google cofounder Sergey Brin pushed for buying Keyhole, a mapping startup backed by the CIA and the NGA, a sister agency to the NSA that handles spy satellite intelligence.

Spooks loved Keyhole because of the "video game-like" simplicity of its virtual maps. They also appreciated the ability to layer visual information over other intelligence. The sky was the limit. Troop movements, weapons caches, real-time weather and ocean conditions, intercepted emails and phone call intel, cell phone locations -- whatever intel you had with a physical location could be thrown onto a map and visualized. Keyhole gave an intelligence analyst, a commander in the field, or an air force pilot up in the air the kind of capability that we now take for granted: using digital mapping services on our computers and mobile phones to look up restaurants, cafes, museums, traffic conditions, and subway routes. "We could do these mashups and expose existing legacy data sources in a matter of hours, rather than weeks, months, or years," an NGA official gushed about Keyhole -- the company that we now know as Google Earth.

Military commanders weren't the only ones who liked Keyhole's ability to mash up data. So did Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

The purchase of Keyhole was a major milestone for Google, marking the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing Internet company and began integrating with the US government. While Google's public relations team did its best to keep the company wrapped in a false aura of geeky altruism, company executives pursued an aggressive strategy to become the Lockheed Martin of the Internet Age. "We're functionally more than tripling the team each year," a Google exec who ran Google Federal, the company's military sales division, said in 2008.

It was true. With insiders plying their trade, Google's expansion into the world of military and intelligence contracting took off.

What kind of work?

Here are just a few data points from Surveillance Valley :

More from the book:

"Google has been tightlipped about the details and scope of its contracting business. It does not list this revenue in a separate column in quarterly earnings reports to investors, nor does it provide the sum to reporters. But an analysis of the federal contracting database maintained by the US government, combined with information gleaned from Freedom of Information Act requests and published periodic reports on the company's military work, reveals that Google has been doing brisk business selling Google Search, Google Earth, and Google Enterprise (now known as G Suite) products to just about every major military and intelligence agency: navy, army, air force, Coast Guard, DARPA, NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, NGA, and the State Department. Sometimes Google sells directly to the government, but it also works with established contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), a California-based intelligence mega-contractor that has so many former NSA employees working for it that it is known in the business as 'NSA West.'"

-- Yasha Levine

Want to know more?

Read "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet"

[Dec 16, 2017] Google vs. Bing on what is the unz review, by Steve Sailer - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... I use Bing and only resort to google for difficult searches, say 7% of the time. Also using the trackmenot extension which keeps bing and google from tracking your searches. ..."
"... I use DDG for regular searches myself since several years; it's usually good enough not to bother with the Goolag. ..."
"... Google is an off-shoot of the CIA. ..."
Dec 16, 2017 | www.unz.com

Clyde , December 14, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT

I use Bing and only resort to google for difficult searches, say 7% of the time. Also using the trackmenot extension which keeps bing and google from tracking your searches.

On a Google search for only "Unz" I get clean and untainted results. No warnings or cautions from ADL or anyone else.

rogue-one , December 14, 2017 at 12:36 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

Perhaps the problem is that if DuckDuckGo becomes the next Google, ADL, Soros, & their friends will go after DuckDuckGo for promoting "hate speech". To keep away SJWs, DuckDuckGo would resort to similar measures.

We shouldn't forget at one time Twitter was the "free speech wing of the free speech party." Today, after "abuse" allegations, it has "trust & safety council".

Progressivism is like a virus. It is attracted to healthy organizations & networks and forces them to act according to progressive values.

Pericles , December 14, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

DuckDuckGo uses Bing as the underlying engine, in case you'd like to know.

I use DDG for regular searches myself since several years; it's usually good enough not to bother with the Goolag.

Detective Club , Website December 14, 2017 at 2:31 pm GMT
Google is an off-shoot of the CIA.

[Dec 14, 2017] Tech Giants Trying to Use WTO to Colonize Emerging Economies

Notable quotes:
"... The initiative described in this article reminds me of how the World Bank pushed hard for emerging economies to develop capital markets, for the greater good of America's investment bankers. ..."
"... By Burcu Kilic, an expert on legal, economic and political issues. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... Today, the big tech race is for data extractivism from those yet to be 'connected' in the world – tech companies will use all their power to achieve a global regime in which small nations cannot regulate either data extraction or localisation. ..."
"... One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants. ..."
"... Out of idle curiosity, how could you accurately deduce my country of origin from my name? ..."
Dec 14, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

December 14, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Notice that Costa Rica is served up as an example in this article. Way back in 1997, American Express had designated Costa Rica as one of the countries it identified as sufficiently high income so as to be a target for a local currency card offered via a franchise agreement with a domestic institution (often but not always a bank). 20 years later, the Switzerland of Central America still has limited Internet connectivity, yet is precisely the sort of place that tech titans like Google would like to dominate.

The initiative described in this article reminds me of how the World Bank pushed hard for emerging economies to develop capital markets, for the greater good of America's investment bankers.

By Burcu Kilic, an expert on legal, economic and political issues. Originally published at openDemocracy

Today, the big tech race is for data extractivism from those yet to be 'connected' in the world – tech companies will use all their power to achieve a global regime in which small nations cannot regulate either data extraction or localisation.

n a few weeks' time, trade ministers from 164 countries will gather in Buenos Aires for the 11th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC11). US President Donald Trump in November issued fresh accusations of unfair treatment towards the US by WTO members , making it virtually impossible for trade ministers to leave the table with any agreement in substantial areas.

To avoid a 'failure ministerial," some countries see the solution as pushing governments to open a mandate to start conversations that might lead to a negotiation on binding rules for e-commerce and a declaration of the gathering as the "digital ministerial". Argentina's MC11 chair, Susana Malcorra, is actively pushing for member states to embrace e-commerce at the WTO, claiming that it is necessary to " bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots ".

It is not very clear what kind of gaps Malcorra is trying to bridge. It surely isn't the "connectivity gap" or "digital divide" that is growing between developed and developing countries, seriously impeding digital learning and knowledge in developing countries. In fact, half of humanity is not even connected to the internet, let alone positioned to develop competitive markets or bargain at a multilateral level. Negotiating binding e-commerce rules at the WTO would only widen that gap.

Dangerously, the "South Vision" of digital trade in the global trade arena is being shaped by a recent alliance of governments and well-known tech-sector lobbyists, in a group called 'Friends of E-Commerce for Development' (FED), including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, and, most recently, China. FED claims that e-commerce is a tool to drive growth, narrow the digital divide, and generate digital solutions for developing and least developed countries.

However, none of the countries in the group (apart from China) is leading or even remotely ready to be in a position to negotiate and push for binding rules on digital trade that will be favorable to them, as their economies are still far away from the technology revolution. For instance, it is perplexing that one of the most fervent defenders of FED's position is Costa Rica. The country's economy is based on the export of bananas, coffee, tropical fruits, and low-tech medical instruments, and almost half of its population is offline . Most of the countries in FED are far from being powerful enough to shift negotiations in favor of small players.

U.S.-based tech giants and Chinese Alibaba – so-called GAFA-A – dominate, by far, the future of the digital playing field, including issues such as identification and digital payments, connectivity, and the next generation of logistics solutions. In fact, there is a no-holds-barred ongoing race among these tech giants to consolidate their market share in developing economies, from the race to grow the advertising market to the race to increase online payments.

An e-commerce agenda that claims unprecedented development for the Global South is a Trojan horse move. Beginning negotiations on such topics at this stage – before governments are prepared to understand what is at stake – could lead to devastating results, accelerating liberalization and the consolidation of the power of tech giants to the detriment of local industries, consumers, and citizens. Aware of the increased disparities between North and South, and the data dominance of a tiny group of GAFA-A companies, a group of African nations issued a statement opposing the digital ambitions of the host for MC11. But the political landscape is more complex, with China, the EU, and Russia now supporting the idea of a "digital" mandate .

Repeating the Same Mistakes?

The relationships of most countries with tech companies are as imbalanced as their relationships with Big Pharma, and there are many parallels to note. Not so long ago, the countries of the Global South faced Big Pharma power in pharmaceutical markets in a similar way. Some developing countries had the same enthusiasm when they negotiated intellectual property rules for the protection of innovation and research and development costs. In reality, those countries were nothing more than users and consumers of that innovation, not the owners or creators. The lessons of negotiating trade issues that lie at the core of public interest issues – in that case, access to medicines – were costly. Human lives and fundamental rights of those who use online services should not be forgotten when addressing the increasingly worrying and unequal relationships with tech power.

The threat before our eyes is similarly complex and equally harmful to the way our societies will be shaped in the coming years. In the past, the Big Pharma race was for patent exclusivity, to eliminate local generic production and keep drug prices high. Today, the Big Tech race is for data extractivism from those who have yet to be connected in the world, and tech companies will use all the power they hold to achieve a global regime in which small nations cannot regulate either data extraction or data localization.

Big Tech is one of the most concentrated and resourceful industries of all time. The bargaining power of developing countries is minimal. Developing countries will basically be granting the right to cultivate small parcels of a land controlled by data lords -- under their rules, their mandate, and their will -- with practically no public oversight. The stakes are high. At the core of it is the race to conquer the markets of digital payments and the battle to become the platform where data flows, splitting the territory as old empires did in the past. As the Economist claimed on May 6, 2017: "Conflicts over control of oil have scarred the world for decades. No one yet worries that wars will be fought over data. But the data economy has the same potential for confrontation."

If countries from the Global South want to prepare for data wars, they should start thinking about how to reduce the control of Big Tech over -- how we communicate, shop, and learn the news -- , again, over our societies. The solution lies not in making rules for data liberalization, but in devising ways to use the law to reduce Big Tech's power and protect consumers and citizens. Finding the balance would take some time and we are going to take that time to find the right balance, we are not ready to lock the future yet.

Jef , December 14, 2017 at 11:32 am

I thought thats what the WTO is for?

Thuto , December 14, 2017 at 2:14 pm

One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants. To paraphrase from a comment I made recently regarding a similar topic : "with markets in the developed world pretty much sewn up by the tripartite tech overlords (google, fb and amazon), the next 3 billion users for their products/services are going to come from developing world". With this dynamic in mind, and the "constant growth" mantra humming incessantly in the background, it's easy to see how high stakes a game this is for the tech giants and how no resources will be spared to stymie any efforts at establishing a regulatory oversight framework that will protect the digital rights of citizens in the global south.

Multilateral fora like the WTO are de facto enablers for the marauding frontal attacks of transnational corporations, and it's disheartening to see that some developing nations have already nailed the digital futures of their citizens to the mast of the tech giants by joining this alliance. What's more, this signing away of their liberty will be sold to the citizenry as the best way to usher them into the brightest of all digital futures.

Mark P. , December 14, 2017 at 3:30 pm

One suspects big money will be thrown at this by the leading tech giants.

Vast sums of money are already being thrown at bringing Africa online, for better or worse. Thus, the R&D aimed at providing wireless Internet via giant drones/balloons/satellites by Google, Facebook, etc.

You're African. Possibly South African by your user name, which may explain why you're a little behind the curve, because the action is already happening, but more to the north -- and particularly in East Africa.

The big corporations -- and the tech giants are competing with the banking/credit card giants -- have noted how mobile technology leapt over the dearth of last century's telephony tech, land lines, and in turn enabled the highest adoption rates of cellphone banking in the world. (Particularly in East Africa, as I say.) The payoffs for big corporations are massive -- de facto cashless societies where the corporations control the payment systems –and the politicians are mostly cheap.

In Nigeria, the government has launched a Mastercard-branded national ID card that's also a payment card, in one swoop handing Mastercard more than 170 million potential customers, and their personal and biometric data.

In Kenya, the sums transferred by mobile money operator M-Pesa are more than 25 percent of that country's GDP.

You can see that bringing Africa online is technically a big, decade-long project. But also that the potential payoffs are vast. Though I also suspect China may come out ahead -- they're investing far more in Africa and in some areas their technology -- drones, for instance -- is already superior to what the Europeans and the American companies have.

Thuto , December 14, 2017 at 4:58 pm

Thank you Mark P.

Hoisted from a comment I made here recently: "Here in South Africa and through its Free Basics programme, facebook is jumping into bed with unsuspecting ISPs (I say unsuspecting because fb will soon be muscling in on their territory and becoming an ISP itself by provisioning bandwidth directly from its floating satellites) and circumventing net neutrality "

I'm also keenly aware of the developments in Kenya re: safaricom and Mpesa and how that has led to traditional banking via bank accounts being largely leapfrogged for those moving from being unbanked to active economic citizens requiring money transfer facilities. Given the huge succes of Mpesa, I wouldn't be surprised if a multinational tech behemoth (chinese or american) were to make a play for acquiring safaricom and positioning it as a triple-play ISP, money transfer/banking services and digital content provider (harvesting data about users habits on an unprecedented scale across multiple areas of their lives), first in Kenya then expanded throughout east, central and west africa. I must add that your statement about Nigeria puts Mark Zuckerberg's visit there a few months back into context somewhat, perhaps a reconnaissance mission of sorts.

Out of idle curiosity, how could you accurately deduce my country of origin from my name?

Mark P. , December 14, 2017 at 6:59 pm

Out of idle curiosity, how could you accurately deduce my country of origin from my name?

Though I've lived in California for decades, my mother was South African and I maintain a UK passport, having grown up in London.

Mark P. , December 14, 2017 at 3:34 pm

As you also write: "with markets in the developed world pretty much sewn up by the tripartite tech overlords (google, fb and amazon), the next 3 billion users for their products/services are going to come from developing world."

Absolutely true. This cannot be stressed enough. The tech giants know this and the race is on.

Mattski , December 14, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Been happening with food for 50 years.

[Oct 22, 2017] Silicon Valley is not your friend by Dan Crawford

Notable quotes:
"... Growth becomes the overriding motivation -- something treasured for its own sake, not for anything it brings to the world. Facebook and Google can point to a greater utility that comes from being the central repository of all people, all information, but such market dominance has obvious drawbacks, and not just the lack of competition. As we've seen, the extreme concentration of wealth and power is a threat to our democracy by making some people and companies unaccountable. ..."
"... Out of curiosity, the other day I searched "cellphones" on Google. Before finding even a mildly questioning article about cellphones, I paged down through ads for phones and lists of phones for sale, guides to buying phones and maps with directions to stores that sell phones, some 20 results in total. Somewhere, a pair of idealistic former graduate students must be saying: "See! I told you so!" ..."
Oct 20, 2017 | angrybearblog.com
Vis New York Times

Growth becomes the overriding motivation -- something treasured for its own sake, not for anything it brings to the world. Facebook and Google can point to a greater utility that comes from being the central repository of all people, all information, but such market dominance has obvious drawbacks, and not just the lack of competition. As we've seen, the extreme concentration of wealth and power is a threat to our democracy by making some people and companies unaccountable.

In addition to their power, tech companies have a tool that other powerful industries don't: the generally benign feelings of the public. To oppose Silicon Valley can appear to be opposing progress, even if progress has been defined as online monopolies; propaganda that distorts elections; driverless cars and trucks that threaten to erase the jobs of millions of people; the Uberization of work life, where each of us must fend for ourselves in a pitiless market.

As is becoming obvious, these companies do deserve the benefit of the doubt. We need greater regulation, even if it impedes the introduction of new services. If we can't stop their proposals -- if we can't say that driverless cars may not be a worthy goal, to give just one example -- then are we in control of our society? We need to break up these online monopolies because if a few people make the decisions about how we communicate, shop, learn the news, again, do we control our own society?

Out of curiosity, the other day I searched "cellphones" on Google. Before finding even a mildly questioning article about cellphones, I paged down through ads for phones and lists of phones for sale, guides to buying phones and maps with directions to stores that sell phones, some 20 results in total. Somewhere, a pair of idealistic former graduate students must be saying: "See! I told you so!"

[Oct 16, 2017] Google to give $1B, help U.S. workers find jobs

Oct 16, 2017 | www.msn.com

Google to give $1B, help U.S. workers find jobs 23 / 44 USA TODAY logo USA TODAY USA TODAY Jessica Guynn 3 days ago SHARE SHARE TWEET SHARE EMAIL Samsung Galaxy S9 May Feature iPhone X Face ID Rival Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses media at the MadebyGoogle event at the SF Jazz Center in San Francisco. © Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses media at the MadebyGoogle event at the SF Jazz Center in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google will invest $1 billion over the next five years in nonprofit organizations helping people adjust to the changing nature of work, the largest philanthropic pledge to date from the Internet giant.

The announcement of the national digital skills initiative, made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in Pittsburgh, Pa. Thursday, is a tacit acknowledgment from one of the world's most valuable companies that it bears some responsibility for rapid advances in technology that are radically reshaping industries and eliminating jobs in the U.S. and around the world.

Pichai's pitstop in an old industrial hub that has reinvented itself as a technology and robotics center is the first on a "Grow with Google Tour." The tour that will crisscross the country will work with libraries and community organizations to provide career advice and training. It heads next to Indianapolis in November.

Definition.org Fans Stunned As Loretta Swit Blurts Out Why She Left M*A*S*H See More Sponsored by Definition.org

"The nature of work is fundamentally changing. And that is shifting the link between education, training and opportunity," Pichai said in prepared remarks at Google's offices in Pittsburgh. "One-third of jobs in 2020 will require skills that aren't common today. It's a big problem."

Google will make grants in its three core areas: education, economic opportunity and inclusion. Already in the last few months, it has handed out $100 million of the $1 billion to nonprofits, according to Pichai.

The largest single grant -- $10 million, the largest Google's ever made -- is going to Goodwill, which is creating the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator. Over the next three years Goodwill, a major player in workforce development, aims to provide 1 million people with access to digital skills and career opportunities. Pichai says 1,000 Google employees will be available for career coaching.

In all, Google employees will donate 1 million volunteer hours to assist organizations like Goodwill trying to close the gap between the education and skills of the American workforce and the new demands of the 21st century workplace, Pichai said.

The announcements, which drew praise from state and local politicians including Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf, come as Google scrambles to respond to revelations that accounts linked to the Russian government used its advertising system to interfere with the presidential election.

Google is embroiled in a growing number of other controversies, from a Labor Department investigation and a lawsuit by former employees alleging systemic pay discrimination, to the proliferation of misinformation in search results and extremist content on YouTube. As the controversies have multiplied, so too have calls for Washington to regulate Google because of its massive scale and global reach.

"This isn't the first time we've seen massive, market-creating and labor market-disrupting companies try to address growing public pressure and possible regulatory limits in this way. But it often has been individual corporate titans who've gotten into philanthropy -- Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller -- as a way to rehabilitate their own images, tarnished by anxiety about the size of their companies and treatment of workers," said Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington.

"What's interesting here is what this signals about how Google's future business ambitions. It is betting that its next era will be one not of search and apps but of devices and labor market interventions."

Google's not alone fending off critics. A recent headline in tech news outlet TechCrunch read: "Dear Silicon Valley: America's fallen out of love with you."

The tech industry, once a shiny symbol of American innovation and pride, has found itself on the defensive after the election of Donald Trump, which telegraphed the deepening disillusionment of everyday Americans who have watched the gains of the economic recovery pass them by.

While whole communities in the nation's heartland have fallen into economic decline, the tech industry, clustered in vibrant coastal hubs like San Francisco and New York, has grown wealthy off new developments that are disrupting how Americans live and work.

The pace of that innovation is quickening. For years tech companies could not deliver on promises of hyper-intelligent machines capable of performing human tasks. Now the technology is catching up to the aspirations.

In recent years, Google and other companies have made long strides, from self-driving cars that whisk you to your destination to digital assistants who answer your questions. This new wave of automation that aids consumers in their everyday lives has a dark side: It's killing off traditional jobs and stranding workers, still struggling after the recession, who are unprepared for the shift.

Google, says O'Mara, will have "undeniably disruptive impacts on the jobs people do and the skills they need for them."

In the 1960s when computer-aided automation worried the nation, presidential and congressional commissions and government agencies tackled the challenge.

"Now it's the private sector. And even though $1 billion sounds like a lot, it is a small number compared to government education programs or, for that matter, the balance sheets of large tech companies," O'Mara said.

When Pichai came to the United States from his native India 24 years ago, it was the first time he had been on a plane. Pittsburgh was the first city he saw. Though Pittsburgh was moored to its early 20th century roots as a steel town, Carnegie Mellon University was already propelling the city into the future.

"As a new arrival, I was homesick but struck by something new: the sense of optimism," he said. "I remain a technology optimist."

Pichai envisions that transformation for Pittsburg as a blueprint for the country to make the transition to a new industrial era. On Thursday, Pichai detailed other programs Google is undertaking.

- Grow with Google is a free online program to help Americans secure the skills they need to get a job or grow their business. Job seekers, business owners and teachers can learn the basics of working with tech, from spreadsheets to email, get training and certificates through google.com/grow. Google says it has rolled it out to 27,000 middle and high school students and now plans to expand it to community colleges and vocational programs.

- In January, Google will launch an IT certificate program developed with online education provider Coursera that includes hands-on labs to prepare people for jobs in eight to 12 months and then connects graduates with potential employers. Google will sponsor 2,600 full scholarships through nonprofit organizations.

- Working with Udacity, Google is creating the Google Developer Scholarship Challenge. The top 10% of applicants who enroll in Google developer courses will receive scholarships.

- Google will give away 20,000 vouchers to get G​ ​Suite​ ​certification​.

"We don't have all the answers. The people closest to the problem are usually the people closest to the solution," Pichai said. "We want to help them reach it sooner."

[Oct 03, 2017] Russian Ads On Facebook A Click-Bait Campaign

Highly recommended!
This is particular dirty campaign to implicate Trump and delegitimize his victory is a part of color revolution against Trump.
The other noble purpose is to find a scapegoat for the current problems, especially in Democratic Party, and to preserve Clinton neoliberals rule over the party for a few more futile years.
Notable quotes:
"... Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. ..."
"... The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue. ..."
"... A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized. ..."
"... This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it. ..."
"... We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites: ..."
"... The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice. ..."
"... After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube. ..."
"... Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum". ..."
"... "Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes). ..."
"... The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation . ..."
"... Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for. ..."
"... Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites. ..."
"... The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues. ..."
Oct 03, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump.

It now turns out that these Facebook ads had nothing to do with the election. The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue.

On September 6 the NYT asserted :

Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
...
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election.

Like any Congress investigation the current one concerned with Facebook ads is leaking like a sieve. What oozes out makes little sense.

If "Russia" aimed to make Congress and U.S. media a laughing stock it surely achieved that.

Today the NYT says that the ads were posted "in disguise" by "the Russians" to promote variously themed Facebook pages:

There was "Defend the 2nd," a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, "LGBT United." There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads

No one has explained how these pages are supposed to be connected to a Russian "influence" campaign. It is unexplained how these are supposed to connected to the 2016 election. That is simply asserted because Facebook said, for unknown reasons, that these ads may have come from some Russian agency. How Facebook has determined that is not known.

With each detail that leaks from the "Russian ads" investigation the propaganda framework of "election manipulation" falls further apart:

Late Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in question. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after, the company said

The original story propagandized that "Russia" intended to influence the election in favor of Trump. But why then was the majority of the ads in questions run later after November 9? And how would an animal-lovers page with adorable puppy pictures help to achieve Trumps election victory?

More details via the Wall Street Journal:

Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That's because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.
...
For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed. Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads ran after the election.

All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign ... designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?

No.

But the NYT still finds "experts" who believe in the "Russian influence" nonsense and find the most stupid reasons to justify their claims:

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said Russia had been entrepreneurial in trying to develop diverse channels of influence. Some, like the dogs page, may have been created without a specific goal and held in reserve for future use.

Puppy pictures for "future use"? Nonsense. Lunacy! The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not a political influence op.

The for-profit scheme runs as follows: One builds pages with "hot" stuff that attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on these pages and fills it with Google ads. One promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook mini-ads for them.

A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized.

This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it.

We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites:

The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice.

"You have to write what people want to see, not what you want to show," he said, scrolling through The Political Insider's stories as a large banner read "ARREST HILLARY NOW."

The 3,000 Facebook ads Congress is investigating are part of a similar scheme. The mini-ads promoted pages with hot button issues and click-bait puppy pictures. These pages were themselves created to generate ad-clicks and revenue. As Facebook claims that "Russia" is behind them, we will likely find some Russian teens who simply repeated the scheme their Macedonian friends were running on.

With its "Russian influence" scare campaign the NYT follows the same business model. It is producing fake news which attracts viewers and readers who's attention is then sold to advertisers. Facebook is also profiting from this. Its current piecemeal release of vague information keeps its name in the news.

After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube.

Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum".

The car crash compilations, like the puppy pages, are another sign that Russia is waging war against the people of the United States!

You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!

Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower - 3:45 PM - 3 Oct 2017

This gets more chilling daily : now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by "demographics, geography, gender & interests," across websites & devices, reached millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo

It indeed gets more chilling. It's fall. It also generates ad revenue.

Posted by b on October 3, 2017 at 02:09 PM | Permalink

nmb | Oct 3, 2017 2:20:52 PM | 1

As Shock Therapy failed miserably in the 90s, the neocon dynasty seeks now direct confrontation with Russia
Jackrabbit | Oct 3, 2017 2:32:24 PM | 2
"Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes).

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation .

Taxi | Oct 3, 2017 2:32:34 PM | 3
Oh dear intrepidus, why are you still talking about MSM's favorite weapon of mass distraction?

Even though you make a fine point or two, at this stage, you're actually adding to the whirling stupidity by indulging it it yourself, methinks.

I'm so very, very over Russiagate and it's non-existent tentacles. Pfft!

Grieved | Oct 3, 2017 2:49:24 PM | 4
Thanks, b.

You're presenting a very good concept/meme to understand: Fake news is click bait for gain.

The same can be said for any sensationalism or shocking event - like the Kurdish referendum, like the Catalonia referendum, like the Vegas shooting - or like confrontational or dogmatic comments in threads about those events.

Everywhere we turn someone is trying to game us for some kind of gain. What matters is to step back from the front lines where our sense is accosted and offended, to step back from the automatic reflex, and to remember that someone triggered that reflex, deliberately, for their gain, not ours.

We have to reside in reason and equanimity, because the moment we indulge in our righteous anger or our strong convictions, the odds are extremely good that someone is playing us.

It's a wicked world, but in fact we live in an age when we can see its meta characteristics like never before.

Anon | Oct 3, 2017 2:49:39 PM | 5
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.

What we see is the biggest psyop., propaganda disinformation campaig ever in the western media, far more powerful than "nuclear Iraq" of 2003.
Still, and this should be a warning, majority of people in EU/US believe this nonsense.

the pair | Oct 3, 2017 3:07:19 PM | 6
$3 ads on facebook seen by nobody:

"russian meddling! their puppies hate our freedom!"

pharmaceutical ads on every evening news show and boeing/lockheed sponsoring the "p"bs news hour?"

"nothing to see here! take off your tin foil hat you f_cking alex jones putinbot!!!!"

you'd think by now most americans would realize the actual threat is other americans. the rest of the world realized it long ago.

sejomoje | Oct 3, 2017 3:08:47 PM | 7
I lol'd. But seriously the next step is a false flag implicating Russia. They're getting nowhere assassinating Russian diplomats and shooting down Russian aircraft, both military and civilian. Even overthrowing governments who are Russia-friendly hasn't seem to provoke a response.

But I consider the domestic Russia buzz to be performance art, and I imagine it's become even grating to some of its participants. How could it not be, unless everyone is heavily medicated(a lot certainly are)? Anyway it's by design that the western media and the political classes they serve need a script, they're incapable of discussing actual issues. Independence has been made quaint.

karlof1 | Oct 3, 2017 3:10:42 PM | 8
Hi Grieved--

I posted this link at the Vegas thread, but the item's contents are valid here too, and speaks to the content of your above comment, https://sputniknews.com/viral/201710031057912410-google-facebook-youtube-vegas-fake-news/

somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9
The line between politics and product marketing has gone.

But no matter if "the Russians" influenced the US election or not - after all that is what most countries do to each other - the FBI is correct that to be able to target audiences according to demographics and individual traits is a powerful tool.

Like the double hoax of " The War of Worlds broadcast ".

The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming a serious competitor in providing news and advertising. "Radio is new but it has adult responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses," said the editorial leader comment on November 1 1938. In an excellent piece in Slate magazine in 2013, Jefferson Pooley (associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College) and Michael J Socolow (associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine) looked at the continuing popularity of the myth of mass panic and they took to task NPR's Radiolab programme about the incident and the Radiolab assertion that "The United States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we've never seen before." Pooley and Socolow wrote: "How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America's newspapers. ... AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . . In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the ground.
ashley albanese | Oct 3, 2017 3:13:06 PM | 10
Jackrabbit 2
No - the two words the Capital system fears the most are SURPLUS VALUE , the control of the 'profit principle' for social not private ends .
Lea | Oct 3, 2017 3:42:35 PM | 11
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.

The "Russiadunnit" thingy has turned into a business in the US. And when a new market is launched in the US, as people depend on it for their living and careers, it generally doesn't go away.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/28/the-slimy-business-of-russia-gate/

OJS | Oct 3, 2017 3:45:59 PM | 12
god bless amerika

somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9
The American panic was a myth, the Equadorian panic in 1949 not so much. I listened to this Radiolab podcast about same ... the details of how they pulled it off in a one-radio station country pre-internet are interesting and valuable (they widely advertised a very popular music program which was then "interrupted" by the hoax to ensure near-universal audience (including the police and other authorities). Very very fews were "in on the joke" and it wasn't a joke. whole page on WooW: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/

specific could it happen again? http://www.radiolab.org/story/91624-could-it-happen-again-and-again/

c1ue | Oct 3, 2017 3:58:38 PM | 14
Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for.
Christian Chuba | Oct 3, 2017 3:58:49 PM | 15
Russian Trolls outed as kids from Oregon: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-latest-fake-news-panic-appears-to-be-fake-news-w506396
"Lankford shocked the world this week by revealing that "Russian Internet trolls" were stoking the NFL kneeling debate. ... Conservative outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and Fox played up the "Russians stoked the kneeling controversy" angle because it was in their interest to suggest that domestic support for kneeling protests is less than what it appears....

The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's" tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing on antifa stereotypes "More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at stadiums We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee." ...

The group was most likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. "

Christian Chuba | Oct 3, 2017 4:00:46 PM | 16
Pity Rolling Stone got caught up in that fake college rape allegation, they have actually done some solid reporting. Every MSM outlet has had multiple fake stories, so should RS be shunned for life for one bad story?
Kalen | Oct 3, 2017 4:03:18 PM | 17
It is time that sane part of independent media understood that there is no more need to rationally respond to psychotic delusions of Deep State puppets in Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites.

There are only two effective responses to provocation namely silence or violence, anything else plays the book of provocateurs.

Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 4:13:28 PM | 18
Now they're seriously undermining their claims of intentionality ... as well as their wildly inflated claims effect on outcome or even effective "undermining" ... again, compared to Citizens United and the long-count of 2000 ... negligible....

And still insisting that Hillary Clinton is Russia's Darth Vader against whom unlimited resources are marshalled because she must be stopped ... even though she damn near won... and the reasons she lost seems unrelated to such vagaries as the DNC e-mails or facebook campaigns (unless you believe she had a god-given right to each and every vote)

Don Bacon | Oct 3, 2017 4:13:47 PM | 19

Lucky for us that television "news" doesn't use this business model. /s
Pnyx | Oct 3, 2017 5:02:54 PM | 20
Why do you think this is important enough to make the effort to write another blog entry B? Everyone who wants to know that this is all fantasy knows by now.
Mina | Oct 3, 2017 5:05:12 PM | 21
https://mobile.twitter.com/dgaytandzhieva/status/913545591757697024
brian | Oct 3, 2017 5:09:39 PM | 22
'Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump.

This is the same US congress that regularly marches off to Israel to receive orders

https://www.amazon.com/They-Dare-Speak-Out-Institutions/dp/155652482X

those who dont obey orders: http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-i-got-fired/

Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 5:36:59 PM | 23
@ Posted by: Pnyx | Oct 3, 2017 5:02:54 PM | 20

This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...

Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ... and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the "remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ... all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...

It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account ... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?

Lochearn | Oct 3, 2017 6:43:01 PM | 24
Sorry to be off topic but yesterday the Saker of the Vineyard published a couple of articles about Catalonia. The first was a diatribe, a nasty hatchet job on the Catalan people which included the following referring to the Catalan people:

"The Problems they have because with their corruption, inefficiency, mismanagement, inability and sometimes the simplest stupidity, are always the fault of others (read Spaniards here) which gives them "carte blanche" to keep going on with it."

"... They (the independistas) are NATIONAL SOCIALIST (aka NAZI) in their Ideology"

Then Saker published an article by Peter Koenig that was reasonable and what we have come to expect. Then he forbade all comments on either of the two articles. My comment was banned, which simply said in my opinion from working for fourteen years in Spain that the Catalans were extremely efficient in comparison with their Madrid counterparts.

ToivoS | Oct 3, 2017 7:32:04 PM | 25
I must admit that I became a fan of watching those Russian car crashes that were captured by the cams many russian drivers keep on their dash boards. Some of these were very funny. I was not aware that made me a victim of Putin propaganda. In any case, they are not that interesting anymore once they were commercialized. That was about 10 years ago.
Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 7:43:29 PM | 26
I'm waiting for the expose of the Russian mail-order bride business (Do they still exist?)
ab initio | Oct 3, 2017 8:29:04 PM | 27
Very good analysis.

The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues.

ben | Oct 3, 2017 8:30:46 PM | 28
Jackrabbit @ 2: Yep!!

And here is another part to the puzzle:

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19516:Empire-Files%3A-The-Hidden-Purging-of-Millions-of-Voters

Chipnik | Oct 3, 2017 8:42:54 PM | 29
Your answer can be found ...right ...here:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc7kskox
james | Oct 3, 2017 8:44:05 PM | 30
OT - more from comedy central - daily USA press briefing from today...

"QUESTION: On Iran, would you and the State Department say, as Secretary Mattis said today, that staying in the JCPOA would be in the U.S. national interest?

MS NAUERT: Yeah.

QUESTION: Is this a position you share?

MS NAUERT: So I'm certainly familiar with what Secretary Mattis said on Capitol Hill today. Secretary Mattis, of course, one of many people who is providing expertise and counsel to the President on the issue of Iran and the JCPOA. The President is getting lots of information on that. We have about 12 days or so, I think, to make our determination for the next JCPOA guideline.

The administration looks at JCPOA as – the fault in the JCPOA as not looking at the totality of Iran's bad behavior. Secretary Tillerson talked about that at length at the UN General Assembly. So did the President as well. We know that Iran is responsible for terror attacks. We know that Iran arms the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which leads to a more miserable failed state, awful situation in Yemen, for example. We know what they're doing in Syria. Where you find the Iranian Government, you can often find terrible things happening in the world. This administration is very clear about highlighting that and will look at Iran in sort of its totality of all of its bad behaviors, not just the nuclear deal.

I don't want to get ahead of the discussions that are ongoing with this – within the administration, as it pertains to Iran. The President has said he's made he's decision, and so I don't want to speak on behalf of the President, and he'll just have to make that determination when he's ready to do so."

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2017/10/274592.htm

[Sep 16, 2017] Google Drive Faces Outage, Users Report

Sep 16, 2017 | tech.slashdot.org

(google.com) 75

Posted by msmash on Thursday September 07, 2017

Numerous Slashdot readers are reporting that they are facing issues access Google Drive, the productivity suite from the Mountain View-based company. Google's dashboard confirms that Drive is facing outage .

Third-party web monitoring tool DownDetector also reports thousands of similar complaints from users. The company said, "Google Drive service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future.

Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Google Drive is not loading files and results in a failures for a subset of users."

[Sep 16, 2017] Creator of Opera Says Google Deliberately Undermined His New Vivaldi Web Browser

Notable quotes:
"... The latest allegation against Google? Jon von Tetzchner, creator of the web browser Opera, says the search giant deliberately undermined his new browser, Vivaldi ..."
"... Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticized big tech companies' attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?" ..."
Sep 16, 2017 | tech.slashdot.org

(wired.co.uk) 247 Posted by msmash on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:00PM from the abuse-of-power dept.

The latest allegation against Google? Jon von Tetzchner, creator of the web browser Opera, says the search giant deliberately undermined his new browser, Vivaldi . Rowland Manthorpe, writing for Wired:

In a blogpost titled, " My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil ," von Tetzchner accuses the US firm of blocking Vivaldi's access to Google AdWords, the advertisements that run alongside search results, without warning or proper explanation. According to Von Tetzchner, the problem started in late May.

Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticized big tech companies' attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?"

He concludes: "Timing spoke volumes." Von Tetzchner got in touch with Google to try and resolve the issue. The result? What he calls "a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions." The particular issue was the end-user license agreement (EULA), the legal contract between a software manufacturer and a user. Google wanted Vivaldi to add one to its website. So it did.

But Google had further complaints. According to emails shown to WIRED, Google wanted Vivaldi to add an EULA "within the frame of every download button." The addition was small -- a link below the button directing people to "terms" -- but on the web, where every pixel matters, this was a potential competitive disadvantage.

Most gallingly, Chrome, Google's own web browser, didn't display a EULA on its landing pages. Google also asked Vivaldi to add detailed information to help people uninstall it, with another link, also under the button.

[Sep 16, 2017] Google Abused Its Power By Quashing a Report Critical Of Its Service, Reporter Says

Notable quotes:
"... As I recall it -- and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory -- a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google's crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly. ..."
Sep 16, 2017 | slashdot.org

(gizmodo.com) 279

Posted by msmash on Friday September 01, 2017 @10:40AM

In the wake of claims that Google got a think-tank research team sacked for criticizing the company , a respected journalist is alleging other abuses by the search giant. Kashmir Hill, a reporter at Gizmodo, is claiming that when she worked for Forbes six years ago, Google told the the magazine's staff that if publishers didn't add the "+" Google Plus social network button at the bottom of stories, those articles would come up lower in search results .

From her report: I published a story headlined, "Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers," that included bits of conversation from the meeting. (An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can still be found here .) Google promptly flipped out.

This was in 2011, around the same time that a congressional antitrust committee was looking into whether the company was abusing its powers. Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn't been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)

It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News. [...] Given that I'd gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately, though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down -- a decision I will always regret. Forbes declined comment about this.

But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all .

As I recall it -- and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory -- a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google's crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.

[May 19, 2017] There are other search engines, browsers, email services besides those operated by the giants. DuckDuckGo, protonmail, and the Opera browser (with free built-in VPN!) work well for me

As soon as DuckDuckGo shows ads and you have Javascript enabled your privacy evaporate the same way it evaporated in Google, unless you use VPN. But even in this case there are ways to "bound" your PC to you via non IP based methods.
May 19, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

lyman alpha blob , May 19, 2017 at 1:58 pm

There are other search engines, browsers, email services, etc. besides those operated by the giants. DuckDuckGo, protonmail, and the Opera browser (with free built-in VPN!) work well for me.

The problem is, if these other services ever do get popular enough, the tech giants will either block them by getting their stooges appointed to Federal agencies and regulating them out of existence, or buy them.

I've been running from ISP acquisitions for years, as the little guys get bought out I have to find an even littler one.

Luckily I've found a local ISP, GWI, that I've used for years now. They actually came out against the new regulations that would allow them to gather and sell their customers' data. Such anathema will probably wind up with their CEO publicly flayed for going against all that is good and holy according to the Five Horsemen.

[May 01, 2017] Google is the largest private spying agency: Is It Time to Break Up Google?

Yes. Next question? And for those who might have missed this Matt Stoller piece read it now. The evidence is piling up - Silicon Valley is being destroyed Business Insider
Notable quotes:
"... It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. ..."
"... According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. ..."
"... In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in "supernormal returns on capital" at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. ..."
"... There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition - Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat. ..."
"... The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations. ..."
"... Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900. ..."
"... Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, "If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government." We ignore his words at our peril. ..."
Apr 27, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

Is It Time to Break Up Google? by JONATHAN TAPLIN

In just 10 years, the world's five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They're all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about "the curse of bigness" were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson's counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) "in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people." We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the "fake news" business to know that Brandeis was right.

While Brandeis generally opposed regulation - which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator - and instead advocated breaking up "bigness," he made an exception for "natural" monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.

DenisPombriant
April 26, 2017
You don't need to look as far back as Brandise or as far forward as Google to see the pernicious effects of monopoly. Just look at airlines...

fortress
April 26, 2017
I have no awareness of how google harms me, I use Bing for searches, and yes they are an octopus, but with efficiencies of scale that...

SR
April 26, 2017
"True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability."...but not for want of trying. The old Microsoft Network-MSN-was a...

Could it be that these companies - and Google in particular - have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market's demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?

Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.

In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.

The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network - a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.

AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age - the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony - all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.

In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.

Changes at the Top

The five largest companies in 2006

    Exxon Mobil $540 General Electric 463 Microsoft 355 Citigroup 331 Bank of America 290


BILLION MARKET CAP


and now

    Apple $794 Alphabet (Google) 593 Microsoft 506 Amazon 429 Facebook 414

All figures in 2017 dollars; 2017 companies as of April 20. Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices By The New York Times

True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google's route to dominance is different from the Bell System's. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.

We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don't inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.

It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.

It's not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in "supernormal returns on capital" at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, "it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant."

There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition - Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.

The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.

The third alternative is to remove the "safe harbor" clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google's YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that's preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.

Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.

I'm under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump's inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, "If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government." We ignore his words at our peril.

[Dec 26, 2016] Google Employee Sues For $3.8 Billion Over Confidentiality Policies

Dec 26, 2016 | tech.slashdot.org
(theverge.com) 101 Posted by msmash on Wednesday December 21, 2016 @01:40PM from the company-policies dept. An anonymous reader writes: A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws. California labor laws give employees the right to discuss workplace issues with law enforcement, regulators, the media, and other employees. Google is accused of firing the employee for exercising his rights, then smearing his reputation in an internal email sent to the rest of the company. These policies are put in place to allegedly prevent the leaking of potentially damaging information to regulators or law enforcement. They in turn prohibit employees from speaking out about illegal activity within the company, even to its own lawyers, and encourage them to report other employees suspected of leaking information. The Verge has obtained a copy of the complaint, linked below in full. "Google's motto is 'don't be evil.' Google's illegal confidentiality agreements and policies fail this test," the lawsuit reads. One policy allegedly even prevents employees from writing a novel about working for a large Silicon Valley corporation -- like, for instance, Dave Eggers' dystopian novel, The Circle -- without first getting final draft approval from Google. The Information confirmed that this lawsuit was filed by the same individual, known in the suit only as "John Doe," who filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year over many of the same confidentiality policies.

[Dec 05, 2016] Why I left Google -- discussion

Notable quotes:
"... "Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation," Whittaker wrote. "The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room." ..."
"... Isn't it inevitable that Google will end up like Microsoft. A brain-dead dinosaur employing sycophantic middle class bores, who are simply working towards a safe haven of retirement. In the end Google will be passed by. It's not a design-led innovator like Apple: it's a boring, grey utilitarian, Soviet-like beast. Google Apps are cheap - but very nasty - Gmail is a terrible UI - and great designers will never work for this anti-design/pro-algorithms empire. ..."
"... All of Google's products are TERRIBLE except for Gmail, and even that is inferior to Outlook on the web now. ..."
"... I used Google Apps for years, and Google just doesn't listen to customers. The engineers that ran the company needed some corporate intervention. I just think Larry Page tried to turn Google into a different company, rather than just focusing the great ideas into actually great products. ..."
"... It seems the tech titans all have this pendulum thing going on. Google appears to be beginning its swing in the "evil" direction. ..."
"... You claim old Google empowered intelligent people to be innovative, with the belief their creations would prove viable in the marketplace. You then go on to name Gmail and Chrome as the accomplishments of that endeavour. Are you ****** serious? ..."
"... When you arrived at Google it had already turned the internet into a giant spamsense depository with the majority of screen real estate consumed by Google's ads. The downhill spiral did not begin with Google+, but it may end there. On a lighter note, you are now free. Launch a start-up and fill the gaping hole which will be left by the fall of the former giant. ..."
"... Great post. Appreciate the insights the warning about what happens when bottom-up entrepreneurship loses out to top-down corporate dictums. ..."
"... The ability to actually consume shared content in an efficient and productive manner is still as broken as ever. They never addressed the issue in Buzz and still haven't with G+ despite people ranting at them for this functionality forever. ..."
"... Sounds like Google have stopped focusing on what problem they're solving and moving onto trying to influence consumer behaviour - always a much more difficult trick to pull off. Great article - well done for sharing in such a humble and ethical manner. Best of luck for the future. ..."
Apr 02, 2012 | JW on Tech

Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After."

"After" is pretty terrible, in his view.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) once gave its engineers the time and resources to be creative. That experimental approach yielded several home-run hits like Chrome and Gmail. But Google fell behind in one key area: competing with Facebook.

That turned into corporate priority No. 1 when Larry Page took over as the company's CEO. "Social" became Google's battle cry, and anything that didn't support Google+ was viewed as a distraction.

"Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed," wrote Whittaker, referring to Google's famous policy of letting employees spend a fifth of their time on projects other than their core job. "The trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled."

Whittaker is not the first ex-Googler to express that line of criticism. Several high-level employees have left after complaining that the "start-up spirit" of Google has been replaced by a more mature but staid culture focused on the bottom line.

The interesting thing about Whittaker's take is that it was posted not on his personal blog, but on an official blog of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), Google's arch nemesis.

Spokesmen from Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

The battle between Microsoft and Google has heated up recently, as the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission begin to investigate Google for potential antitrust violations. Microsoft, with its Bing search engine, has doubled its share of the search market since its June 2010 founding, but has been unsuccessful at taking market share away from Google.

Microsoft is increasingly willing to call out Google for what it sees as illicit behavior. A year ago, the software company released a long list of gripes about Google's monopolistic actions, and last month it said Google was violating Internet Explorer users' privacy.

Despite his misgivings about what Google cast aside to make Google+ a reality, Whittaker thinks that the social network was worth a shot. If it had worked -- if Google had dramatically changed the social Web for the better -- it would have been a heroic gamble.

But it didn't. It's too early to write Google+ off, but the site is developing a reputation as a ghost town. Google says 90 million people have signed up, but analysts and anecdotal evidence show that fairly few have turned into heavy users.

"Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation," Whittaker wrote. "The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room."

Ian Smith:

Isn't it inevitable that Google will end up like Microsoft. A brain-dead dinosaur employing sycophantic middle class bores, who are simply working towards a safe haven of retirement. In the end Google will be passed by. It's not a design-led innovator like Apple: it's a boring, grey utilitarian, Soviet-like beast. Google Apps are cheap - but very nasty - Gmail is a terrible UI - and great designers will never work for this anti-design/pro-algorithms empire.

Steve

I have to be honest with you. All of Google's products are TERRIBLE except for Gmail, and even that is inferior to Outlook on the web now.

I used Google Apps for years, and Google just doesn't listen to customers. The engineers that ran the company needed some corporate intervention. I just think Larry Page tried to turn Google into a different company, rather than just focusing the great ideas into actually great products.

Matt:

It seems the tech titans all have this pendulum thing going on. Google appears to be beginning its swing in the "evil" direction. Apple seems like they're nearing the peak of "evil".

And Microsoft seems like they're back in the middle, trying to swing up to the "good" side. So, if you look at it from that perspective, Microsoft is the obvious choice.

Good luck!

VVR:

The stark truth in this insightful piece is the stuff you have not written..

Atleast you had a choice in leaving google. But we as users don't.

I have years of email in Gmail and docs and youtube etc. I can't switch.

"Creepy" is not the word that comes to mind when Ads for Sauna, online textbooks, etc suddenly begin to track you, no matter which website you visit.

You know you have lost when this happens..

David:

A fascinating insight, I think this reflects what a lot of people are seeing of Google from the outside. It seems everybody but Page can see that Google+ is - whilst technically brilliant - totally superfluous; your daughter is on the money. Also apparent from the outside is the desperation that surrounds Google+ - Page needs to face facts, hold his hands up and walk away from Social before they loose more staff like you, more users and all the magic that made Google so great.

Best of luck with your new career at Microsoft, I hope they foster and encourage you as the Google of old did.

Raymond Traylor:

I understand Facebook is a threat to Google search but beating Facebook at their core competency was doomed to fail. Just like Bing to Google. I was so disappointed in Google following Facebook's evil ways of wanting to know everything about me I've stopped using their services one at a time, starting with Android.

I am willing to pay for a lot of Google's free service to avoid advertising and harvesting my private data.

root

You claim old Google empowered intelligent people to be innovative, with the belief their creations would prove viable in the marketplace. You then go on to name Gmail and Chrome as the accomplishments of that endeavour. Are you ****** serious?

Re-branding web based email is no more innovative than purchasing users for your social networking site, like Facebook did. Same for Chrome, or would you argue Google acquiring VOIP companies to then provide a mediocre service called Google Voice was also innovative?

When you arrived at Google it had already turned the internet into a giant spamsense depository with the majority of screen real estate consumed by Google's ads. The downhill spiral did not begin with Google+, but it may end there. On a lighter note, you are now free. Launch a start-up and fill the gaping hole which will be left by the fall of the former giant.

RBLevin:

Great post. Appreciate the insights the warning about what happens when bottom-up entrepreneurship loses out to top-down corporate dictums.

Re: sharing, while I agree sharing isn't broken (heck, it worked when all we had was email), it certainly needs more improvement. I can't stand Facebook. Hate the UI, don't care for the culture. Twitter is too noisy and, also, the UI sucks. I'm one of those who actually thinks Google+ got 21st century BBSing right.

But if that's at the cost of everything else that made Google great, then it's a high price to pay.

BTW, you can say a lot of these same things about similar moves Microsoft has made over the years, where the top brass decided they knew better, and screwed over developers and their investments in mountains of code.

So, whether it happens in an HR context or a customer context, it still sucks as a practice.

bound2run:

I have made a concerted effort to move away from Google products after their recent March 1st privacy policy change. I must say the Bing is working just fine for me. Gmail will be a bit tougher but I am making strides. Now I just need to dump my Android phone and I will be "creepy-free" ... for the time being.

Phil Ashman:

The ability to actually consume shared content in an efficient and productive manner is still as broken as ever. They never addressed the issue in Buzz and still haven't with G+ despite people ranting at them for this functionality forever.

Funny that I should read your post today as I wrote the following comment on another persons post a couple days back over Vic's recent interview where someone brought up the lack of a G+ API:

"But if it were a social network.......then they are doing a pretty piss poor job of managing the G+ interface and productive consumption of the stream. It would be nice if there was at least an API so some 3rd party clients could assist with the filtering of the noise, but in reality the issue is in the distribution of the stream. What really burns me is that it wouldn't be that hard for them to create something like subscribable circles.

Unfortunately the reality is that they just don't care about whether the G+ stream is productive for you at the moment as their primary concern isn't for you to productively share and discuss your interests with the world, but to simply provide a way for you to tell Google what you like so they can target you with advertising. As a result, the social part of Google+ really isn't anything to shout about at the moment."

You've just confirmed my fear about how the company's focus has changed.

Alice Wonder:

Thanks for this. I love many of the things Google has done. Summer of code, WebM, Google Earth, free web fonts, etc.

I really was disappointed with Google+. I waited for an invite, and when I finally got one, I started to use it. Then the google main search page started to include google+ notifications, and the JS crashed my browser. Repeatedly. I had to clear my cache and delete my cookies just so google wouln't know it was me and crash search with a notification. They fixed that issue quickly but I did not understand why they would risk their flagship product (search) to promote google plus. The search page really should be a simple form.

And google plus not allowing aliases? Do I want a company that is tracking everything I do centrally to have my real name with that tracking? No. Hence I do not use google+ anymore, and am switching to a different search engine and doing as little as I can with google.

I really don't like to dislike google because of all they have done that was cool, it is really sad for me to see this happening.

Mike Whitehead

Sounds like Google have stopped focusing on what problem they're solving and moving onto trying to influence consumer behaviour - always a much more difficult trick to pull off. Great article - well done for sharing in such a humble and ethical manner. Best of luck for the future.

jmacdonald 14 Mar 2012 4:07 AM great write-up

personally i think that google and facebook have misread the sociological trend against the toleration of adverts, to such an extent that if indeed google are following the 'facebook know everything and we do too' route, i suspect both companies may enter into issues as the advertising CPMs fall and we're left with us wretched consumers who find ways around experiences that we don't want

more on this stuff here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com

and here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com

for anyone that cares about that kinda angle

Mahboob Ihsan:

Google products are useful but probably they could have done more to improve the GUI, Standardization and Usability. You can continue to earn business in short term enjoying your strategic advantage as long as you don't have competitors. But as soon as you have just one competitor offering quality products at same cost, your strategic advantage is gone and you have to compete through technology, cost and quality. Google has been spreading its business wings to so many areas, probably with the single point focus of short term business gains. Google should have learnt from Apple that your every new offering should be better (in user's eye) than the previous one.

Victor Ramirez:

Thanks for the thoughtful blog post. Anybody who has objectively observed Google's behavior and activity over the past few years has known that Google is going in this direction. I think that people have to recognize that Google, while very technically smart, is an advertising company first and foremost. Their motto says the right things about being good and organizing the world's information, but we all know what Google is honestly interested in. The thing that Google is searching for, more than almost anything else, is about getting more data about people so they can get people better ads they'll be more likely to click on so they make more money. Right now, Google is facing what might be considered an existential threat from Facebook because they are the company that is best able to get social data right now. Facebook is getting so much social data that odds are that they're long-term vision is to some point seriously competing in search using this social data that they have. Between Facebook's huge user-base and momentum amongst businesses (just look at how many Super Bowl ads featured Facebook pages being promoted for instance, look at the sheer number of companies listed at www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com that do nothing other than promote Facebook business pages, and look at the biggest factor out there - the fact that Facebook's IPO is set to dominate 2012) I think that Facebook has the first legitimate shot of creating a combination of quality results and user experience to actually challenge Google's dominance, and that's pretty exciting to watch. The fact that Google is working on Google+ so much and making that such a centerpiece of their efforts only goes to illustrate how critical this all is and how seriously they take this challenge from Facebook into their core business. I think Facebook eventually enters the search market and really disrupts it and it will be interesting to see how Google eventually acts from a position of weakness.

Keith Watanabe:

they're just like any company that gets big. you end up losing visibility into things, believe that you require the middle management layer to coordinate, then start getting into the battlegrounds of turf wars because the people hired have hidden agendas and start bringing in their army of yes men to take control as they attempt to climb up the corporate ladder. however, the large war chest accumulated and the dominance in a market make such a company believe in their own invulnerability. but that's when you're the most vulnerable because you get sloppy, forget to stop and see the small things that slip through the cracks, forget your roots and lose your way and soul. humility is really your only constant savior.

btw, more than likely Facebook will become the same way. And any other companies who grow big. People tend to forget about the days they were struggling and start focusing on why they are so great. You lose that hunger, that desire to do better because you don't have to worry about eating pinches of salt on a few nibbles of rice. This is how civilization just is. If you want to move beyond that, humans need to change this structure of massive growth -> vanity -> decadence -> back to poverty.

Anon:

This perceived shift of focus happens at every company when you go from being an idealistic student to becoming an adult that has to pay the bills. When you reach such a large scale with so much at stake, it is easy to stop innovating. It is easy to get a mix of people who don't share the same vision when you have to hire on a lot of staff. Stock prices put an emphasis on perpetual monetization. Let's keep in mind that Facebook only recently IPO'd and in the debate for personal privacy, all the players are potentially "evil" and none of them are being held to account by any public policy.

The shutdown of Google Labs was a sad day. Later the shutdown of Google Health I thought was also sad as it was an example of a free service already in existence, akin to what Ontario has wasted over $1 billion on for E-Health. Surely these closures are a sign that the intellectual capital in the founders has been exhausted. They took their core competencies to the maximum level quickly, which means all the organic growth in those areas is mostly already realized.

There needs to be some torch passing or greater empowerment in the lower ranks when things like this happen. Take a look at RIM. Take a look at many other workplaces. It isn't an isolated incident. There are constantly pressures between where you think your business should go, where investors tell you to go, and where the industry itself is actually headed. This guy is apparently very troubled that his name is attached to G+ development and he is trying to distance himself from his own failure. Probably the absence of Google Labs puts a particular emphasis on the failure of G+ as one of the only new service projects to be delivered recently.

After so much time any company realizes that new ideas can only really come with new people or from outside influences. As an attempt to grow their business services via advertising, the idea that they needed to compete with Facebook to continue to grow wasn't entirely wrong. It was just poorly executed, too late, and at the expense of potentially focusing their efforts on doing something else under Google Labs that would have been more known as from them (Android was an acquisition, not organically grown internally). There is no revolution yet, because Facebook and Google have not replaced any of each others services with a better alternative

The complaints in the final paragraph of the blog regarding privacy are all complaints about how much Google wants to be Facebook. Thing is that Google+ just like all the aforementioned services are opt-in services with a clear ToS declared when you do so, even if you already have a Google account for other services. The transparency of their privacy policy is on par if not better than most other competing service providers. The only time it draws criticism is when some changes have been made to say that if you use multiple services, they may have access to the same pool of information internally. It's a contract and it was forced to be acknowledged when it changed. When advertising does happen it is much more obvious to me that it is advertising via a Google service, than when Facebook decides to tell me who likes what. Not to give either the green light here; but the evolution is one of integrating your network into the suggestions, and again, it isn't isolated to any one agency.

One way to raise and enforce objections to potential mishandling of information is to develop a blanket minimum-requirement on privacy policy to apply to all businesses, regarding the handling of customer information. We are blind if we think Google+ and Facebook are the only businesses using data in these ways. This blanket minimum requirement could be voluntarily adopted via 3rd party certification, or it could be government enforced; but the point is that someone other than the business itself would formulate it, and it must be openly available to debate and public scrutiny/revision. It is a sort of "User License Agreement" for information about us. If James Whittaker left to partake in something along these lines, it sure would make his blog entry more credible, unless Microsoft is focused so much more greatly on innovation than the profit motive.

It is also important for customers and the general public not to get locked into any kind of brand loyalty. One problem is Facebook is a closed proprietary system with no way to forward or export the data contained within it to any comparable system. Google is a mish-mash of some open and some closed systems. In order for us as customers to be able to voice our opinions in a way that such service providers would hear, we must be provided alternatives and service portability.

As an example of changing service providers, there has been an exodus of business customers away from using Google Maps as they began charging money to businesses that want to use the data to develop on top of it. I think that this is just the reality of a situation when you have operating costs for a service that you need to recoup; but there is a royalty-free alternative like Open Street Map (which Apple has recently ripped off by using Open Street Map data without attribution).

Google won't see the same meteoric growth ever again. It probably is a less fun place for a social media development staffer to work at from 2010 to present, than it was from 2004 - 2010 (but I'm betting still preferable to FoxConn or anything anywhere near Balmer).

Linda R. Tindall :

Thank you for your honest comments Mr. Whittaker. And yes, Google is not like it was before..

It is Scary, Google may destroy anyone online business overnight!

Google penalize webmasters if they don't like a Website for any reason. They can put out anyone they want out of business. How does Google judge a webmaster's?

Google's business isn't anymore the search engine. Google's business is selling and displaying ads.

GOOGLE becomes now the Big Brother of the WWW. I think it is scary that Google has so much power. Just by making changes, they can ruin people's lives.

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn't part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn't even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, "social isn't a product," she told me after I gave her a demo, "social is people and the people are on Facebook."

Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room.

[Nov 12, 2016] Why I left Google

Notable quotes:
"... The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again. ..."
"... Had Google been right, the effort would have been heroic and clearly many of us wanted to be part of that outcome. I bought into it. I worked on Google+ as a development director and shipped a bunch of code. But the world never changed; sharing never changed. It's arguable that we made Facebook better, but all I had to show for it was higher review scores. ..."
Apr 02, 2012 | MSDN Blogs

... ... ...

It wasn't an easy decision to leave Google. During my time there I became fairly passionate about the company. I keynoted four Google Developer Day events, two Google Test Automation Conferences and was a prolific contributor to the Google testing blog. Recruiters often asked me to help sell high priority candidates on the company. No one had to ask me twice to promote Google and no one was more surprised than me when I could no longer do so. In fact, my last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back.

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn't feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.

Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder's awards, peer bonuses and 20% time. Our advertising revenue gave us the headroom to think, innovate and create. Forums like App Engine, Google Labs and open source served as staging grounds for our inventions. The fact that all this was paid for by a cash machine stuffed full of advertising loot was lost on most of us. Maybe the engineers who actually worked on ads felt it, but the rest of us were convinced that Google was a technology company first and foremost; a company that hired smart people and placed a big bet on their ability to innovate.

From this innovation machine came strategically important products like Gmail and Chrome, products that were the result of entrepreneurship at the lowest levels of the company. Of course, such runaway innovative spirit creates some duds, and Google has had their share of those, but Google has always known how to fail fast and learn from it.

In such an environment you don't have to be part of some executive's inner circle to succeed. You don't have to get lucky and land on a sexy project to have a great career. Anyone with ideas or the skills to contribute could get involved. I had any number of opportunities to leave Google during this period, but it was hard to imagine a better place to work.

But that was then, as the saying goes, and this is now.

It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook. Informal efforts produced a couple of antisocial dogs in Wave and Buzz. Orkut never caught on outside Brazil. Like the proverbial hare confident enough in its lead to risk a brief nap, Google awoke from its social dreaming to find its front runner status in ads threatened.

Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information, so much so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own.

Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike, a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook's? No company has ever done that for Google and Google took it personally.

Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn't enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction.

Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the "old Google" and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a "new Google" that promised "more wood behind fewer arrows."

The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.

Officially, Google declared that "sharing is broken on the web" and nothing but the full force of our collective minds around Google+ could fix it. You have to admire a company willing to sacrifice sacred cows and rally its talent behind a threat to its business.

Had Google been right, the effort would have been heroic and clearly many of us wanted to be part of that outcome. I bought into it. I worked on Google+ as a development director and shipped a bunch of code. But the world never changed; sharing never changed. It's arguable that we made Facebook better, but all I had to show for it was higher review scores.

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