On 9/13/07, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob La Quey wrote: > > On 9/13/07, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> I never really trusted Google but, > >> I don't like the direction Google is > >> going at this point. > > > > That comment is worth eleaborating, please. > > Well, the whole "street view" thing has some very significant privacy > concerns that Google is basically ignoring. I agree. If I had serious privacy issues with the mail that I use GMail for I would not be using GMail. I do not so I do. > Worse, it's not even very > hard to avoid (you just drive past something *twice* and composite the > pictures to remove all the humans). I think the core argument here is "Everybody's doing it." Like it or not as with many such things our defense lies in accepting the fact and constructing defenses accordingly. > Google has demonstrated that they will cave to governments when money is > involved. The only reason they didn't cave to the US government is that > it would cost them more money to comply than to fight. In this respect Google is like pretty much every other business on the planet. You might want to point out what you consider principled exceptions. > Google's results are now effectively useless. Google doesn't update and > pull in new websites with any rapidity (to avoid getting gamed by the > optimization folks). However, sites which are already established often > create specific affiliate websites in order to coopt existing search > terms. Finally, lots of high rank, obsolete dead web pages exist > because changing them would drop their Google rank and thus the value of > the links *off* of the page. " Google's results are now effectively useless." Well while I agree that they are not, for a variety of reasons some of which you list, nearly as useful as they were a few years ago I must say your statement is just plain wrong. I use Google regularly to good effect. Could search be much better. Absolutely. Is Google worse now than it was a few years ago. I think so. > Yet, despite not moving very fast everywhere else, Google regularly > crushes small sites--either because they suddenly change their > Googlerank algorithm or the site makes edits. Those small sites get > replaced by big players who have staff to make *sure* that they never do > anything that will drop their Googlerank ever again. > > To be fair, not all of this is Google's fault. Right. Finding a way to do search that cannot be gamed is not a trivial problem. > However, we would all be > better served by a Google that was 30% of the search market rather than > 60-70%. I agree. The question is "How can that be brought about?" The same comments have applied to Microsoft for close to two decades now. Saddly it seems their is a real darkside to the network effect. BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
