Evil Google? Can the Search Engine Be Moral?
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Google has one guiding principle: “don’t be evil.” It’s a simple motto, even though we could easily get wrapped into the semantics of it. But over the past months, Google has been exerting its power in ways that draw their adherence to this singular policy into question.
Don’t get me wrong, I use Google on a daily basis, and I think it’s a great search engine. That doesn’t mean the company itself is incapable of doing wrong. Google is as susceptible (if not moreso) to the same pitfalls as other big search engines, Yahoo! and MSN. Google has enjoyed using that ridiculous moral catchphrase to separate themselves, but people are only now becoming more and more aware and vocal about the problems with Google’s omnipresence.
The vastness of its indexing raises privacy concerns, and its power from being widely used raises concerns over its ability to represent data. Some are even afraid of Google tracking users. New concerns are found on a near-daily basis.
Most recently, Google has banned speaking to CNet News.com reporters after one voiced privacy concerns. To emphasize the reach of the Google index, Elinor Mills performed a 30 minute Google search and wrote this about Google’s CEO:
Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.
He and his wife Wendy live in the affluent town of Atherton, Calif., where, at a $10,000-a-plate political fund-raiser five years ago, presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper danced as Elton John belted out "Bennie and the Jets."
Schmidt has also roamed the desert at the Burning Man art festival in Nevada, and is an avid amateur pilot. (Hyperlinks within this text have been removed by SEO Chat. View the original CNet article here.)
That’s all it took to get press contact cut off. The information published is rather sketchy, and it is certainly not highly personal or embarrassing. The most sensitive thing is the first hyperlink (if you click Schmidt). It provides his home address and contact information...on his own homepage! He can remove his address whenever we wants, and of all people he should know better than to put it there if it wasn't meant to be public.
A few months ago, CNet ran an earlier article where Schmidt responds to privacy concerns.
Next: What is Google Talking About? >>
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