[LINK] SMH: 'Google: 10 years old and still searching'

[Roger Clarke]

[Comment inserted re one mistake in a good article]

[The key passage:

"[Google] has also attracted the ire of privacy activists and civil 
libertarians who complain that the search giant has amassed so much 
information about us it would make the Stasi blush.  ...
"The more things that people and companies do online, the more ads 
they see and the more money Google makes," says Nicholas Carr, former 
executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.
"In addition, as internet activity increases, Google collects more 
data on consumers' needs and behaviour and it can tailor its ads more 
precisely, strengthening its competitive advantage and further 
increasing its income."]


Google: 10 years old and still searching
Date: September 8 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald
Asher Moses
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/09/07/1220725858555.html

TEN years ago, Bill Clinton admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky, 
John Howard won his second term as prime minister, the Seinfeld 
finale aired and a small internet company called Google was formed by 
two geeks in a garage.

Now employing more than 19,000 workers in 20 countries, Google turned 
10 yesterday. It was not until 2002 that Google hired its first 
Australian employee, Kate Vale, who initially sold advertising from 
her lounge room.

Today Google Australia has 200 employees and will move to grandiose 
new headquarters in Pyrmont early next year. "At the beginning I had 
a desk, a phone, a computer and a lot to learn," said Ms Vale, who is 
now Google's director of sales operations. Google has parlayed its 
internet search dominance - Nielsen says 9.7 million Australians use 
Google to search every month - into a global stranglehold on the 
online advertising market.

When you do a search on Google, highlighted text advertisements 
appear beside the results. When you surf to a website, there's a 
chance the text and banner ads on it are served by Google as well. As 
a result, when the internet grows, so does Google.

It has also attracted the ire of privacy activists and civil 
libertarians who complain that the search giant has amassed so much 
information about us it would make the Stasi blush.

Politicians are starting to question whether Google is keeping to its 
corporate motto - Don't be evil.

[[That meme has to be attacked at every opportunity.  It isn't in any 
sense a commitment by Google.  It's an advertising jingle.  The media 
must stop giving Google a false aura.  See at the bottom for what 
Google actually says.]]


"The more things that people and companies do online, the more ads 
they see and the more money Google makes," says Nicholas Carr, former 
executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

"In addition, as internet activity increases, Google collects more 
data on consumers' needs and behaviour and it can tailor its ads more 
precisely, strengthening its competitive advantage and further 
increasing its income."

Its services include email, a photo organiser, online mapping, 
instant messaging, a suite of office productivity applications, a 
blogging platform, a mobile phone operating system, a social network 
and, of course, YouTube.

This year Google launched its own 3D virtual world, Lively, a 
Wikipedia competitor dubbed Knol, a web browser called Chrome, and a 
controversial Google Maps feature containing street-level photographs.

Google's revenue - 99 per cent of which comes from advertising - 
jumped from $US440 million ($653 million) in 2002 to over $US16.5 
billion last year. Although it was officially incorporated on 
September 7, 1998, in a garage in California, Google began in 1996 as 
a Stanford University research project by the then 24-year-old 
mathematicians Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now worth $US16 billion 
each.

While search engines in the 1990s ranked results according to how 
many times the search term appeared on a page, Mr Page and Mr Brin 
were convinced the most relevant pages associated with any given 
search term were those with the most links to them from other highly 
relevant web pages.

They were right. Today, over 60 per cent of internet searches are 
carried out through Google. In Australia, the web monitoring firm 
Hitwise says Google dominates the market with an 88 per cent share.


[Extract from an article 2 years ago, at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Gurgle0604.html#Conc

"There are continual reports in the media to the effect that Google 
Inc. abides by its alleged motto "You can make money without doing 
evil". Those reports are seriously misleading. If their premise were 
true, then the company would be being put to the test, as its growth 
and diversification put enormous temptations in front of its 
executives.
...
"An examination of Google's alleged motto is instructive. Google is 
emphatically not built on the normative statement that 'the company 
should not do evil'. Two variants are evident on the web-site. One is 
merely as number 6 of 'Ten things Google has found to be true', and 
the statement is actually descriptive, not normative: "you can make 
money without doing evil". The other variant is the statement "Our 
informal corporate motto is `Don't be evil'". This is vague and 
completely non-binding. It appears as part of a so-called `Code of 
Conduct' which, firstly, appears in the `investor' part of Google's 
web-site rather than being communicated to customers, and, secondly, 
omits any form of protection for the company's users. (The Code 
arguably provides far more protection for cats than for users, in 
that para. IIe flippantly warns them off Google Inc. premises).

"Google Inc.'s aphorism about evil has an apposite corollary: "You 
can make money without doing evil; but you can make more money by 
doing evil". On that basis, and given the obligations of corporations 
under law, the epithet arguably implies that evil should be done. 
Google Inc. would rationally see it as being in the company's best 
interests to gather more personal data, to cross-correlate it, to 
mine it, to exploit its users, and indeed to exploit anyone else who 
falls within the scope of its increasing market power."


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW