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"Google is just an amoral menace"

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

Monday, April 6, 2009
15 years ago2,473 views

[ This is not likely to go away anytime anywhere soon. I dislike some of the arguments (ab)used by the writer, but agree on the main premise that, left to its own ever-expansionistic nature, Google risks becoming its own worst enemy.]

Henry Porter: The ever-growing empire produces nothing but seems determined to control everything

[...] one detects in Google something that is delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old.

This particular 11-year-old has known nothing but success and does not understand the risks, skill and failure involved in the creation of original content, nor the delicate relationships that exist outside its own desires and experience. [...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/05/google-internet-piracy

Surly Teabag [PersonRank 2]

15 years ago #

I think my response to him would be to point out that newspapers were already experiencing declining circulation numbers in the 1980s (when they presumably blamed TV).

Any big, successful corporation could be called an "amoral menace". Yellow journalism, anyone?

"Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time."

Like a librarian?

If Google Print Ads had been successful, it could have been hailed as the savior of newspapers. (And certainly this and its other advertising programs are ways that Google benefits content providers.)

In Benjamin Franklin's time, most newspapers were weekly, not daily.
When Benjamin Franklin took over the Pennsylvania Gazette, he "quickly made it the most valuable newspaper property in America. The semi-weekly publication was, however, changed to a weekly, owing to lack of subscription."

http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Benjamin+Franklin&offset=0

Maybe weekly publication will be a stable point for newspapers. Or maybe the could collaborate with radio or television news, bringing their best qualities to those media.

I do like aspects of newspapers (particularly, investigative reporting and the creative things that the best ones do), and I hope that they survive.

I will have to think about the charges about Google's hubris and Street View, etc.

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