All Praise to Google
Dec. 8th, 2006 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
le_bebna_kamniI recently had the chance to visit the webpage of The Church of Google, and I have to say that it's a wonderful laugh.
Google is a wonderful company. It promises to be spam and pop-up free, and upfront with the user in all software related matters. And it's got some great programs available. It's hard to beat the free e-mail, and I love Google Maps and the ability to measure my jogging/walking routes. I wasn't too thrilled with Google Pages, but then again I like much more "hack" control, as one friend pointed out to me the other day. But I hear Google Codes is great.
But Google is really beginning to scare me. While it touts a corporate philosophy of protecting the user and democracy, it's got something that I can't quite put my finger on that is starting to creep me out.
Take my e-mail, for example. Google actually uses key words in the e-mails that you send and receive to target advertising on their pages to you. I watched in horror as I typed a message to a friend about how I was attempting to learn Perl, and suddenly my advertisements were geared towards computer users. I opened up an e-mail about a conceptual fictitious caligraphy alphabet, and immediately saw ads come up related to calligraphy and "magical runes" come up. **shudder** It was really creepy, and it borders on the invasive.
In 2005, Google created a toolbar that could autolink things on your webpage. You might be viewing a site where an author lists her book by ISBN, and Google creates a link on the page you're viewing that takes you to Amazon.com to buy the book. But who gets to decide where those links lead? Why can't the links go to ebay or Borders or the Dawn Treader's website instead? This toolbar is supposed to heighten the "user experience", but once again it seems rather invasive – both to the user and the person whose page is being crawled by Google. I haven't ever used the Google toolbar for this reason, so I don't know if it has changed since it was first created, but this kind of thing gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Google might be wonderful because it gives a way a lot of things for free, and I give them kudos that their Google Pages really are about free speech (you don't have to sign an agreement saying you won't post anything obscene, hateful, or offensive – unlike most web page providers – which gives them a big plus in my book). But a little part of me way back in the corner of my brain is just waiting for the real creepiness to begin. I mean, it reminds me of something from a horror show where they give away free samples of a product that turn into some monster or alien when people aren't looking. While I won't accuse Google of being aliens, I do wonder just how well they'll stick to their own philosophies when they become as "ubiquitous as brushing your teeth".
There's something not quite right about how Google, its pages, and its search engines work. Are we looking at another Microsoft, Google's incarnation of Satan, or a more insidious evil?
Maybe we really should take Google's claims about being God (or trying to be) seriously.
Google is a wonderful company. It promises to be spam and pop-up free, and upfront with the user in all software related matters. And it's got some great programs available. It's hard to beat the free e-mail, and I love Google Maps and the ability to measure my jogging/walking routes. I wasn't too thrilled with Google Pages, but then again I like much more "hack" control, as one friend pointed out to me the other day. But I hear Google Codes is great.
But Google is really beginning to scare me. While it touts a corporate philosophy of protecting the user and democracy, it's got something that I can't quite put my finger on that is starting to creep me out.
Take my e-mail, for example. Google actually uses key words in the e-mails that you send and receive to target advertising on their pages to you. I watched in horror as I typed a message to a friend about how I was attempting to learn Perl, and suddenly my advertisements were geared towards computer users. I opened up an e-mail about a conceptual fictitious caligraphy alphabet, and immediately saw ads come up related to calligraphy and "magical runes" come up. **shudder** It was really creepy, and it borders on the invasive.
In 2005, Google created a toolbar that could autolink things on your webpage. You might be viewing a site where an author lists her book by ISBN, and Google creates a link on the page you're viewing that takes you to Amazon.com to buy the book. But who gets to decide where those links lead? Why can't the links go to ebay or Borders or the Dawn Treader's website instead? This toolbar is supposed to heighten the "user experience", but once again it seems rather invasive – both to the user and the person whose page is being crawled by Google. I haven't ever used the Google toolbar for this reason, so I don't know if it has changed since it was first created, but this kind of thing gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Google might be wonderful because it gives a way a lot of things for free, and I give them kudos that their Google Pages really are about free speech (you don't have to sign an agreement saying you won't post anything obscene, hateful, or offensive – unlike most web page providers – which gives them a big plus in my book). But a little part of me way back in the corner of my brain is just waiting for the real creepiness to begin. I mean, it reminds me of something from a horror show where they give away free samples of a product that turn into some monster or alien when people aren't looking. While I won't accuse Google of being aliens, I do wonder just how well they'll stick to their own philosophies when they become as "ubiquitous as brushing your teeth".
There's something not quite right about how Google, its pages, and its search engines work. Are we looking at another Microsoft, Google's incarnation of Satan, or a more insidious evil?
Maybe we really should take Google's claims about being God (or trying to be) seriously.