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Yeah. To "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/ https://www.goo

Yeah. To "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/ I agree they're not really faithful to it. I mean don't get me wrong. Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress. But I do think that if they were really true to the mission statement, they'd take things such as archival more seriously. (If you explained the entire internet to an alien, and then told them that Google aren't the ones running the Internet Archive, they'd say "Seriously?")

ghaff 8y ago
>(If you explained the entire internet to an alien, and then told them that Google aren't the ones running the Internet Archive, they'd say "Seriously?") +1000 Mind you. At some level, I'm happier that it's a non-profit pursuing this as its mission rather than Google. But, given the vast amounts of money that Google spends on all sorts of things, I don't really grok the mindset that doesn't really prioritize the preservation of information--and the organization of that information--as at least a sideline. There are admittedly growing headwinds, especially in the case of Europe, about what information can be preserved, but that hasn't really been a big issue until recently.
- luckylion 8y ago
  It might be that they figure the Internet Archive is doing a great job, and there's no use to do the same job twice. They do contribute, being on of the largest (the largest?) book sponsor.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I suspect that at least part of it is that mirroring copyrighted content is a gray area of law. The fact that the Internet Archive is a non-profit archive may give them some leeway and, in any case, they're a less tempting target than Google would be. Look at the ongoing issues that Google has around news sites for example.
    - adventured 8y ago
      Ideally the Internet Archive stays out of jurisdictions that can force them to remove most types of content. The non-profit aspect won't help them in the least. Being all over the planet in terms of business, infrastructure and physical presence is where Google acting as archive would fail very badly. They might be the absolute last organization you want serving as that entity. The IA in theory could operate all of its infrastructure and organization out of a preferential jurisdiction (or a few, so as to have backups in case one favorable location goes bad legally/politically), and archive anything it wants to from around the world while entirely ignoring the local laws from a given place (eg the EU, or China, or Brazil, New Zealand, or Turkey, or wherever).
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Though the legal situation is a bit murky even in the US. After all, I can't set up a "Comics Archive" and start populating it with all sorts of copyrighted comic strips and expect not to hear from the publishers. But as a non-profit who isn't making money off the content it mirrors, respects robots.txt even retroactively, and will generally honor takedown requests that are remotely legit, it gets cut a lot of slack that a corporation doing this for profit-making purposes wouldn't.
        reaperducer 8y ago
        Though the legal situation is a bit murky even in the US. I don't think it's all that murky. It's my understanding that IA is allowed to have all that copyrighted stuff because it took the effort to legally register as a real library.
        ghaff 8y ago
        The short answer is that libraries do not get a magical exemption to make copies of copyrighted works although they have some limited exemptions (that seem to have mostly been written with physical artifacts in mind). For example, a library cannot rip a DVD and make it available to the public with no usage restrictions. IANAL but there is maybe an argument to be made that the IA can mirror web sites for preservation purposes but then could only make it available to one researcher at a time.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    >there's no use to do the same job twice And why bother looking both ways before crossing the street, or even testing your backups?
    - luckylion 8y ago
      Checking left and right are two jobs. And how often do you test each of your backups? It might get corrupted at any moment - is perpetual validation the answer?
      - Izkata 8y ago
        Sure, why not? I do regular automated validation of my backups against each other using "rsync --checksum --dry-run" and get notified if anything beyond a tiny threshold is out of whack. (The threshold being due to small files updated between the two backup runs)
ForHackernews 8y ago
Thank God Google isn't running the Internet Archive. Everyone should donate to them so they can remain an independent nonprofit.
amelius 8y ago
Does Google allow the Internet Archive to archive all of its YouTube videos?
- stickfigure 8y ago
  Could the Internet Archive afford to do so?
  - amelius 8y ago
    Even if they can not, I suppose it's nice to not have to ask for permission for every video.
- code_duck 8y ago
  I think someone would have to donate a datacenter
  - astrodust 8y ago
    There's a lot of tech billionaires out there. Just saying.
ajmurmann 8y ago
It says "organize", not "preserve". They are organizing information following the Mary Kondo method.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  "Organize" is just a weasel word for "censor".
  - dleslie 8y ago
    Curation is a method of limiting and reducing access, it's true. I think you're being downvoted because many folks are touchy about the word censor being applied to non-government organizations. OTOH, when is it that an organization becomes the defacto governing body?
    - mikestew 8y ago
      I think you're being downvoted because... ...because I hope that's the most uncharitable interpretation of someone else's words that I read today.
      - dleslie 8y ago
        I find that I am happier when I presume goodwill and allow for the risk that I am disappointed. Most of the time people don't disappoint.
luckylion 8y ago
> Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress. I don't know about this. Google Search was a great improvement in ranking by relevance, but an important invention itself? As for maps: as far as I'm aware, Google Maps was "just" a combination of two existing technologies - online maps and car navigation systems. They launched Maps in 2005, even Germany had online maps by 2000. Granted, they didn't look as good as Google's and the UX was inferior, but it wasn't a horses vs cars situation imho.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  And the iPhone is "just" a more expensive version of its predecessors with a slightly better touchscreen and UX, and Dropbox is "just" a ftp mount with svn on top of it. Also cars are just faster horses so that works too :) Honestly I find it hard to argue that Maps and Search haven't been some of the internet's biggest worldwide productivity boosts.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    The question is what you would have if that product never existed. That's different from measuring how good the product is in a vacuum. Without the iPhone it may have taken another year or two but the wave of full-screen smartphones had already started. For Dropbox I'm unsure but they definitely have a lot of competitors doing the same thing at this point. Maps... had much better scrolling than competitors? Being pretty isn't revolutionary. Google search itself might qualify. Cars are not faster horses, but if you removed any particular car company from history we would still have cars.
    - macintux 8y ago
      > ...but the wave of full-screen smartphones had already started. I’ve heard it argued that someone would have gotten there eventually, but my suspicion is that without a big player committing all their resources to marketing and selling it a similar device would have failed to make headway. Phone manufacturers would never have pushed like Apple did against the headwinds of physical keyboards and flash and operator-managed app distribution (and phone crippling). But I’ve never heard someone argue that the design was already established and going to become a tidal wave. There were a few devices which vaguely resembled a few superficial elements. What examples can you provide to illustrate a wave was already underway?
0815test 8y ago
> To "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" They still do a few things like that, very occasionally. When they got rid of Freebase (notice a pattern?) they did preserve that data and it was used to seed Wikidata, which now in turn feeds their "SERP boxes". But I absolutely agree that there's zero focus otherwise on that core enabler of their business-- they're just coasting on their earlier (very substantial) efforts, and managing to stay afloat somehow.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> If you explained the entire internet to an alien, and then told them that Google aren't the ones running the Internet Archive, they'd say "Seriously?" They are running an internet archive. That's what their cache is. There's more than one internet archive; why would Google necessarily be running all of them?
chongli 8y ago
Yeah, their new motto might more accurately be stated as "to organize the world's information, to feed it into our machine learning models, and to throw away anything we deem unprofitable."
beamatronic 8y ago
Internet Archive has a clear mission and pure motives though. As an independent non-profit they are free from “business” motivations.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
> I mean don't get me wrong. Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress I'm wondering if I'm the only one finding Google Search lacking lately. Increasingly, its search results are seriously out of date and linking to dead and/or ad-heavy sites. I've come to use DDG and, recently, Startpage.com more than Google Search.

ghaff 8y ago

>(If you explained the entire internet to an alien, and then told them that Google aren't the ones running the Internet Archive, they'd say "Seriously?") +1000 Mind you. At some level, I'm happier that it's a non-profit pursuing this as its mission rather than Google. But, given the vast amounts of money that Google spends on all sorts of things, I don't really grok the mindset that doesn't really prioritize the preservation of information--and the organization of that information--as at least a sideline. There are admittedly growing headwinds, especially in the case of Europe, about what information can be preserved, but that hasn't really been a big issue until recently.

luckylion 8y ago
It might be that they figure the Internet Archive is doing a great job, and there's no use to do the same job twice. They do contribute, being on of the largest (the largest?) book sponsor.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I suspect that at least part of it is that mirroring copyrighted content is a gray area of law. The fact that the Internet Archive is a non-profit archive may give them some leeway and, in any case, they're a less tempting target than Google would be. Look at the ongoing issues that Google has around news sites for example.
  - adventured 8y ago
    Ideally the Internet Archive stays out of jurisdictions that can force them to remove most types of content. The non-profit aspect won't help them in the least. Being all over the planet in terms of business, infrastructure and physical presence is where Google acting as archive would fail very badly. They might be the absolute last organization you want serving as that entity. The IA in theory could operate all of its infrastructure and organization out of a preferential jurisdiction (or a few, so as to have backups in case one favorable location goes bad legally/politically), and archive anything it wants to from around the world while entirely ignoring the local laws from a given place (eg the EU, or China, or Brazil, New Zealand, or Turkey, or wherever).
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Though the legal situation is a bit murky even in the US. After all, I can't set up a "Comics Archive" and start populating it with all sorts of copyrighted comic strips and expect not to hear from the publishers. But as a non-profit who isn't making money off the content it mirrors, respects robots.txt even retroactively, and will generally honor takedown requests that are remotely legit, it gets cut a lot of slack that a corporation doing this for profit-making purposes wouldn't.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Though the legal situation is a bit murky even in the US. I don't think it's all that murky. It's my understanding that IA is allowed to have all that copyrighted stuff because it took the effort to legally register as a real library.
        ghaff 8y ago
        The short answer is that libraries do not get a magical exemption to make copies of copyrighted works although they have some limited exemptions (that seem to have mostly been written with physical artifacts in mind). For example, a library cannot rip a DVD and make it available to the public with no usage restrictions. IANAL but there is maybe an argument to be made that the IA can mirror web sites for preservation purposes but then could only make it available to one researcher at a time.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  >there's no use to do the same job twice And why bother looking both ways before crossing the street, or even testing your backups?
  - luckylion 8y ago
    Checking left and right are two jobs. And how often do you test each of your backups? It might get corrupted at any moment - is perpetual validation the answer?
    - Izkata 8y ago
      Sure, why not? I do regular automated validation of my backups against each other using "rsync --checksum --dry-run" and get notified if anything beyond a tiny threshold is out of whack. (The threshold being due to small files updated between the two backup runs)

ForHackernews 8y ago

Thank God Google isn't running the Internet Archive. Everyone should donate to them so they can remain an independent nonprofit.

amelius 8y ago

Does Google allow the Internet Archive to archive all of its YouTube videos?

stickfigure 8y ago
Could the Internet Archive afford to do so?
- amelius 8y ago
  Even if they can not, I suppose it's nice to not have to ask for permission for every video.
code_duck 8y ago
I think someone would have to donate a datacenter
- astrodust 8y ago
  There's a lot of tech billionaires out there. Just saying.

ajmurmann 8y ago

It says "organize", not "preserve". They are organizing information following the Mary Kondo method.

DonHopkins 8y ago
"Organize" is just a weasel word for "censor".
- dleslie 8y ago
  Curation is a method of limiting and reducing access, it's true. I think you're being downvoted because many folks are touchy about the word censor being applied to non-government organizations. OTOH, when is it that an organization becomes the defacto governing body?
  - mikestew 8y ago
    I think you're being downvoted because... ...because I hope that's the most uncharitable interpretation of someone else's words that I read today.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      I find that I am happier when I presume goodwill and allow for the risk that I am disappointed. Most of the time people don't disappoint.

luckylion 8y ago

> Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress. I don't know about this. Google Search was a great improvement in ranking by relevance, but an important invention itself? As for maps: as far as I'm aware, Google Maps was "just" a combination of two existing technologies - online maps and car navigation systems. They launched Maps in 2005, even Germany had online maps by 2000. Granted, they didn't look as good as Google's and the UX was inferior, but it wasn't a horses vs cars situation imho.

scrollaway 8y ago
And the iPhone is "just" a more expensive version of its predecessors with a slightly better touchscreen and UX, and Dropbox is "just" a ftp mount with svn on top of it. Also cars are just faster horses so that works too :) Honestly I find it hard to argue that Maps and Search haven't been some of the internet's biggest worldwide productivity boosts.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  The question is what you would have if that product never existed. That's different from measuring how good the product is in a vacuum. Without the iPhone it may have taken another year or two but the wave of full-screen smartphones had already started. For Dropbox I'm unsure but they definitely have a lot of competitors doing the same thing at this point. Maps... had much better scrolling than competitors? Being pretty isn't revolutionary. Google search itself might qualify. Cars are not faster horses, but if you removed any particular car company from history we would still have cars.
  - macintux 8y ago
    > ...but the wave of full-screen smartphones had already started. I’ve heard it argued that someone would have gotten there eventually, but my suspicion is that without a big player committing all their resources to marketing and selling it a similar device would have failed to make headway. Phone manufacturers would never have pushed like Apple did against the headwinds of physical keyboards and flash and operator-managed app distribution (and phone crippling). But I’ve never heard someone argue that the design was already established and going to become a tidal wave. There were a few devices which vaguely resembled a few superficial elements. What examples can you provide to illustrate a wave was already underway?

0815test 8y ago

> To "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" They still do a few things like that, very occasionally. When they got rid of Freebase (notice a pattern?) they did preserve that data and it was used to seed Wikidata, which now in turn feeds their "SERP boxes". But I absolutely agree that there's zero focus otherwise on that core enabler of their business-- they're just coasting on their earlier (very substantial) efforts, and managing to stay afloat somehow.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> If you explained the entire internet to an alien, and then told them that Google aren't the ones running the Internet Archive, they'd say "Seriously?" They are running an internet archive. That's what their cache is. There's more than one internet archive; why would Google necessarily be running all of them?

chongli 8y ago

Yeah, their new motto might more accurately be stated as "to organize the world's information, to feed it into our machine learning models, and to throw away anything we deem unprofitable."

beamatronic 8y ago

Internet Archive has a clear mission and pure motives though. As an independent non-profit they are free from “business” motivations.

tannhaeuser 8y ago

> I mean don't get me wrong. Google Search and Maps are two inventions that are so insanely useful, they may standalone be responsible for decades of faster progress I'm wondering if I'm the only one finding Google Search lacking lately. Increasingly, its search results are seriously out of date and linking to dead and/or ad-heavy sites. I've come to use DDG and, recently, Startpage.com more than Google Search.