22 ms·

Google is FUBAR

282 points by llambda 15y ago

toddh 15y ago
It's a more successful version of the Yahoo portal strategy + the walled garden strategy. Yahoo failed when the competition created more attractive services and a walled garden requires something interesting enough to build a wall around. It will interesting to see how well it works.
Destroyer661 15y ago
I have a hard time understanding the whole deal everyone is making of Google finally combining the whole ecosystem they have into one nice package. I don't think the author knows that Google already knows what you use in Google docs, they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually. This seems like much ado about nothing. Google isn't trying to wall people up in it's ecosystem, they're simply trying to unify all of the services they offer into one point of contact, which, as a user of many of these services, I applaud.
- brudgers 15y ago
  If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising. And that's even without giving Google the leverage to change the Terms of Service by which I access my existing business records unilaterally, at will, and without recourse. YMMV
  - MCompeau 15y ago
    Please correct me if I'm mistaken but companies using Google services such as GMail and Docs use them through Google Apps which isn't subject to advertising like the public versions of these services.
    - maaku 15y ago
      You're missing the point--when the switchover occurs the ads accompanying regular google search will pull upon a profile which includes your GMail/Google Docs accounts as well.
      - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
        Data from Google's enterprise products are not included in your ad profile. I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform. Just because something shows up in your (March 1st) search results doesn't mean it was used in generating the ad next to it.
        maaku 15y ago
        From TFA: "if you want to continue using Gmail, Docs, and so on. You must allow Google to share your data between its services" Maybe it is actually sensationalist nonsense, but that is what the whole article is kinda about.
        brudgers 15y ago
        >"I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform." I have observed people tend to accept vendor lock in. Particularly when the migration costs are high. Likewise, the cost of lost enterprise accounts would have to offset the revenue gained from mining the data...assuming of course that Google isn't already mining enterprise data.
  - cbs 15y ago
    If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising. On the other hand, if I was a buisness concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence, I wouldn't use 2nd party cloud services.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  I agree. In fact, I'm surprised that Google services don't already work this way.
  - kc0bfv 15y ago
    I agree too. I think it was naive of anybody to think that this wouldn't eventually happen. For years people have said that Google's goal was to control the information - all of it. I suppose that never bothered me because I know that I control what information I give Google, and I don't feel that Google has tried to subvert that control yet. I'm a little disappointed that Google is returning Goog+ results above other social networks when the + results clearly are not as relevant, but hopefully they'll iron that out over time.
- amstr 15y ago
  Apparently when Apple has a unified ecosystem, the purpose is to "perfectly tailor its devices to its users" but if Google does it, it's "maniacal" and "tyrannical"? The state of tech blogging is so, so poor.
  - shantanubala 15y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong (I might have outdated knowledge since I don't really use Apple products a whole lot), but you can use a Mac or iPod/iPad without having your personal data stored with Apple. Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services. Apple makes money from selling stuff. Google makes money from ads. Who has a greater incentive to collect more of your personal information and use it to make money?
    - paganel 15y ago
      > Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services. Spot on. For example Google knows my exact porn-searches the moment I make them, either through their search-engine logs or directly through Chrome. Now imagine if it were to surface that Apple somehow logs and sends back to some server in Cupertino all porn-related searches made by MacBook-owners... (I chose "porn" as an example because it's a sensitive topic, I could as well have chosen "drugs", "depression", "cancer cure", "tax evasion" and so on).
    - amstr 15y ago
      Yes, I'd agree with you that tight integration for Apple and Google provide different kinds of "systemic risk". For Google, the risk is they control too much of your information. For Apple, when Apple owns the entire software and hardware stack, the market price of hardware skyrockets (the opposite of the effect Microsoft had by commoditizing hardware), and by its monopoly on App Stores for iPads/iPhones, it is able to gouge content creators for ~30% of the price of books/apps. IMO, tight integration of BOTH of these companies is bad for society, but I found the author's singling out of Google to be unwarranted.
- Ecio78 15y ago
  they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually Uhm ok tell me if you like this scenario: * I'm fed up of my employeer so I'm sending tons of jobs applications from my personal gmail account * I dont write these mails while at work, but sometimes I login on google services for doin some work-related stuff (let's say use keyword search tools) * I forgot to logout * I start searching stuff on the net with my chief for our vmware project and instantly google suggests me as a perfect match my application letter sent to vmware HR * Thank you google I'm almost fired :) of course in this case I should've logged out from google, but I'd prefer to possibly opt-out this kind of stuff...
  - spindritf 15y ago
    > of course in this case I should've logged out from google Yes, exactly, what is to stop anyone from just going through your sent mail if they were already willing to go through your web history?
    - talmand 15y ago
      I believe he was saying he would not have accessed his email on his work computer at all, he would then log into Google for other reasons and not open his mail. But Google would then go ahead and show him something related to his email account that he did not want. Leaving his computer logged into his Google account and his employer sitting down to go through the account, such as sent mail, is a different matter. The solution to all this is to never use personal logins for anything on a computer you do not control 100%.
      - Ecio78 15y ago
        Yes exactly, thanks talmand for the clarification, i was thinking about the case in which the user is not logged in the mail but google fetches data for your search from all your personal data just because you're logged on.
  - 15y ago
MCompeau 15y ago
I'm really surprised that Google is moving towards a more integrated/proprietary/closed platform. Their advantage was always that they were able to make the chaos of the web sensible to navigate. As a trendsetter in terms of openness they were protecting their own best interests by influencing others to be open (and thus crawlable) as well. I guess Google has decided that the content stored in the walled gardens of other platforms (Facebook) has become so valuable that they must change their own approach in order to compete.
- myko 15y ago
  What do you mean by Google is moving towards a closed platform?
  - MCompeau 15y ago
    I mean it in a colloquial sense. By tightly integrating their services and beginning to aggregate primarily their own content through search it seems they are taking a protectionist stance.
    - laconian 15y ago
      You are talking about Facebook and Twitter, right?
jfeldstein2 15y ago
Seems to me google search results are the same as ever, they just put a G+ widget on the side and Twitter and Facebook peeps are upset they weren't included so they're calling it "evil".
- SquareWheel 15y ago
  It's also including Google+ pages in suggested search, and seems to prioritize those pages in organic search too. I don't have an opinion of if it's evil, but I think it is more than just the sidebar.
njloof 15y ago
"... there is no option for you to continue using the old privacy policy that existed when you signed up." Find me one web site that allows me to continue using their expired privacy policy in perpetuity.
wiggum 15y ago
The solution is to log out. For those of you who like being signed into Gmail put "accounts.youtube.com" in your adblock filters. That will prevent Google from automatically signing you in to Youtube and other services.
- cdh 15y ago
  Just because you've logged out of a site doesn't necessarily mean the cookies have been deleted. Google can still track you just as effectively until you've cleared your cookies. In fact, if they store IP address and useragent information, they could continue tracking you even afterwards. Now, I don't know that they do that, but they certainly have the technical means to do so.
  - dereferenced2 15y ago
    Pretty sure they do. Watch this ted talk about filter bubbling from last year: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk He mentions they use ~30 points of info to identify you, even if you're logged out.
    - tonfa 15y ago
      From the talk: > Even if you're logged out, one engineer told me, there are 57 signals that Google looks at -- everything from what kind of computer you're on to what kind of browser you're using to where you're located -- that it uses to personally tailor your query results. He says they are signals used during ranking, not something to identify people.
bambax 15y ago
> Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a result Apple can perfectly tailor its devices for it users (and ratchet up record-breaking quarterly earnings in the process). Are Apple's devices "perfectly tailored for it[s] users"? I don't see any of that tailoring when I use them. The reason why Apple ratchets up record-breaking earnings is that they build things people want; they build incredibly good devices. Google is playing with fire; the thing it has that people want is not G+ or Reader or even Gmail: it is search. If they break search, they will die.
- techiferous 15y ago
  > If they break search, they will die. Agreed. And if they don't innovate search, they will die. Big change has to happen. Whether this is the right move remains to be seen.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  OTOH, we might discover adding a social dimension to search results may yield better results for a substantial chunk of the general population. If I am looking for a how-to, knowing whether my geek friends found it useful would be a good indicator. It has to be carefully balanced to avoid forming social echo chambers and perpetuating instantaneous events, but, in the end, it may prove useful. And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear.
  - GoCatGo 15y ago
    > And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear. Don While a valid point, I signed up to g+ and then logged out permanently as I didn't want all my data submitted to a single company (i.e. Google has my search, calendar and gmail) I don't like that they have so much in one spot already but I certainly wasn't going to give them social as well. I think that everyone likes to have an element of anonymity online and this lets Google have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you are by tying these together. While we on HN might be clever ones that realise all the data we're putting out there there's a whole world of lay people that have no idea. I assume the outrage isn't so much about the people in the know, but about your grandmother not realising what she's volunteering.
mburst 15y ago
I think the whole idea of a search engine is to give you relevant results. Google already does this and you can view your current ad profile here http://www.google.com/settings/ads/ http://www.google.com/settings/ads/ I think it makes sense to combine all of their products, though taking input from my e-mails seems a bit shady.
yanw 15y ago
Nothing spikes pageviews like Google bashing.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  Unless it's Apple bashing.
  - yanw 15y ago
    Nah, Apple has the best PR in the business; even posts about their revenue generate massive views.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Assuming this article's suppositions are correct (that Google must become more social to continue growing), Google is showing a lot of cojones. Most businesses won't cannibalize their core cash-cow, even when they know the future is limited (see Kodak with digital cameras and every hard disk manufacturer :). There is no question it is a gamble; but if the other option is an eventual sunset (and I wouldn't be surprised if Larry thought of it that way), it is better to make the bet while you are on top than when you are scratching for survival.
- smspence 15y ago
  I don't understand. Can you please explain how they are "cannibalizing their core cash-cow"? Can you please explain what they are gambling or betting on? They aren't getting rid of search as we know it. They are just adding additional features. They haven't taken anything away.
- c2 15y ago
  Pretty relevant example, as Eastman Kodak just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just last week.
icebraining 15y ago
And of course, the kicker: Google’s ad networks — AdSense, AdWords, DoubleClick — will have full access to all of your search and surf habits from every Google web service. They already did. Hell, we've had this discussion eight years ago [1] when they announced Gmail, which mines your email for demographic data to show you ads. Nothing has meaningfully changed in that respect. [1]: https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm
spodek 15y ago
It just occurred to me a main reason they chose "Don't be evil" as their slogan. The foundation of the company is a slippery slope that will forever motivate it to get more personal information and to do more with it -- generally meaning profiting from that personal information in ways people don't know about. Also, they will forever be asked or demanded that information from governments and other companies who want to do the same. Many (most?) professions would never need to remind themselves not to "be evil." Restaurants don't have to say "Don't be evil." Yes, they have the motivation to skimp on quality or ingredients, but nothing like Google's temptation. The company's foundation is so laden with temptation to "be evil" it had to try to build defences to it in its core. The problem with that situation is that the motivation never goes away, but the effort to resist it can fade.
- taphangum 15y ago
  You're right. And it will only get worse as time goes on. IMO the upward trajectory of their stock price and how 'evil' they are willing to be, over time, will have a positive correlation.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  The real problem is people don't really understand the context of "Don't be evil." If you read Steven Levy's In the Plex, or any first-hand account, really, you realize it's more about always thinking about the user experience first. It has nothing to do with personal information. As far as I know, when "Don't be evil" was coined, they used little to no personal information to provide search results.
  - ellyagg 15y ago
    That doesn't really seem to agree with Paul Buchheit's quote on the wikipedia entry regarding the topic, where he said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent." I'm pretty sure the plain meaning of the phrase was one of the intended senses, suggesting that any aggressively selfish behavior falls under its umbrella. It would be a little opportunistic to, on the one hand, have the founders include the following line in a company manifesto: "Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains" and garner all the amazing PR that's come from that association over the years--but then turn around and claim, oh, no, that was really mostly just talking about user experience. And I doubt they'd make that claim.
ck2 15y ago
DuckDuckGo was really ahead of the curve with the privacy angle eh? Now if they just had their own crawlers - I keep saying they need to merge with Gigablast (Matt Wells) which was the most promising startup a decade ago and looked like the old google pre-adsense, but never took off (built his own crawlers way before "the cloud" existed).
jrockway 15y ago
So, this was all true before the privacy policy change. Google isn't asking for new rights, they just condensed 70 documents into one.
- smspence 15y ago
  Facts and logic are not going to stop the bloggers from creating FUD and link bait.
victork2 15y ago
I feel like there are many Google supporters here but to be honest Google is steering to a bad direction if you are like me about efficiency and relevancy. What makes me mad is that we don't have the choice. I don't want all the social bullshit, the +1, why would I even give a crap about that? I don't want to have everything interconnected, I hate the fact that now if I logged in to Gmail I am logged into Youtube. I don't buy Apple to avoid fully integrated systems, I will not use Google in the future. It makes me think about CNN who believes they are more relevant when they are reading what shit people say on Twitter "Ze pope is dead LOL". Yeah right, great piece of info here. But hey, if people like it, they are welcome to it, I just hope there will be good alternatives in the future.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  >What makes me mad is that we don't have the choice. If you don't like the social results in your SERP, you realize it's a one click button to turn it off, right? Or were you talking about the +1? Nobody forces you to click on it. I don't get the rage. Google owns a multitude of different sites. Being able to sign into all of them at once is a godsend as far as I'm concerned. So much misplaced anger here..
  - victork2 15y ago
    Au contraire I don't have any anger. If their choice is to sacrifice relevancy for their other social services or they social bullshit, it is fine with me, I am not a fan of Google brand, just a user and I will take my business elsewhere. To tell you where the problems come from in my opinion: _ Everything is opt-out, not opt-in. After I realize than I am very pro-choice in term of user experience. _ The +1 thingy is very tricky, if you click the wrong button and don't read well, that's it you're on +1. And once you're on it, no way to get out _ Relevancy is killed by the influence of +1. Look at this talk if you have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu... . Since it is an opt out 99% of the user won't do it and in the long term it will probably have a bad influence on how people receive and perceive information. I think my reasons to leave are relevant and not based on rage but a cold appreciation of the future of Google.
BenoitEssiambre 15y ago
Although I don't like the way Google is starting to control too much online, I believe that using the social network and other information to influence search and other services is the future. Google’s move towards social search could be the most significant change in the way we use the web since the beginning of Google itself. Consider that with this move, Google is actually moving away from their flagship Pagerank algorithm. Google has already mentioned it wants to hold our online identity and others have speculated that Google wants to be a “reputation engine” (http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/08/breaking-google-will-be-a-reputation-engine.html http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/08/breaking-g...). It is not difficult to see that the next step is to make search results dependent on reputation and on the trust friends and +1’d organisations have in particular websites. Difficulty to establish identity and trust is one of the main shortcomings of the web compared to the real world, especially when doing business. It is much easier to judge character and establish trust in a local face to face relationship than on the web. Locally we can observe others interacting with a person of interest or ask questions to neighbors who are likely to have some knowledge about each other. I have been interested in algorithmic trust metrics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric) for a while. If I was starting grad school over, I think I might have picked this field for my research. Things like Subjective logic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic) are similar to the way humans establish trust in real life and search engines could improve their results by using it. There are ways to quantify not only direct relationships but also indirect ones where one can trust an entity because some other trusted party, trusts them. The fact that we are all connected by few degrees of separation (some say at most six) makes this truly powerful. It is probably too computationally expensive to generate a complete global trust network for each google+ user but a team of smart engineers should be able to cluster users with similar opinions or apply the relevant algorithms greedily. Although it is a computationally difficult problem, Google might just be the company that has enough servers to throw at the problem. The trust network paradigm isn’t limited to search. When plugged into a global trust engine, people or organisations that do transactions online, on eBay for example, could forgo the need to rely on vast amounts of random customer feedback to establish trust but instead users could request to see a trust path from themselves to a target person before doing business. This means that new eBay users could bring their reputation from elsewhere with them when just starting to sell. Inversely, it may become possible for google+ users to "+1" eBay’s reputation system and their search results would then contain things that people with good reputation on eBay have +1’d or linked to. The transition from rankings based on random websites’ link contents which often include SEO manipulations to rankings based on individually chosen trusted sources has the potential to be revolutionary. I can’t wait for the day when each search result is accompanied by text stating “recommended this because you +1’d this guy who +1’d this organisation who links a lot to this site.” The mechanism could be used in every kind of relationships and might help picking new employees, friends, doctors or even politicians. I hope Google doesn't become a monopoly in this, like many people I am unconformable with their growing reach. However, if they manage to provide a transparent trust network and provide better search results based on it, it will add a lot of value to the web. tl;dr I suspect Google wants all its services integrated with social because it is trying to build a trust network.
orenmazor 15y ago
why does it creep the crap out of me when google gathers personal information, but I dont care if facebook/apple do it?
- laconian 15y ago
  Tech blog echo chamber?
AJ007 15y ago
My Gmail account is accessed separately on a remote machine. Its not my main email account. I have no "Google" account, because I do not use Google in that context. I don't use Google Docs, Google Reader, or log in to Youtube to watch videos marked as offensive. Use Google for search. Certainly don't use a Google linked version of Android. There are plenty of good alternatives to most everything Google has. The aggressiveness of Google's actions make me think a launch of a Facebook ad network is imminent, just in time for their IPO.
cletus 15y ago
Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem like good things to me. As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out). To me this seems to be another of these "bubble" issues. Take Apple as an example of that. Every time they release a new (iPhone, iPad, whatever) you'll see people in the tech bubble (largely of SF and NYC) dig up tired old cliches like "its evolutionary not revolutionary" (seriously, I'm so sick of hearing that phrase) and it's "not the upgrade I was hoping for". On HN you'll find people who are still somehow shocked that you can't out-of-the-box sideload a bootloader onto an iPhone (or whatever). Consumers (outside the bubble) however love these new products. Just look at Apple's 2011Q4 results, which are simply astounding. Thing is, that happens every time and yet the same old jaded "bubblistas" meet every new release with the same mix of lukewarm cliches, disappointment and derision. I see this as much the same way. All of this is about (IMHO) improving the user experience. You don't have to look very far to see accounts from users who love these new features. If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? EDIT: as far as including Twitter/FB goes, Eric Schmidt addressed this [1]: > I countered that Google seemed to have all the permission it needed, in that they’re not blocked from crawling pages. > “That’s your opinion,” Schmidt said, then joked: “If you could arrange a letter from Facebook and Twitter to us, that would be helpful.” > I pushed back that both have effectively given those letters since their robots.txt files — a method of blocking search engines — weren’t telling Google to go away. > “That’s your interpretation of their policies,” Schmidt said. [1]: http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to-talk-twitter-facebook-integration-3151 http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to...
- alexgartrell 15y ago
  > As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. For the majority of users, Facebook/Twitter results are more relevant than Google Plus results. There's nothing in the rule book that says you can't leverage a successful property to promote another, but it's unfair to everyone to try to pass that off as a move to increase relevance in search results. Disclaimer: I'm a Facebook engineer who doesn't take SPYW personally.
spqr 15y ago
I still use Google for Gmail and for a (now abandoned) Google+ profile, but I've switched to Bing for search. The results are "good enough". The benefit is that none of my searches are attached to a personally identifiable account.
mkup 15y ago
I've been using "GMail for Domains" service for years to filter spam. Can anyone recommend a viable alternative? I read e-mail in Portable Thunderbird, it's downloaded/uploaded via POP3/SMTP, so I don't have to browse the internet with Google cookies. Also I don't have Google+ account, and I have separate browser to access Analytics and Webmaster tools and AdWords. My main browser clears all cookies at end-of-session except ones from whitelisted domains, so I'm not bothered by the search query spying that much. They can bind search queries to my e-mail account only by the same IP address used in HTTP search and POP3/SMTP mail transfer. One more question: does Chrome browser (on desktop) have some kind of builtin instance/installation ID it transfers to Google servers every time I connect? I use Firefox, but anyway.
- kodkdoepk 15y ago
  hotmail and dozens of others has similar feature.
- freehunter 15y ago
  People love Google services, but they don't like the very things that make those services great. Without knowing who you are and what you're about, they can't accurately filter spam or show you relevant results/ads. There are other spam filters, but they don't work as well because they don't know you. Yes, Chrome sends information back to Google just like Google Search does: it tracks what searches you make through the Omnibar. Firefox does the same thing when you make Google searches in their search box.
  - mkup 15y ago
    Filtering spam has nothing to do with my search queries. It's all about finding duplicate or nearly duplicate messages sent to many people at once, all one needs is a large sample database.
    - freehunter 15y ago
      Which is when you get false positives, about the worst thing a spam filter can do. Millions of legitimate organizations send billions of duplicate messages per week. And what's spam for you might not be spam in my eyes. Or maybe it's just a case of needing to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Maybe there's a phishing message and a legitimate message coming in at the same time. Your spam filter needs to know which one is which, it needs to be quick to react to new developments, and it needs to know what you want to see and what you don't. Spam filtering is hard. Gmail got popular because of their space and their nearly bullet-proof spam detection. If it was easy, someone else would have done it.
cheald 15y ago
What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. It seems they can't win either way. This is a necessary step in fixing Google's broken approach to social and personalized information. Personally, I like this direction. I really don't care Google will have the my same data in Picasa and Docs and Gmail. If anything, it's going to mean a better product for me. It's not like Google is suddenly sharing all this data with an external entity - it already had it. It already used it. Now it's just using it across multiple facets rather than limiting it to a single one. I'm just not sure I get the brouhaha. Maybe it's because I already use all those services as a single user, and have wanted better integration between them, so this just fits me better. Maybe I'm just ignorant about the implications. I'm not sure. I do have to ask, though - if you have an issue with Google's having access to your data, why do you use Google services? As with any web property, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.
- scottkrager 15y ago
  My issue with it is mostly in the visual implementation. I had hoped that Google would be more subtle about it, instead I look at the SERPs and see them shouting at me.
  - cheald 15y ago
    I think that's a fair point. Some people like the simpler search results. Does the SPYW toggle solve that complaint for you, though, or is there a deeper problem that I'm missing?
    - scottkrager 15y ago
      It does, but it's not just SPYW. It's the endless amounts of "extra" stuff that keeps getting added to the formally very clean SERP.
- 15y ago
danso 15y ago
This is why I use two different browsers. My main browser, Chrome, is where I'm logged onto my GMail account. I use another browser solely to connect to Facebook so that it doesn't collect my Chrome's site usage data. Also, I think I've always assumed that everything I've entered in Google Search will be linked to me indefinitely...so...sensitive searches are done in the non-logged in browser. Of course, there's IP tracking, but I'm not feeling that paranoid yet.
laconian 15y ago
This trope is getting super-tired. We even heard from someone saying that Google reducing the stock of bagels in the snack bars is EVIL!
gdubs 15y ago
Here's something I've been concerned about... I do Core Audio development, and participate from time to time in the Apple Core Audio Mailing list. Every so often a newcomer will arrive and ask about something basic. In response, someone will tell them to google it. This is common in coding related mailing list circles: "I just googled it and the answer is the third result down". Now, my concern is that the google results an advanced user will get are going to be more relevant a lot of times than what a newcomer – who hasn't done a whole lot of Core Audio yet – will see. They're likely to get hundreds of pages of results that mask what they're looking for, because to Google they're not a low-level audio programmer, so they're probably looking for something else. I realize it's a bit of a slippery slope argument, but something about different-search-results-for-different-people that bothers me – maybe its the fact that so many people aren't even aware that their google results may be drastically different from others. To me, it has a lot to do with what Nicholas Negroponte called "The Daily Me".
beloch 15y ago
Am I the only one who has started running Gmail and Facebook in their own separately installed browsers that are used for absolutely nothing else?
eligottlieb 15y ago
Welp, I need to work more. Google is quickly creating my customer base.
- Scybert 15y ago
  Still butthurt that Google rejected you?
TDL 15y ago
So if I am not logged in when I use GOOG search I won't have the tailored results, correct? If that is the case, what are the privacy concerns? Will the results of my search still be "inferior"?
chmike 15y ago
I'ld like to vote wih me feet. This is not a walled garden thing, it is about putting users in glass houses controled by google. We need to get out of this trap, and fast. Make these services crowed sourced and open source.
chmike 15y ago
I'ld like to vote wih me feet. This is not a walled garden thing, it is about putting users in glass houses controled by google. We need to get out of this trap, and fast. Make these services crowed sourced and open source.
protomyth 15y ago
As much as I love my parents and my close friends, I really, really don't want their postings or links to influence searches I do. They, as a whole, are not relevant to any search I have done in the last year. On twitter, I follow a lot of area experts and could be relevant in those specific areas, but many of them have wider interests. Some of these interests would negatively influence the search I do. I really wish they would concentrate on customer service (human) and dealing with the spam links and implications of the must-post-first journalism model that is a basic creation of their payment model.
skeltoac 15y ago
Eventually Google's algorithms will be so smart that they will detect your sentiments and give you the experience you remember from 2005.
api 15y ago
There are "wheels of reincarnation" in computing: http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.ht... One of these is the PC/mainframe decentralization/centralization cycle. Right now we're completing as swing back from decentralized PCs to centralized mainframes, except now the latter is called "cloud" and "software as a service." I think it's time for the pendulum to start swinging the other way. What we need are software platforms for large-scale, secure, reliable decentralized computing over wide area networks. Then we need to use these to enable decentralized meshed Facebook, Google, etc. competitors.
tatsuke95 15y ago
>"According to Pando Daily..." Who used completely unattributed sources ("X-Googlers") themselves. That's textbook echo chamber in action.
EGreg 15y ago
I remember when Facebook introduced the newsfeed, everyone was up in arms. But this is more like when Facebook saw Twitter's growth numbers and got scared and decided to be more like it. So a private social network became more public and everyone (including Google) could link to it now. It's a sad day when a company abandones what it has come to represent, and becomes something else. But then again, if you want to use your own stuff, it's always there. You can always host your own applications! Wordpress instead of blogger. Your own email. This has always been possible. Relying on centralized authorities you have to accept that this might happen.
yaix 15y ago
"It must force [...] Google+ down the throats of users who are simply looking for a brilliant search engine." And that's the part I don't get. Facebook does not even make that much money. Why would Google want to be more like it? Google is leading the part of the web with most profits. And now tries hard to abandon it in favor of becoming second in the part that makes one of the worst profits. Why?
gorm 15y ago
Funny. extremetech uses at least 9 different pieces of tracking software on their page reported by ghostery
jmcmoto 15y ago
this argument is RETARDED. Just log out if you dont want personalized results. All these people writing articles are paid PR Shills for FB or Twitter or someone.
- fred_nada 15y ago
  Yes, I use Bing and starting to use DDG for tech queries... You are wrong about fb/twitter are the only ones who care. Look at all of the comments on the blogs... Here is one for an example. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ This doesn't just effect twitter/fb
alextingle 15y ago
Right. All of Google's cookies are now blocked on my browser.
kzrdude 15y ago
"Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge" I hope that's false. This device runs linux.
kr1shna 15y ago
I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I bet most users go about their daily lives like this is happening already. I for one, assumed that this sharing was happening already (really, it'd be silly for Google not to do it) and went about my daily life without being affected by it. Most of the 153 million Americans using Google wouldn't give a damn. At least Google is being open an honest about it, unlike other companies who change TOS without really letting the user know. FUBAR indeed.
rhaphazard 15y ago
My initial reaction was DON'T BE EVIL. But after some thought and some reading, I realize that technology advances and we don't know what the results and consequences will be until quite a bit of time has passed. I really want to trust Google, so please don't be evil.
trotsky 15y ago
Is it really true that there hasn't been co-mingling of user data between properties already? It seems hard to believe that most user data didn't at least "leak" into their advertising businesses, which presumably is where you'd be worried about it going.
augiehill 15y ago
More sensationalist BS by those who would see themselves profit from the fall of the leader. These changes are all about improving relevance of search results and thus improving the user experience!
chalst 15y ago
There is a possible search quality motive for SPYW, which is that weighting social networks allows proxies for personal trust to be brought into ranking search results, diluting the value of some obnoxious SEO strategies.
tehwalrus 15y ago
I don't want search results tailored to my google profile, I want the real results, even if I disagree with them. Example: I found my blog coming higher and higher on google for random search terms...only to realise that I was logged in and google knew that it was my blog. Not useful data! I would move to duckduckgo, if it weren't mediocre the last time I tried. Maybe it's time to give them another shot.
- latch 15y ago
  Speed is the biggest problem with DDG, but really, there's no harm in giving it another shot for a couple days to see how it has improved (because it has).
dools 15y ago
Personally, I thought Google already did this Me too. I assumed that since they all share a cookie/login that this is why they bothered to have so many different services.
fred_nada 15y ago
Wow - 65% of people say they will cancel their Google Account over the Privacy changes... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-user-polls/post/will-you-cancel-your-google-account/2012/01/24/gIQAOdVHOQ_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-user-polls/post/wil...
- yanw 15y ago
  Full disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors. They omitted it this time it seems.
  - fred_nada 15y ago
    disclosure of what? Do you think he voted 15,000 times?
dedward 15y ago
All other facts aside, I sort of assume google analyzes their statistics to find out what works and what doesn't... whether an extra quarter second of search results matter or not, and so on. I don't like the confusing mess it's become either... I use a bunch of products, and I kept them compartmentalized for my reasons, mostly just simplicity. Now it's this big mess that I could go ranting about..... That said - just because people say they don't/won't like something doesn't mean it won't be liked/loved, and used by everyone. The end users actions speak louder than their words, and on the internet, this is easy to watch. As a 20 year veteran of the internet and all that crap? Sure. Am I frustrated by Google's current direction? Yup... Will I stop using it? I haven't yet - we'll see, but if I do, it will only be because I naturally move to something else because google stops being as useful.... and that's how the majority of people react to things. (Then I wonder, if I find it confusing, how will my mom find it?)
_func 15y ago
Why did I switch from AltaVista to Google? AV was working great for me. Read the history and you will know the reason. Yes there is a huge market building for somone who can offer something better than what Google is becoming (albeit slowly). Was Google looking to profit from the fall of AltaVista back then? I doubt it. I think they just had an idea of how they do search better. They took out the advertising and the influence of payments on ranking. AdSense came much later. The Google of today is different than the one that provided a better alternative to AV. Given the direction Google is taking (obsessively competing for unsavvy Facebook users), they are giving me and no doubt others lots of ideas of how we can do search better. Keep on Google. If this is what you want.
po 15y ago
Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a result Apple can perfectly tailor its devices for its users (and ratchet up record-breaking quarterly earnings in the process). Stopped reading at this point.. Does apple know if I tap the home screen? Does apple know that I just used twitter? No. This claim shows their willingness to throw around unsubstantiated ideas as fact.
firefox 15y ago
I didn't see that coming, no, not with the creation of gmail, google docs, the acquisition of Youtube and everything else we use, why on earth would they want to put all my info into one place?... c'mon people! Facebook knows more about you than Google, and (shock) they're a for-profit organization, if they can target better ads to you, they will. I don't personally like this but as a corporation it's what they've to do.
adjwilli 15y ago
Please no more extremetech.com links on Hacker News. There mobile website is terrible. Plus all that tracking software isn't nice.
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
SPYW is Spy World. The hilarious part is that I didn't even have to bring in my own words. SPY is right there, dominating the word and guiding the way you would attempt to pronounce it, and World is what the W actually stands for. Spy World. What were they thinking?
kahawe 15y ago
> If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else. If I was working at a company and my boss would use such "STFU"-style statements, I would consider quitting sooner rather than later. And here is why: I remember in my old company, the time when our boss started using similar rhetorics it did not take long for the whole thing to go down the drain because he would continue clinging to bad major decisions for dear life, against all the resistance and warnings of practically all his employees and those "STFU" phrases were, I guess, his way of coping by closing his eyes to the inevitable wall we were speeding towards. Like a reality-distortion field kicked into overdrive gone haywire. Seeing Larry use such a phrase at the SPYW-launch staff event makes you wonder just how much internal disagreement there really was amongst google's employees. Not a good signs at all, if you ask me.

282 points by llambda 15y ago

toddh 15y ago

It's a more successful version of the Yahoo portal strategy + the walled garden strategy. Yahoo failed when the competition created more attractive services and a walled garden requires something interesting enough to build a wall around. It will interesting to see how well it works.

Destroyer661 15y ago

I have a hard time understanding the whole deal everyone is making of Google finally combining the whole ecosystem they have into one nice package. I don't think the author knows that Google already knows what you use in Google docs, they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually. This seems like much ado about nothing. Google isn't trying to wall people up in it's ecosystem, they're simply trying to unify all of the services they offer into one point of contact, which, as a user of many of these services, I applaud.

brudgers 15y ago
If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising. And that's even without giving Google the leverage to change the Terms of Service by which I access my existing business records unilaterally, at will, and without recourse. YMMV
- MCompeau 15y ago
  Please correct me if I'm mistaken but companies using Google services such as GMail and Docs use them through Google Apps which isn't subject to advertising like the public versions of these services.
  - maaku 15y ago
    You're missing the point--when the switchover occurs the ads accompanying regular google search will pull upon a profile which includes your GMail/Google Docs accounts as well.
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      Data from Google's enterprise products are not included in your ad profile. I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform. Just because something shows up in your (March 1st) search results doesn't mean it was used in generating the ad next to it.
      - maaku 15y ago
        From TFA: "if you want to continue using Gmail, Docs, and so on. You must allow Google to share your data between its services" Maybe it is actually sensationalist nonsense, but that is what the whole article is kinda about.
      - brudgers 15y ago
        >"I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform." I have observed people tend to accept vendor lock in. Particularly when the migration costs are high. Likewise, the cost of lost enterprise accounts would have to offset the revenue gained from mining the data...assuming of course that Google isn't already mining enterprise data.
- cbs 15y ago
  If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising. On the other hand, if I was a buisness concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence, I wouldn't use 2nd party cloud services.
jinushaun 15y ago
I agree. In fact, I'm surprised that Google services don't already work this way.
- kc0bfv 15y ago
  I agree too. I think it was naive of anybody to think that this wouldn't eventually happen. For years people have said that Google's goal was to control the information - all of it. I suppose that never bothered me because I know that I control what information I give Google, and I don't feel that Google has tried to subvert that control yet. I'm a little disappointed that Google is returning Goog+ results above other social networks when the + results clearly are not as relevant, but hopefully they'll iron that out over time.
amstr 15y ago
Apparently when Apple has a unified ecosystem, the purpose is to "perfectly tailor its devices to its users" but if Google does it, it's "maniacal" and "tyrannical"? The state of tech blogging is so, so poor.
- shantanubala 15y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong (I might have outdated knowledge since I don't really use Apple products a whole lot), but you can use a Mac or iPod/iPad without having your personal data stored with Apple. Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services. Apple makes money from selling stuff. Google makes money from ads. Who has a greater incentive to collect more of your personal information and use it to make money?
  - paganel 15y ago
    > Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services. Spot on. For example Google knows my exact porn-searches the moment I make them, either through their search-engine logs or directly through Chrome. Now imagine if it were to surface that Apple somehow logs and sends back to some server in Cupertino all porn-related searches made by MacBook-owners... (I chose "porn" as an example because it's a sensitive topic, I could as well have chosen "drugs", "depression", "cancer cure", "tax evasion" and so on).
  - amstr 15y ago
    Yes, I'd agree with you that tight integration for Apple and Google provide different kinds of "systemic risk". For Google, the risk is they control too much of your information. For Apple, when Apple owns the entire software and hardware stack, the market price of hardware skyrockets (the opposite of the effect Microsoft had by commoditizing hardware), and by its monopoly on App Stores for iPads/iPhones, it is able to gouge content creators for ~30% of the price of books/apps. IMO, tight integration of BOTH of these companies is bad for society, but I found the author's singling out of Google to be unwarranted.
Ecio78 15y ago
they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually Uhm ok tell me if you like this scenario: * I'm fed up of my employeer so I'm sending tons of jobs applications from my personal gmail account * I dont write these mails while at work, but sometimes I login on google services for doin some work-related stuff (let's say use keyword search tools) * I forgot to logout * I start searching stuff on the net with my chief for our vmware project and instantly google suggests me as a perfect match my application letter sent to vmware HR * Thank you google I'm almost fired :) of course in this case I should've logged out from google, but I'd prefer to possibly opt-out this kind of stuff...
- spindritf 15y ago
  > of course in this case I should've logged out from google Yes, exactly, what is to stop anyone from just going through your sent mail if they were already willing to go through your web history?
  - talmand 15y ago
    I believe he was saying he would not have accessed his email on his work computer at all, he would then log into Google for other reasons and not open his mail. But Google would then go ahead and show him something related to his email account that he did not want. Leaving his computer logged into his Google account and his employer sitting down to go through the account, such as sent mail, is a different matter. The solution to all this is to never use personal logins for anything on a computer you do not control 100%.
    - Ecio78 15y ago
      Yes exactly, thanks talmand for the clarification, i was thinking about the case in which the user is not logged in the mail but google fetches data for your search from all your personal data just because you're logged on.
- 15y ago

MCompeau 15y ago

I'm really surprised that Google is moving towards a more integrated/proprietary/closed platform. Their advantage was always that they were able to make the chaos of the web sensible to navigate. As a trendsetter in terms of openness they were protecting their own best interests by influencing others to be open (and thus crawlable) as well. I guess Google has decided that the content stored in the walled gardens of other platforms (Facebook) has become so valuable that they must change their own approach in order to compete.

myko 15y ago
What do you mean by Google is moving towards a closed platform?
- MCompeau 15y ago
  I mean it in a colloquial sense. By tightly integrating their services and beginning to aggregate primarily their own content through search it seems they are taking a protectionist stance.
  - laconian 15y ago
    You are talking about Facebook and Twitter, right?

jfeldstein2 15y ago

Seems to me google search results are the same as ever, they just put a G+ widget on the side and Twitter and Facebook peeps are upset they weren't included so they're calling it "evil".

SquareWheel 15y ago
It's also including Google+ pages in suggested search, and seems to prioritize those pages in organic search too. I don't have an opinion of if it's evil, but I think it is more than just the sidebar.

njloof 15y ago

"... there is no option for you to continue using the old privacy policy that existed when you signed up." Find me one web site that allows me to continue using their expired privacy policy in perpetuity.

wiggum 15y ago

The solution is to log out. For those of you who like being signed into Gmail put "accounts.youtube.com" in your adblock filters. That will prevent Google from automatically signing you in to Youtube and other services.

cdh 15y ago
Just because you've logged out of a site doesn't necessarily mean the cookies have been deleted. Google can still track you just as effectively until you've cleared your cookies. In fact, if they store IP address and useragent information, they could continue tracking you even afterwards. Now, I don't know that they do that, but they certainly have the technical means to do so.
- dereferenced2 15y ago
  Pretty sure they do. Watch this ted talk about filter bubbling from last year: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk He mentions they use ~30 points of info to identify you, even if you're logged out.
  - tonfa 15y ago
    From the talk: > Even if you're logged out, one engineer told me, there are 57 signals that Google looks at -- everything from what kind of computer you're on to what kind of browser you're using to where you're located -- that it uses to personally tailor your query results. He says they are signals used during ranking, not something to identify people.

bambax 15y ago

> Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a result Apple can perfectly tailor its devices for it users (and ratchet up record-breaking quarterly earnings in the process). Are Apple's devices "perfectly tailored for it[s] users"? I don't see any of that tailoring when I use them. The reason why Apple ratchets up record-breaking earnings is that they build things people want; they build incredibly good devices. Google is playing with fire; the thing it has that people want is not G+ or Reader or even Gmail: it is search. If they break search, they will die.

techiferous 15y ago
> If they break search, they will die. Agreed. And if they don't innovate search, they will die. Big change has to happen. Whether this is the right move remains to be seen.
rbanffy 15y ago
OTOH, we might discover adding a social dimension to search results may yield better results for a substantial chunk of the general population. If I am looking for a how-to, knowing whether my geek friends found it useful would be a good indicator. It has to be carefully balanced to avoid forming social echo chambers and perpetuating instantaneous events, but, in the end, it may prove useful. And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear.
- GoCatGo 15y ago
  > And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear. Don While a valid point, I signed up to g+ and then logged out permanently as I didn't want all my data submitted to a single company (i.e. Google has my search, calendar and gmail) I don't like that they have so much in one spot already but I certainly wasn't going to give them social as well. I think that everyone likes to have an element of anonymity online and this lets Google have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you are by tying these together. While we on HN might be clever ones that realise all the data we're putting out there there's a whole world of lay people that have no idea. I assume the outrage isn't so much about the people in the know, but about your grandmother not realising what she's volunteering.

mburst 15y ago

I think the whole idea of a search engine is to give you relevant results. Google already does this and you can view your current ad profile here http://www.google.com/settings/ads/ http://www.google.com/settings/ads/ I think it makes sense to combine all of their products, though taking input from my e-mails seems a bit shady.

yanw 15y ago

Nothing spikes pageviews like Google bashing.

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
Unless it's Apple bashing.
- yanw 15y ago
  Nah, Apple has the best PR in the business; even posts about their revenue generate massive views.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

Assuming this article's suppositions are correct (that Google must become more social to continue growing), Google is showing a lot of cojones. Most businesses won't cannibalize their core cash-cow, even when they know the future is limited (see Kodak with digital cameras and every hard disk manufacturer :). There is no question it is a gamble; but if the other option is an eventual sunset (and I wouldn't be surprised if Larry thought of it that way), it is better to make the bet while you are on top than when you are scratching for survival.

smspence 15y ago
I don't understand. Can you please explain how they are "cannibalizing their core cash-cow"? Can you please explain what they are gambling or betting on? They aren't getting rid of search as we know it. They are just adding additional features. They haven't taken anything away.
c2 15y ago
Pretty relevant example, as Eastman Kodak just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just last week.

icebraining 15y ago

And of course, the kicker: Google’s ad networks — AdSense, AdWords, DoubleClick — will have full access to all of your search and surf habits from every Google web service. They already did. Hell, we've had this discussion eight years ago [1] when they announced Gmail, which mines your email for demographic data to show you ads. Nothing has meaningfully changed in that respect. [1]: https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm

spodek 15y ago

It just occurred to me a main reason they chose "Don't be evil" as their slogan. The foundation of the company is a slippery slope that will forever motivate it to get more personal information and to do more with it -- generally meaning profiting from that personal information in ways people don't know about. Also, they will forever be asked or demanded that information from governments and other companies who want to do the same. Many (most?) professions would never need to remind themselves not to "be evil." Restaurants don't have to say "Don't be evil." Yes, they have the motivation to skimp on quality or ingredients, but nothing like Google's temptation. The company's foundation is so laden with temptation to "be evil" it had to try to build defences to it in its core. The problem with that situation is that the motivation never goes away, but the effort to resist it can fade.

taphangum 15y ago
You're right. And it will only get worse as time goes on. IMO the upward trajectory of their stock price and how 'evil' they are willing to be, over time, will have a positive correlation.
joebadmo 15y ago
The real problem is people don't really understand the context of "Don't be evil." If you read Steven Levy's In the Plex, or any first-hand account, really, you realize it's more about always thinking about the user experience first. It has nothing to do with personal information. As far as I know, when "Don't be evil" was coined, they used little to no personal information to provide search results.
- ellyagg 15y ago
  That doesn't really seem to agree with Paul Buchheit's quote on the wikipedia entry regarding the topic, where he said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent." I'm pretty sure the plain meaning of the phrase was one of the intended senses, suggesting that any aggressively selfish behavior falls under its umbrella. It would be a little opportunistic to, on the one hand, have the founders include the following line in a company manifesto: "Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains" and garner all the amazing PR that's come from that association over the years--but then turn around and claim, oh, no, that was really mostly just talking about user experience. And I doubt they'd make that claim.

ck2 15y ago

DuckDuckGo was really ahead of the curve with the privacy angle eh? Now if they just had their own crawlers - I keep saying they need to merge with Gigablast (Matt Wells) which was the most promising startup a decade ago and looked like the old google pre-adsense, but never took off (built his own crawlers way before "the cloud" existed).

jrockway 15y ago

So, this was all true before the privacy policy change. Google isn't asking for new rights, they just condensed 70 documents into one.

smspence 15y ago
Facts and logic are not going to stop the bloggers from creating FUD and link bait.

victork2 15y ago

I feel like there are many Google supporters here but to be honest Google is steering to a bad direction if you are like me about efficiency and relevancy. What makes me mad is that we don't have the choice. I don't want all the social bullshit, the +1, why would I even give a crap about that? I don't want to have everything interconnected, I hate the fact that now if I logged in to Gmail I am logged into Youtube. I don't buy Apple to avoid fully integrated systems, I will not use Google in the future. It makes me think about CNN who believes they are more relevant when they are reading what shit people say on Twitter "Ze pope is dead LOL". Yeah right, great piece of info here. But hey, if people like it, they are welcome to it, I just hope there will be good alternatives in the future.

Karunamon 15y ago
>What makes me mad is that we don't have the choice. If you don't like the social results in your SERP, you realize it's a one click button to turn it off, right? Or were you talking about the +1? Nobody forces you to click on it. I don't get the rage. Google owns a multitude of different sites. Being able to sign into all of them at once is a godsend as far as I'm concerned. So much misplaced anger here..
- victork2 15y ago
  Au contraire I don't have any anger. If their choice is to sacrifice relevancy for their other social services or they social bullshit, it is fine with me, I am not a fan of Google brand, just a user and I will take my business elsewhere. To tell you where the problems come from in my opinion: _ Everything is opt-out, not opt-in. After I realize than I am very pro-choice in term of user experience. _ The +1 thingy is very tricky, if you click the wrong button and don't read well, that's it you're on +1. And once you're on it, no way to get out _ Relevancy is killed by the influence of +1. Look at this talk if you have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu... . Since it is an opt out 99% of the user won't do it and in the long term it will probably have a bad influence on how people receive and perceive information. I think my reasons to leave are relevant and not based on rage but a cold appreciation of the future of Google.

BenoitEssiambre 15y ago

Although I don't like the way Google is starting to control too much online, I believe that using the social network and other information to influence search and other services is the future. Google’s move towards social search could be the most significant change in the way we use the web since the beginning of Google itself. Consider that with this move, Google is actually moving away from their flagship Pagerank algorithm. Google has already mentioned it wants to hold our online identity and others have speculated that Google wants to be a “reputation engine” (http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/08/breaking-google-will-be-a-reputation-engine.html http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/08/breaking-g...). It is not difficult to see that the next step is to make search results dependent on reputation and on the trust friends and +1’d organisations have in particular websites. Difficulty to establish identity and trust is one of the main shortcomings of the web compared to the real world, especially when doing business. It is much easier to judge character and establish trust in a local face to face relationship than on the web. Locally we can observe others interacting with a person of interest or ask questions to neighbors who are likely to have some knowledge about each other. I have been interested in algorithmic trust metrics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric) for a while. If I was starting grad school over, I think I might have picked this field for my research. Things like Subjective logic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic) are similar to the way humans establish trust in real life and search engines could improve their results by using it. There are ways to quantify not only direct relationships but also indirect ones where one can trust an entity because some other trusted party, trusts them. The fact that we are all connected by few degrees of separation (some say at most six) makes this truly powerful. It is probably too computationally expensive to generate a complete global trust network for each google+ user but a team of smart engineers should be able to cluster users with similar opinions or apply the relevant algorithms greedily. Although it is a computationally difficult problem, Google might just be the company that has enough servers to throw at the problem. The trust network paradigm isn’t limited to search. When plugged into a global trust engine, people or organisations that do transactions online, on eBay for example, could forgo the need to rely on vast amounts of random customer feedback to establish trust but instead users could request to see a trust path from themselves to a target person before doing business. This means that new eBay users could bring their reputation from elsewhere with them when just starting to sell. Inversely, it may become possible for google+ users to "+1" eBay’s reputation system and their search results would then contain things that people with good reputation on eBay have +1’d or linked to. The transition from rankings based on random websites’ link contents which often include SEO manipulations to rankings based on individually chosen trusted sources has the potential to be revolutionary. I can’t wait for the day when each search result is accompanied by text stating “recommended this because you +1’d this guy who +1’d this organisation who links a lot to this site.” The mechanism could be used in every kind of relationships and might help picking new employees, friends, doctors or even politicians. I hope Google doesn't become a monopoly in this, like many people I am unconformable with their growing reach. However, if they manage to provide a transparent trust network and provide better search results based on it, it will add a lot of value to the web. tl;dr I suspect Google wants all its services integrated with social because it is trying to build a trust network.

orenmazor 15y ago

why does it creep the crap out of me when google gathers personal information, but I dont care if facebook/apple do it?

laconian 15y ago
Tech blog echo chamber?

AJ007 15y ago

My Gmail account is accessed separately on a remote machine. Its not my main email account. I have no "Google" account, because I do not use Google in that context. I don't use Google Docs, Google Reader, or log in to Youtube to watch videos marked as offensive. Use Google for search. Certainly don't use a Google linked version of Android. There are plenty of good alternatives to most everything Google has. The aggressiveness of Google's actions make me think a launch of a Facebook ad network is imminent, just in time for their IPO.

cletus 15y ago

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem like good things to me. As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out). To me this seems to be another of these "bubble" issues. Take Apple as an example of that. Every time they release a new (iPhone, iPad, whatever) you'll see people in the tech bubble (largely of SF and NYC) dig up tired old cliches like "its evolutionary not revolutionary" (seriously, I'm so sick of hearing that phrase) and it's "not the upgrade I was hoping for". On HN you'll find people who are still somehow shocked that you can't out-of-the-box sideload a bootloader onto an iPhone (or whatever). Consumers (outside the bubble) however love these new products. Just look at Apple's 2011Q4 results, which are simply astounding. Thing is, that happens every time and yet the same old jaded "bubblistas" meet every new release with the same mix of lukewarm cliches, disappointment and derision. I see this as much the same way. All of this is about (IMHO) improving the user experience. You don't have to look very far to see accounts from users who love these new features. If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? EDIT: as far as including Twitter/FB goes, Eric Schmidt addressed this [1]: > I countered that Google seemed to have all the permission it needed, in that they’re not blocked from crawling pages. > “That’s your opinion,” Schmidt said, then joked: “If you could arrange a letter from Facebook and Twitter to us, that would be helpful.” > I pushed back that both have effectively given those letters since their robots.txt files — a method of blocking search engines — weren’t telling Google to go away. > “That’s your interpretation of their policies,” Schmidt said. [1]: http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to-talk-twitter-facebook-integration-3151 http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to...

alexgartrell 15y ago
> As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. For the majority of users, Facebook/Twitter results are more relevant than Google Plus results. There's nothing in the rule book that says you can't leverage a successful property to promote another, but it's unfair to everyone to try to pass that off as a move to increase relevance in search results. Disclaimer: I'm a Facebook engineer who doesn't take SPYW personally.

spqr 15y ago

I still use Google for Gmail and for a (now abandoned) Google+ profile, but I've switched to Bing for search. The results are "good enough". The benefit is that none of my searches are attached to a personally identifiable account.

mkup 15y ago

I've been using "GMail for Domains" service for years to filter spam. Can anyone recommend a viable alternative? I read e-mail in Portable Thunderbird, it's downloaded/uploaded via POP3/SMTP, so I don't have to browse the internet with Google cookies. Also I don't have Google+ account, and I have separate browser to access Analytics and Webmaster tools and AdWords. My main browser clears all cookies at end-of-session except ones from whitelisted domains, so I'm not bothered by the search query spying that much. They can bind search queries to my e-mail account only by the same IP address used in HTTP search and POP3/SMTP mail transfer. One more question: does Chrome browser (on desktop) have some kind of builtin instance/installation ID it transfers to Google servers every time I connect? I use Firefox, but anyway.

kodkdoepk 15y ago
hotmail and dozens of others has similar feature.
freehunter 15y ago
People love Google services, but they don't like the very things that make those services great. Without knowing who you are and what you're about, they can't accurately filter spam or show you relevant results/ads. There are other spam filters, but they don't work as well because they don't know you. Yes, Chrome sends information back to Google just like Google Search does: it tracks what searches you make through the Omnibar. Firefox does the same thing when you make Google searches in their search box.
- mkup 15y ago
  Filtering spam has nothing to do with my search queries. It's all about finding duplicate or nearly duplicate messages sent to many people at once, all one needs is a large sample database.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    Which is when you get false positives, about the worst thing a spam filter can do. Millions of legitimate organizations send billions of duplicate messages per week. And what's spam for you might not be spam in my eyes. Or maybe it's just a case of needing to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Maybe there's a phishing message and a legitimate message coming in at the same time. Your spam filter needs to know which one is which, it needs to be quick to react to new developments, and it needs to know what you want to see and what you don't. Spam filtering is hard. Gmail got popular because of their space and their nearly bullet-proof spam detection. If it was easy, someone else would have done it.

cheald 15y ago

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. It seems they can't win either way. This is a necessary step in fixing Google's broken approach to social and personalized information. Personally, I like this direction. I really don't care Google will have the my same data in Picasa and Docs and Gmail. If anything, it's going to mean a better product for me. It's not like Google is suddenly sharing all this data with an external entity - it already had it. It already used it. Now it's just using it across multiple facets rather than limiting it to a single one. I'm just not sure I get the brouhaha. Maybe it's because I already use all those services as a single user, and have wanted better integration between them, so this just fits me better. Maybe I'm just ignorant about the implications. I'm not sure. I do have to ask, though - if you have an issue with Google's having access to your data, why do you use Google services? As with any web property, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.

scottkrager 15y ago
My issue with it is mostly in the visual implementation. I had hoped that Google would be more subtle about it, instead I look at the SERPs and see them shouting at me.
- cheald 15y ago
  I think that's a fair point. Some people like the simpler search results. Does the SPYW toggle solve that complaint for you, though, or is there a deeper problem that I'm missing?
  - scottkrager 15y ago
    It does, but it's not just SPYW. It's the endless amounts of "extra" stuff that keeps getting added to the formally very clean SERP.
15y ago

danso 15y ago

This is why I use two different browsers. My main browser, Chrome, is where I'm logged onto my GMail account. I use another browser solely to connect to Facebook so that it doesn't collect my Chrome's site usage data. Also, I think I've always assumed that everything I've entered in Google Search will be linked to me indefinitely...so...sensitive searches are done in the non-logged in browser. Of course, there's IP tracking, but I'm not feeling that paranoid yet.

laconian 15y ago

This trope is getting super-tired. We even heard from someone saying that Google reducing the stock of bagels in the snack bars is EVIL!

gdubs 15y ago

Here's something I've been concerned about... I do Core Audio development, and participate from time to time in the Apple Core Audio Mailing list. Every so often a newcomer will arrive and ask about something basic. In response, someone will tell them to google it. This is common in coding related mailing list circles: "I just googled it and the answer is the third result down". Now, my concern is that the google results an advanced user will get are going to be more relevant a lot of times than what a newcomer – who hasn't done a whole lot of Core Audio yet – will see. They're likely to get hundreds of pages of results that mask what they're looking for, because to Google they're not a low-level audio programmer, so they're probably looking for something else. I realize it's a bit of a slippery slope argument, but something about different-search-results-for-different-people that bothers me – maybe its the fact that so many people aren't even aware that their google results may be drastically different from others. To me, it has a lot to do with what Nicholas Negroponte called "The Daily Me".

beloch 15y ago

Am I the only one who has started running Gmail and Facebook in their own separately installed browsers that are used for absolutely nothing else?

eligottlieb 15y ago

Welp, I need to work more. Google is quickly creating my customer base.

Scybert 15y ago
Still butthurt that Google rejected you?

TDL 15y ago

So if I am not logged in when I use GOOG search I won't have the tailored results, correct? If that is the case, what are the privacy concerns? Will the results of my search still be "inferior"?

chmike 15y ago

I'ld like to vote wih me feet. This is not a walled garden thing, it is about putting users in glass houses controled by google. We need to get out of this trap, and fast. Make these services crowed sourced and open source.

chmike 15y ago

protomyth 15y ago

As much as I love my parents and my close friends, I really, really don't want their postings or links to influence searches I do. They, as a whole, are not relevant to any search I have done in the last year. On twitter, I follow a lot of area experts and could be relevant in those specific areas, but many of them have wider interests. Some of these interests would negatively influence the search I do. I really wish they would concentrate on customer service (human) and dealing with the spam links and implications of the must-post-first journalism model that is a basic creation of their payment model.

skeltoac 15y ago

Eventually Google's algorithms will be so smart that they will detect your sentiments and give you the experience you remember from 2005.

api 15y ago

There are "wheels of reincarnation" in computing: http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.ht... One of these is the PC/mainframe decentralization/centralization cycle. Right now we're completing as swing back from decentralized PCs to centralized mainframes, except now the latter is called "cloud" and "software as a service." I think it's time for the pendulum to start swinging the other way. What we need are software platforms for large-scale, secure, reliable decentralized computing over wide area networks. Then we need to use these to enable decentralized meshed Facebook, Google, etc. competitors.

tatsuke95 15y ago

>"According to Pando Daily..." Who used completely unattributed sources ("X-Googlers") themselves. That's textbook echo chamber in action.

EGreg 15y ago

I remember when Facebook introduced the newsfeed, everyone was up in arms. But this is more like when Facebook saw Twitter's growth numbers and got scared and decided to be more like it. So a private social network became more public and everyone (including Google) could link to it now. It's a sad day when a company abandones what it has come to represent, and becomes something else. But then again, if you want to use your own stuff, it's always there. You can always host your own applications! Wordpress instead of blogger. Your own email. This has always been possible. Relying on centralized authorities you have to accept that this might happen.

yaix 15y ago

"It must force [...] Google+ down the throats of users who are simply looking for a brilliant search engine." And that's the part I don't get. Facebook does not even make that much money. Why would Google want to be more like it? Google is leading the part of the web with most profits. And now tries hard to abandon it in favor of becoming second in the part that makes one of the worst profits. Why?

gorm 15y ago

Funny. extremetech uses at least 9 different pieces of tracking software on their page reported by ghostery

jmcmoto 15y ago

this argument is RETARDED. Just log out if you dont want personalized results. All these people writing articles are paid PR Shills for FB or Twitter or someone.

fred_nada 15y ago
Yes, I use Bing and starting to use DDG for tech queries... You are wrong about fb/twitter are the only ones who care. Look at all of the comments on the blogs... Here is one for an example. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ This doesn't just effect twitter/fb

alextingle 15y ago

Right. All of Google's cookies are now blocked on my browser.

kzrdude 15y ago

"Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge" I hope that's false. This device runs linux.

kr1shna 15y ago

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I bet most users go about their daily lives like this is happening already. I for one, assumed that this sharing was happening already (really, it'd be silly for Google not to do it) and went about my daily life without being affected by it. Most of the 153 million Americans using Google wouldn't give a damn. At least Google is being open an honest about it, unlike other companies who change TOS without really letting the user know. FUBAR indeed.

rhaphazard 15y ago

My initial reaction was DON'T BE EVIL. But after some thought and some reading, I realize that technology advances and we don't know what the results and consequences will be until quite a bit of time has passed. I really want to trust Google, so please don't be evil.

trotsky 15y ago

Is it really true that there hasn't been co-mingling of user data between properties already? It seems hard to believe that most user data didn't at least "leak" into their advertising businesses, which presumably is where you'd be worried about it going.

augiehill 15y ago

More sensationalist BS by those who would see themselves profit from the fall of the leader. These changes are all about improving relevance of search results and thus improving the user experience!

chalst 15y ago

There is a possible search quality motive for SPYW, which is that weighting social networks allows proxies for personal trust to be brought into ranking search results, diluting the value of some obnoxious SEO strategies.

tehwalrus 15y ago

I don't want search results tailored to my google profile, I want the real results, even if I disagree with them. Example: I found my blog coming higher and higher on google for random search terms...only to realise that I was logged in and google knew that it was my blog. Not useful data! I would move to duckduckgo, if it weren't mediocre the last time I tried. Maybe it's time to give them another shot.

latch 15y ago
Speed is the biggest problem with DDG, but really, there's no harm in giving it another shot for a couple days to see how it has improved (because it has).

dools 15y ago

Personally, I thought Google already did this Me too. I assumed that since they all share a cookie/login that this is why they bothered to have so many different services.

fred_nada 15y ago

Wow - 65% of people say they will cancel their Google Account over the Privacy changes... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-user-polls/post/will-you-cancel-your-google-account/2012/01/24/gIQAOdVHOQ_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-user-polls/post/wil...

yanw 15y ago
Full disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors. They omitted it this time it seems.
- fred_nada 15y ago
  disclosure of what? Do you think he voted 15,000 times?

dedward 15y ago

All other facts aside, I sort of assume google analyzes their statistics to find out what works and what doesn't... whether an extra quarter second of search results matter or not, and so on. I don't like the confusing mess it's become either... I use a bunch of products, and I kept them compartmentalized for my reasons, mostly just simplicity. Now it's this big mess that I could go ranting about..... That said - just because people say they don't/won't like something doesn't mean it won't be liked/loved, and used by everyone. The end users actions speak louder than their words, and on the internet, this is easy to watch. As a 20 year veteran of the internet and all that crap? Sure. Am I frustrated by Google's current direction? Yup... Will I stop using it? I haven't yet - we'll see, but if I do, it will only be because I naturally move to something else because google stops being as useful.... and that's how the majority of people react to things. (Then I wonder, if I find it confusing, how will my mom find it?)

_func 15y ago

Why did I switch from AltaVista to Google? AV was working great for me. Read the history and you will know the reason. Yes there is a huge market building for somone who can offer something better than what Google is becoming (albeit slowly). Was Google looking to profit from the fall of AltaVista back then? I doubt it. I think they just had an idea of how they do search better. They took out the advertising and the influence of payments on ranking. AdSense came much later. The Google of today is different than the one that provided a better alternative to AV. Given the direction Google is taking (obsessively competing for unsavvy Facebook users), they are giving me and no doubt others lots of ideas of how we can do search better. Keep on Google. If this is what you want.

po 15y ago

Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a result Apple can perfectly tailor its devices for its users (and ratchet up record-breaking quarterly earnings in the process). Stopped reading at this point.. Does apple know if I tap the home screen? Does apple know that I just used twitter? No. This claim shows their willingness to throw around unsubstantiated ideas as fact.

firefox 15y ago

I didn't see that coming, no, not with the creation of gmail, google docs, the acquisition of Youtube and everything else we use, why on earth would they want to put all my info into one place?... c'mon people! Facebook knows more about you than Google, and (shock) they're a for-profit organization, if they can target better ads to you, they will. I don't personally like this but as a corporation it's what they've to do.

adjwilli 15y ago

Please no more extremetech.com links on Hacker News. There mobile website is terrible. Plus all that tracking software isn't nice.

a_a_r_o_n 15y ago

SPYW is Spy World. The hilarious part is that I didn't even have to bring in my own words. SPY is right there, dominating the word and guiding the way you would attempt to pronounce it, and World is what the W actually stands for. Spy World. What were they thinking?

kahawe 15y ago

> If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else. If I was working at a company and my boss would use such "STFU"-style statements, I would consider quitting sooner rather than later. And here is why: I remember in my old company, the time when our boss started using similar rhetorics it did not take long for the whole thing to go down the drain because he would continue clinging to bad major decisions for dear life, against all the resistance and warnings of practically all his employees and those "STFU" phrases were, I guess, his way of coping by closing his eyes to the inevitable wall we were speeding towards. Like a reality-distortion field kicked into overdrive gone haywire. Seeing Larry use such a phrase at the SPYW-launch staff event makes you wonder just how much internal disagreement there really was amongst google's employees. Not a good signs at all, if you ask me.