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Big Google Becomes Big Target
(from New York Times)
In 2001, about a dozen of Google's founding employees sat in a conference room trying to come up with a set of corporate values. After a while, one of them, an engineer, Paul Buchheit, said everything they were saying could be summed up by a simple phrase: "Don't Be Evil."
Today, while Google is adored on Wall Street, you can see all over the Web anti-Google sentiment is on the rise.
In a column on The Register, a London-based technology news site (www.theregister.co.uk), Otto Z. Stern says that "Big Google Is Much Worse Than Big Oil." Asserting that Google's success is based more on its ability to bamboozle Internet users and investors than on its ability to provide value, Mr. Stern taunts his readers: "Go ahead and celebrate everything Google. When it has a total monopoly on online advertising, content, goods and services, religion, morality and porn, you can really rejoice."
Some Google-watchers say new products like Google Base are meant to put a stranglehold on the Internet, and drive smaller operations like Craigslist.org (a mostly free classified-ads service) out of business. But product shortcomings could inhibit that game plan.
As Cnet's News.com reported, Webmasters have complained that Google Analytics, a new service that measures and analyzes Web traffic, takes up to two days to return statistics. Google says the bugs are being worked out.
A few years ago, when Google introduced Gmail, a Web-based e-mail program that serves up ads based on keywords found in messages, privacy advocates bristled. This despite assurances from Google that it would never reveal private information to outsiders, and would not tie the keywords to individual users.
To be sure, Google has plenty of fans...but Google's growth has only heightened the concerns of some trend watchers.
full New York Times article (log on required)
posted by Unknown @ Monday, November 28, 2005,
