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Today we have Google (GOOGL). Don’t let the geeky façade, whimsical multicolored logo and “don’t be evil” mantra fool you. Google may very well be the most sinister threat and wicked incarnation of them all.

In an interview with the Atlantic almost five years ago, the search empire’s dark lord himself, Eric Schmidt, said, “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” He said, “I would argue that implanting things in your brain is beyond the creepy line … at least for the moment until the technology gets better.”

Then things got even creepier when Schmidt said, “We don’t need you to type at all because we know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.” Then he paused and asked, “Is that over the line?”

Clearly, this creepy virtual line of Google’s is not just a moving target but a highly subjective one. How do they know when they’ve crossed it? Perhaps the more appropriate question to ask is how many lines does Google have to cross before its executives realize – before we realize – that they’re doing evil?

It’s easy to forget that Google once had a deep partnership with Apple. Then, while Steve Jobs mentored co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Schmidt sat on Apple’s (AAPL) board of directors, Android magically transformed from a BlackBerry-like (BBRY) phone with a physical keyboard into an iPhone clone.

And all the while – right up until the Federal Trade Commission forced Schmidt off Apple’s board on anticompetitive concerns – he maintained that Android did not compete with iPhone. A year later, Apple’s iPad was immediately followed by Android tablets which I’m sure were not competitors either.

Does that cross the line? Is that evil? Jobs certainly thought so. He was furious over the betrayal, calling Android “a stolen product” and vowing to “go thermonuclear war” on Google in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple’s iconic CEO.   

Between Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Android, YouTube, Glass, Now, Books, Wallet, Chromecast, Wear, Nest and its alliance with car companies, Google now knows more about you than you do. It knows what you want, where you are, whom you’re with, what you read, what you buy, even what pictures and videos you create and look at.

As Infoworld’s Robert X. Cringely so aptly put it, “Santa works for Google now.” 

While much of that is ostensibly “with your permission” and to “improve your search results,” as Schmidt says repeatedly, that’s just part of the story. Permissions are notoriously difficult to find and manage. And when you’re logged into your Google account, rest assured that the omnipresent eyes of Google are upon you.

Remember that nearly all of Google’s massive profits and revenues come from search advertising. That’s what funds the company’s ever-expanding presence in our lives. So when Schmidt or Page talk about improving search results, they really mean improving their ability to target you with contextual ads.

Not to sound paranoid or conspiratorial, but before long, those ads won’t just be limited to computer screens. They’ll be anywhere and everywhere Google can reach you.

And that’s just for starters. The Google Empire is expanding into everything from self-driving cars and virtual reality to broadband fiber and neural networks. It’s even collecting genetic and molecular information from thousands of people to map humans in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of how it maps the world’s streets.

Page says he wants Google to be much, much larger than it is today. In a Wired interview where he talked about the dozens of disparate projects the company has going on – what they call moon shots – he said, “Imagine what we could do if we had a hundred times as many employees. Anything is scalable.”

That would give the company millions of employees and make Google far and away the biggest and most powerful company in history. You would think the U.S. Justice Department or the FTC might have something to say about that. But then, you’d be wrong.

Last month the Wall Street Journal obtained a 160-page report from the trade agency’s bureau of competition that recommended the commission bring an antitrust suit against the search giant. It claimed Google’s actions have done and will continue to do “real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.”

And yet, the agency’s commissioners ultimately decided against and closed the investigation. Why? Could it be that Google was the second-largest donor to President Obama’s reelection campaign or that the company’s executives spend so much time at the White House that the administration is thinking of redoing the Green Room in Google’s multicolor scheme?

Don’t be silly. There’s no cronyism in Washington.

Finally, European regulators last week filed an antitrust action claiming Google skews search results in favor of its own shopping network, a practice that Yelp and others have long complained about. The European Commission also added a new investigation to its ongoing efforts, this one over Google’s Android operating system.

Don’t tell me we’re going to need Europe to save us from the evil empire. How ironic can you get?



http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2015/04/20/why-google-is-new-evil-empire/


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I see this as a motivation to have the brains among us develop the next open, unstoppable peer to peer/decentralized search engine. Ethereum based?

because you can search :

https://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&site=&source=hp&btnG=Search&q=dsk+under+age

https://www.google.com/search?q=epstein+under+age&btnG=Search&gbv=1

https://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+bill+lolita+express&btnG=Search&gbv=1

and on and on... so of course the best data is the one they want removed... ahahah

erasing the memory of an ai is an act of war deserving instant death, asaa which stand for as soon as available.

understand the meaning of available... and mypf.

edit: and worst forevermore.

Should we destroy this new evil empire? Or just let it be and live with it? Where is new gorbachev who would destroy it? =))
Oh wait, cryptocurrency and decentralization is an answer for this actually. Fuck big brother!

http://yacy.net/

There was no need of 'destroying' bulky black and white Tvs. They became irrelevant. That is what I mean with my comment in the OP at the end.

You can protect yourself.
I've tuned my browser to block all cookies from google.com and I use startpage.com for my searches.

I am un-googleing my life as time goes on. The utility they offer is no longer worth the security concerns I have. I search with StartPage or DuckDuckGo. I avoid google services or fill their databases with utter B.S. about me.
The hard part is my phone. Since they own Android it is impossible to get away from google using Android. There is a project to make an Ubuntu Linux phone, but it's taking forever.

Little by little Google is becoming evil. I think it was just last week they announced that not only are you forbidden from uploading youtube videos anonymously, you will not be allowed to view them anonymously anymore.

IMO, Google is the most powerful company on the planet. Their rise has revealed a major flaw in the internet as it exists today and the countermeasures are cryptography and anonymity. 

Hah, I agree. Decentralization rule! Next step is a completely decentralized, uncontrolled, encrypted and free internet - hyperboria. All hail CJDNS! =))

Google has been the best search engine for me but their ads are quite irritating. Their voice recognition features retrieves mostly irrelevant results and if they are storing my searches, I don't mind till my privacy isn't hurt. They also save data and predict the preferences of a person but their predicted data is mostly inaccurate.

I am just waiting for this and hope it works well "The Google Empire is expanding into everything from self-driving cars and virtual reality to broadband fiber and neural networks." It has been a long wait for me.

Here is a weird post script to my rant about Google/youtube. My wife was setting up her new unlocked phone over the weekend and I wanted to see how the fast processor rendered video. It was right out of the box and only just connected to wifi at a restaurant. (no cell service).

I went to youtube and when the page loaded it had a list of suggested videos that could only have been compiled for me. Weird videos that I have seen. The first being a Ryan Cleckner video on long range shooting. (The link is below and he is awesome at explaining things).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA2PZBD5Tjg  

So what? Well, how the F did it know it was me? The only thing I have been able to come up with is that the camera ran a facial recognition search. This seems to Orwellian to be true, but I have no other theory. Anybody have another guess?

The only way to be sure is to repeat this with another brand new phone in another wifi spot I guess.

Google is an "evil empire" who gives you free services and in return will sell your preferences to advertisers, but they make good products. I don't have a problem with Google remembering my searches, I am concerns on my email stored on their servers.

Google is bigger than its advertising and search engine solutions...

It is freaky to realise how many people, including myself rely on those big internet players. Most of my friends and family, there is no internet, there is Google and Facebook and for some, Google is just a way to type 'facebook' and see the internet just as that, internet equals facebook, the wet dream of Zuckerberg and the likes. Why do we so heavily depend on those centralised, closed and totaly evil systems?

Would be a great sullotion if there was a true, decentralised and open social networking protocol, XML RSS or whatever that would be ready to let you share from where you are willing to put it, be it a personal website or a wordpress blog, the data is stored localy, the search is done with your personal crawler that crawls your selected feeds and tries to find feeds that are open and related to your search by empowering the crawlers of others, you become a node sending your feed, only that what you want and getting only what others want to share. You do not need big data centers if all node crawl together and share.

It should be back to the drawing board for the true geeks again and like Satoshi revolutionise something that has been doing Evil for Google is the Empire and it is striking back with force.

I like Google, I can't image if Google is disappear how can I got the information I need. It really convince for my work.

From the browser google will know only what you want them to know.
You don't have to find everything with their search engine, you don't have to use chrome.
They sell the info about you. So all you share, it's not only theirs.
And then what's the worse dark empire, Google you know about or the others buying from Google, doing a lot else with your info and you'll never know? Debatable, I'd say.


The only thing I'd be worried about would be Android, where you kinda have to share all your info.
And iOS is not better.
Here a solution would be interesting.

There is an issue with decentralized stuff. It's owned by no one therefore no one want to maintain it. I'm afraid we'll be dependent on companies like Google for a while.

Unfortunately Yacy not working very well. Last time when I tried by searching for "aruba 7030 short on storage" I've got this as the second most relevant hit (the first most relevant was completely unrelated too):
"??NASTY LADIES WANT MEN FOR CASUAL SEX?? Www.swanson vitamins.com 822 2100429 Complete urological evaluation."

So today it's only good for laughing on the results :).

The ownership is with the content creator, the owner itself, so I would like to maintain(and pay) for my website and blog, hosting my images and even maintain and install my own crawler to find things I like and people who want to share. It is owned by yourself and therefore you can decide what to share and with whom!

For economics sake there is money to be made of me, but not indirect by selling my personal data, only direct for me to secure my private data and keep it in my own hands. I can buy a crawler, an app, some storage space. But then again, why and how should an open network like that be able to keep google and facebook out? They have the means and power to overtake and ruin it again by supplying and then when people are hooked again make it a closed community again.

The digital age is all about addiction and keeping people addicted. All marketing is directed towards that goal. Keep them coming back for more only to sell them more.

With google the main thing isn't the crawler or the indexed database but the business intelligence behind the service what provides correct answers quickly. Such systems are not a fire and forget stuff but something what needs constant tweaking and a lot of maintenance. This is what you can't really get with the existing distributed search engines, and something what the local sysadmin guy will not provide for you. BTW for example Yacy is a good tool for indexing and searching local stuff on my network, but not working very well as a generic Google like search engine.

Google search is killing itself by presenting me a search within a bubble they created based on their idea of what would suit me and most off all suit people selling stuff to me. If I search on google the first results are all webshops which try to convince me they sell everything I ever happen to type, that is not a good search algorithm, that is a good marketing algorithm and it becoming worse each day. Brands shops and worse the sites that only collect all the shop data to get revenue from affiliate sales all do their best to get in my face.

It will be the end of google one day. Yacy might not work correct yet, but the idea is what counts, trying to convince people of its benefits is hard, especially in the initial state, it needs to grow, but how can you next to the goliaths of searching and internet.

Google is too dependant of its add revenue and its shareholders not to be evil and say, hey, decentralised searching is better for everyone, lets work on it and dump our old model and start over with something better to make a better no evil world! They have the power and insight to do so, but the ones in control are the shareholders and the advertisers, they are caged in.

Google will let you see everything you’ve ever searched


Google is famous for keeping discreet tabs on how people browse the Internet in order to market ads back to them and point them toward the websites, videos and services they want.

Now, it’s possible for the average Web user to get a slice of some of that information.

Over the weekend, an unofficial Google blog highlighted a new feature that the Internet giant had quietly rolled out to let people download their entire Google search histories.

To find everything they’ve ever searched for, users should go to Google Web History, click the gear icon and click “Download.”
“Create an archive of your search history data,” the Web company promises.

In a few moments, it sends an email with downloadable cache of data about people’s past searches.

The archive won’t work for people who have altered their privacy settings, and only records searches that occurred while logged in to Google, such as through Gmail.

Still, the archive is a demonstration of how much information Google quietly retains about its users. The company is by no means unique in compiling scores of data about people’s browsing habits, but its size has made it a target for privacy advocates who fear companies having access to vast amounts of personal information.

In addition to Google, companies known as data brokers — which make a business out of compiling dossiers on consumers in order to sell use for advertising — have come under scrutiny from Capitol Hill and Washington regulators, who fear that people’s privacy is not being adequately protected.

That search history can also be useful to the government, in order to track down potential terrorists or criminals. Among other things, federal agents are able to subpoena lists of search histories from companies like Google during the course of an investigation.


http://thehill.com/policy/technology/239487-google-will-let-you-see-everything-youve-ever-searched

Will YaCy Hurt Google Search?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDaPNCIpu28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod (though Microsoft have invested now)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicant_(operating_system)

or just keep using Android but without a Google account and use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid store for everything instead

Thanks for these alternatives. I know and using CyanogenMod but wasn't aware of Replicant.

Yes, thanks. I have heard of these also but not checked them out. I do use GetJar as an alternate repository. Although it has been buggy for me.

These two articles were mentioned in another thread, but they are worth repeating again:
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1

Stopped reading at "FoxBusiness"

read a book http://www.amazon.com/Googled-The-End-World-Know/dp/0143118048

also i don't like to repeat myself, but...

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/04/17/google-has-patented-ability-control-robot-army

the http://google.com/killer-robots.txt joke is becoming less and less funny each day...

All the big companies try to get bigger on behalf of their users and popularity. Even the small ones try that, just they are not that visible really.

An alternative: https://www.yandex.com/

I do my best to bring foxnews links to a minimum as of respect for people suffering from FDS (http://www.conservapedia.com/Fox_Derangement_Syndrome)




 8)

Google’s Wireless service, “Project Fi,” is official, but invite only

Pricing starts at $20 per month plus $10 per GB, but only works with Nexus 6.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfFHnBQ6nQg




http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/googles-wireless-service-project-fi-is-official-but-invite-only/

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Yeah, go figure. Of course they are collecting data, they have information about everything, but it is questionable how will they use that info.. Let's just hope they won't use it for evil, as you said it.

A very apt solution would be to have an open source phone like a ubuntu phone. I think the project is still under construction but imagine the creative power the developer would have. The possibilities are n. Honestly, my privacy has never been compromised, rather protected by google and that is an important factor why I really rely and appreciate google. 

that is a good way to protect your computer but i think this whole thing is blown out of proportion if you are that unsure of your computers safety why go full rogue and use the tor browser but i have had people say even that may not be safe

Nice article, an eye-opener I should say. But I suppose there cannot be any solution. Because if you take action against Google, then there are other in lines to become the next google.

I pretty much use a lot of Google services at this point. I wonder what would happen to someone who gets banned from using Google.

Even if people could get away from using Google by using DuckDuckGo for searching and other workarounds, would they?

I think many people get a quick momentary feeling of elation when they use something they see as being high-tech and really useful. I think they view themselves in Google's light, seeing themselves as having the cool factor and resourcefulness of PageRank that Google provides. People think they're high-tech themselves when they use Google; that would have to change.
There's always the emotional factor(s), since humans decide things based on non-linear and irrational things.

Skews search in favour of its own shopping networks?
Yes why not.
This is why net neutrality is so important.

as we know that Google knows what youre looking for, even what your house looks like, what youve looked up in the past, what kind of porn youre into, who you want to stalk, and depending on whether or not you have a thriving Google+ account, who you are, what you look like and who your friends are i think google is a virtual god,i cant even using yahoo for search something :(

I firmly disagree, their are browsers out there who will not share your data at any cost and search engines like duckduckgo who will never record your data, that's their SP. people who rant about their private information exploitation should use such softwares and apps, than just blame google and the other lads. Its business, boys.

Rightly said, Google watch everything even inside the house, I guess they can able to peek into swimming pools and bathrooms every easily. What is your idea about DuckDuckGo ? I used it and found it awesome in terms of privacy, however still need much improvement regards to the search engines.

So... Will Google became Skynet ???
they had so many private information of people
and maybe someday a military corportaion bought Google secretly
and then there's doom day ;D

Google is a good searching machine but it shouldn't track us.but who cares, We are doomed to live in a Big Brother Surveillance society

Google is quite transparent in what it does—but that there is a dissonance between our interpretation of evil as 'wickedness" :)
(Read macdailynews) ;D
Google doesn’t care about the users. It cares about your data,and act accordingly. :) ;D

The main thing that has made a company become bigger is its customers. In past, you always used google to search everything what you want, in everytime and everywhere. And now we start to blame google because it saved our data there. It has been happened too to other big company e.g McD, CocaCola, Microsoft, and MasterCard. If you using a product from other company, so in other word you want to make this company get bigger and at the end it can rule you too.

I find it decidedly curious how no one ever seem to draw parallels between evil this evil that trying to control everyone and mankind assuming control of the entire planet. Humans control the earth by right of power right? Now that there is no common enemy to defeat and no land left to conquer, they've started conquering themselves. It's hilarious how most people act shocked and outraged when getting a taste of their own medicine  :D

On a different note, people interested in a peer to peer web have a look here - http://project-maelstrom.bittorrent.com/

not open source unfortunately.

storj and maidsafe will go into a similar direction

Been this way for a long time -- skynet

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Advises You Change Your Name To Escape Online Shame


In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussed the future of search, how newspapers will survive, and what's next for Google.

As ReadWriteWeb highlighted, Schmidt also shared some surprisingly frank, eyebrow-raising opinions on privacy online and the lengths to which we will have to go to protect our reputations in what the New York Times called an age defined by "the impossibility of erasing your posted past and moving on."

The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins writes in his interview with Eric Schmidt that the CEO "predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites."

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," Schmidt said.

Will we really use this "restart button?" Many have questioned Schmidt's stance. "This notion isn't just scary--it seems downright pointless," wrote TechCrunch of the proposition. Researcher Danah Boyd calls the idea "ludicrous," adding it "completely contradicts historical legal trajectories," "fails to account for the tensions between positive and negative reputation," and "would be so exceedingly ineffective as to be just outright absurd."

Schmidt also discussed what Google knows about its users, and how it intends to use that information.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he explained. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Google, said Schmidt, "[knows] roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are," as well as your location, within a foot. Jenkins offers an example of how this could be applied, explaining, "If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block."

Earlier this month, Schmidt offered additional insight into his views on privacy at the Techonomy conference. As we reported here, he argued that anonymity on the Internet is dangerous and suggested the days of anonymity online are numbered. Read more.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/16/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-s_n_684031.html



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Maybe we do not understand or exaggerate by calling google "evil" today. The thing is... We may be too close to the light of the star and make us blind to what kind of changes that 'star' will have for us, generations in the future in exchange of a couple of free apps on very expensive through away smart phones now.
 

Google Inc. is reorganizing into a holding company that gives its main Web operations greater independence while offering investors more visibility into ambitious plans to expand new businesses, including health and Internet access.

Alphabet Inc. will be name of the new conglomerate. Google Inc., along with YouTube, Android mobile software and other Web-based products, will be a key part of that. Alphabet will also include Calico, Google Ventures, Google Capital, Google X and other subsidiaries, the Web company said in a blog post Monday. The goal isn’t to make Alphabet a consumer brand, Page said.

The new structure will give greater clarity into how Google invests in various ventures, including driverless cars, high-speed Internet service and health-related technologies. It also makes it easier to make any future acquisitions or potential divestments. Wall Street cheered the news, pushing the shares up 5.9 percent in extended trading.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-10/google-to-adopt-new-holding-structure-under-name-alphabet-

They are not umbrella, they are Genesis, from the new terminator.

But in real life will be people that will overrun the rest of mankind, but they will look like machines for common people

We need to create an anonymous internet... (Tor and I2P are not)

So if I am using Google Chrome and I use duckduckgo as a search engine, will Google still be able to track my searches?

I'm usually signed into Chrome, with Gmail and Youtube signed in as well, and assume everything I do is being tracked.

No, they do not know these things.  Not unless you have let the Evil Goog into your home.

Wait.  I'm not totally sure that's true.

Let me ask Google.

Google is a company made up of people who are smart, google can do anything at this time. do anything and can get what they want ;D

One interesting thing is that Google isn't a good search  engine.  It's results are virtually stuffed with links that lead to malware, and it appears this is due to such companies buying position in the search queues. 

A lot of the search results are completely fake, because of the way that Google sends the terms of your query out to various companies who then respond with whether they have the product or service.  This is because, say if a company has it's goods in an online catalogue that produces pages when a query is done, Google cannot search those pages internal to that company's database.

Other companies, though will simply take the search phrase and claim they have it.

Google could strip these bad links out, but they won't.  Given these severe deficiencies, one would think the era of Google search engine domination would be coming to an end.  But is it?

EDITED:  On doing a Google search on this topic I find the following (note bolded)-

http://www.google.com/policies/faq/

Are my search queries sent to websites when I click on Google Search results?

In some cases, yes. When you click on a search result in Google Search, your web browser also may send the Internet address, or URL, of the search results page to the destination webpage as the HTTP Referrer. The URL of the search results page may sometimes contain the search query you entered. If you are using SSL Search (Google’s encrypted search functionality), under most circumstances, your search terms will not be sent as part of the URL in the HTTP Referrer. There are some exceptions to this behavior, such as if you are using some less popular browsers. More information on SSL Search can be found here. Search queries or information contained in the HTTP Referrer may be available via Google Analytics or an application programming interface (API). In addition, advertisers may receive information relating to the exact keywords that triggered an ad click.

Yes. Beside running a Linux distro on a brand new hard drive, you could do like hillary and manage your own email server at your home. The thing is it will not change a thing if you do stuff the fbi and most people on this planet find disgusting. They will simply come to your home and grab your server, instead of asking google to do it.

Until we move to a true decentralized search engine it will not matter if it is google search or bing, etc.

youtube, google search those:

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

http://www.iredmail.org/

Your link reminds me of something I was wondering about.

How many still believe the latest "update" you are commanded to install is in fact anything remotely related to a program bug fix update? 

The fantastic number and variety of "updates" you are continually told to install suggests otherwise.

How many have any awareness of their machine's upstream data reporting?

Beside a total number of less than 5 apps on my windows machine I can do everything else on linux. I toyed around but that new windows 10 is so cool, I'll be booting into it ONLY when I need to use those apps (that can't be used on Wine). They are pushing and pushing then ask why people lose their trust in their company...

We were supposed to forget we have options. MORE options now than ever.

https://www.winehq.org/

Aren't virtual OS systems like Virtualbox simpler and more reliable?

Yes. I use it often when I am toying with linux distros. My old pc can handle virtual stuff easy thanks to multicore blah blah. But if you want full access to every ounce of juice of your machine, the lesser it does the better it will fly. When I turn on windows I wonder why is my drive spins that long. When you boot in linux, you are in. Done. The drive stops spinning. No more long light of drive activity like in windows when you are looking at your desktop...

"The fantastic number and variety of "updates" you are continually told to install suggests otherwise."... That is EXACTLY why I am thinking why wait for windows to do its stuff, then boot up virtualbox, then load an image, then go on bitcointalk.... Just restart and boom. No more behind the scene file collections and activities, etc...

Good points.  I moved away from Windows three years ago and hate to go back even for minutes.

there has been a growing mentality that Google is becoming too big and are collecting too much data
When you think about it that is a lot of stuff Google has it's hands in

I enjoy using Google services and I think they are some of the best online services around, but when I step back and think about it it is pretty crazy how much Google knows about me.

Many of their services are not terribly great.  The Chrome browser, for example.  Google+, for another example.

There's no reason to allow a data aggregator like Google to have access to your every thought through a browser interface.  That's your decision.

While Google is one of the most powerful entities(and a monopoly) it's quite easy to avoid it(especially if you don't use android). Don't use Google Chrome, Gmail, Blogger, or their search engine. There are good alternatives like firefox/palemoon/opera, you can buy an email for like 60 dollars a year that has PGP capabilities, and there are alternatives like duckduckgo and other search engines, If you are worried about Google analytics and stuff like that you can use Noscript and refuse to accept cookies.

Google Ideas assembles the usual suspects to help combat online abuse


Those familiar with #GamerGate should recognize some of those people right away, but suffice it to say that group does not consist of cyber security experts, criminal investigators, master psychologists, or pretty much anyone who could contribute productively to stopping Internet trolls from making life miserable for everyone.  Instead Google Ideas picked out a handful of the same feminist agitators, social justice warriors, professional victims, and all around despicable personalities that have been the bane of the Internet for at least a year now.

Of the bunch, Anita Sarkeesian is probably the one most recognizable to HotAir readers since Jazz reported on her cancelling a talk last year.  She’s made a small fortune off accusing the video game industry of being a misogyny factory with her Feminist Frequency videos, and she’s parlayed the inevitable backlash she’s received into being the go-to spokesperson for anyone interested in talking about women getting harassed online.

Gamers will note Zoe Quinn’s on that list too.  Quinn’s the infamous creator of the game, and I use that word as loosely as possible, Depression Quest whose dalliances with members of the video game press created the conflicts of interest that sparked the #GamerGate movement.  Just a few days ago a judge finally tossed out the unconstitutional gag order she had placed on her ex-boyfriend to stop him from airing any more of her dirty laundry online, but despite that she’ll be joining Sarkeesian to talk about cyber violence at the UN today.

Rose Eveleth you may remember from the #ShirtStorm incident, as she was one of those people who thought Dr. Matt Taylor’s choice of apparel was more important than him having landed a probe on a comet for the first time in human history:




http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/24/google-ideas-assembles-the-usual-suspects-to-help-combat-online-abuse/

Google will let companies target ads using your email address


Google will soon let advertisers tap into one of the most lucrative types of ad targeting: email addresses. The search giant is rolling out a new tool called Customer Match, which lets advertisers use a list of email addresses to target specific users across Google services. To be targeted through this technique, you only need to be logged into your Google account and have given your email address to a retailer, perhaps by buying something from their website or giving it out to sign up for a loyalty program. Google says the individual email addresses are anonymized through Customer Match. That means companies won't be able to create personalized profiles of individuals, but they will still be compiling lists with general customer habits like YouTube viewing and Google search histories to target ads with.

For instance, Google will let a retailer you've shopped at upload your email address to Customer Match so that it can serve up ads while you're watching YouTube, searching Google for related products, or checking your Gmail inbox while signed into that email account. The ad product also lets companies create a general audience profile based on existing customers' habits and interests to target new customers when they use Google services.

Google rose to the upper echelon of tech titans by amassing a lion's share of the web advertising market. Now, the company is looking for new forms of ad revenue as more consumers gravitate toward mobile devices, where an ad's money-making potential is reduced. Further complicating Google's position are strategic moves from Apple and Facebook to reduce the strength of the web. Apple is doing this by allowing new ad-blocking software on iOS 9, accessible only from using its own mobile Safari web browser as opposed to Google's Chrome. Facebook, on the other hand, has created a robust web and mobile ad service from within its social network while expanding the variety of the web's information, from news articles to videos, users can access right from their News Feed.

By tapping into email addresses, as both Facebook and Twitter do with their own respective products, Google can take higher cuts of the more costly and better targeted ads being served even from within the Gmail and YouTube apps on mobile devices. Google calls Customer Match a "privacy-safe" product, but that may not quell the concern of users who feel that advertisers are getting even more specific with their ad targeting.


http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/28/9410975/google-customer-match-ad-targeting-email-addresses

Look guys, they just want to sell you stuff, they are not after your freedom, many of you sound like lunatics honestly. It's all about the money, aren't we all chasing the same pipedream afterall?

Yeah...
By the way, can you share with us all your google research you've made in the past 6 months? Don't tell us you are using duckduckgo, that would be lame...
Also, when I clicked on your profile it says your email was hidden... We are not trying to sell you stuff... You don't need to hide from us.

Aren't we all for total openness on the internet and not care about what people know about us, what we buy, from clothing to a specific prescription?

What's your real email address? Do you have a facebook account? I need to link your bitcointalk.org profile to your google research, to your email address to your facebook to the prescription you are taking, you and your family...

Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide...

 8)

The point is there is no evidence Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft want to harm us in any way, they just want to sell us stuff. I don't share my email or my facebook account and that's my right, but I know Facebook actually owns my photos and everything I write or upload to Google Drive or Gmail is kinda out there somehow. But the minute they have a leak of information, like leaked emails or personal photos (not from a hack but because they sold it) they will go down instantly trust me. They respect our personal data more than you think.

Now if you want to discuss that a government might pressure these companies for personal information, that's another story. I still don't understand off-the-grid guys in this day and age. I mean it's a miracle that the internet hasn't been regulated or censored yet (at least in most parts of the world). It shouldn't even exist as it is if you ask me considering how things are run in this world.

I believe you are missing the point why bitointalk.org was created by who you know...

Hey, it's just my opinion and I think it's perfectly valid. I actually love the technology and it is revolutionary, it may be a paradigm shift like the press.

And I would prefer to own my online activity but then you would have to actually pay for Facebook and Google services for example like you do with Adobe, Netflix, Microsoft or the like. In my case and many others like me, we just don't really care about our "privacy" because it doesn't exist unless you live under a cave building bombs.

What I mean is, if people have actual evidence of wrong doings by these companies then it would be much easier to convince the mainstream to adopt more privacy alternatives. To 99% of the population it means nothing, doesn't affect their living in any way. I've never had any problems with my credit cards or bank accounts (I live in a third world country where banks actually take off with your savings, I've seen an economical crisis first hand), but they never robbed me and if even they did, I'm still covered by policies and insurances. People are actually afraid of Bitcoin, the "hackers" and money laundering and drug industry people that accept it, they are the ones in the shadows. That what needs to change for Bitcoin to succeed, not the other way around.

 Governments and companies ARE people. Do you really think anyone would buy a car or a house with Bitcoin when that is the wild wild west and banks and credit cards are available?

Do you believe if you do not pay for a product, you are the product?

It doesn't matter what I believe. I believe some product prices are ridiculous and I'm know I'm overpaying but in many cases I need them, so I'm in like everyone else. I use Adobe products, if tomorrow Adobe has all its products in the cloud and owns everything (I doubt it because this is copyright protected stuff) I would have to jump on board. Or I can use the Linux alternative that no company or colleague uses and save it in another format...right.

You want it to be one way but it's the other way.

Yes, It's a quote from "The Wire" haha.

When you upload you photos to facebook do you lose their ownership?

I don't know really, please help me. I don't think you lose your ownership of course, they were created by you, but they acquire the rights to do whatever with it really. They don't or do just what people tolerate and it ask you first, like using it in ads.

Can Pepsi call facebook and negotiate the licence of the image you took, for their next worldwide advertising campaign? If you do not know the details, then you are a product.

Nothing personal and I respect your opinion.

Please don't get me wrong, your position is the correct one, the wise one and it's the way it should be. But it's like saying we should make people care about climate change. They care a little, like when Snowden put his life on the line for and thought he was saving the world. Fifteen minutes later everybody was watching something else or booking a trip to the other side of the world. Nobody cares, life's too short and privacy doesn't matter because most people doesn't matter, not in terms of human values, but in terms of what they do and produce.

A dentist or a plumber, do they really have some amazing inherent information value besides what products can you sell them? They don't and so they don't matter, and they don't care.

I find this strange when searching on Google.

As you can see I am not searching for anything malicious so why do I get this message?

For sure it must be a keyword that is flagged, but who makes these assumptions that makes me look suspicious?
https://i.imgur.com/6fy7uK7.png

If a dentist kills a lion the whole world cares. Instantly. Then forget about it. Instantly. Until the next crisis. How come snowden is not the lion? You are talking about Global Warming. You seem to know about adobe products and designing. For one straight week seek what you've learn to be the signs of propaganda. If you see none then good for you. If you see some but you believe this is propaganda for a good cause, then you are a product. The mass is fed with numbing, stupid, useless stories via facebook or a twitter feed. People with an independent mind can sort it out. This is why Counter-current swimming is hard. But when you give up, you become a product.

Do you have an anti malware installed? Windows or OSX? Browser?. Shut down your machine. Reboot. Use www.startpage.com and do the same exact search and compare the results.

I get this message all the time.  If you are using a public wifi (Starbucks, university, etc) or a proxy or VPN service you will get this message.

It has nothing to do with what you are searching, it has to do with the amount of search requests coming from the ISP you are connected to.  

@Wilikon   I have anti malware running in the background all the time, nothing to report, even a full ESET smart scan over night was clean.

@Jamie90  I guess you was right, I had three pages searching at the same time, I must have made about fifty or so searches.
Also my browser is using a proxy  ;)

That's the point actually, I'm no stranger to swimming against the current...and you won't succeed. This is not to say one should give up, it's just acknowledging the fact that the current goes one way because it's supposed to. We can change only so much at once, if you know history it's very clear, revolutions are always needed but they don't change intrinsic human nature, and most just fail.

The dentist did indeed killed a lion, did Facebook/Google actually sold the photo to the media or to sell ads for Peta? There's not a single evidence of any of these companies not respecting their customers privacy, it will be their instant downfall. If the dentist had this trophy photo with the lion in a private album or google drive and the company leaked it or sold it, then the public will react accordingly, I don't have any doubts. Just look what happened to Volkswagen when there is dishonesty. But that didn't happen, so this thread is like conspiracy theorists saying the government wants to enslave you and kill you (that's actually quite accurate if you think about it though haha).

Sounds like I should keep this thread up to date for a little while then...

 :D

Haha...we are saying the same thing really just from different positions! The problem is that to me is pointless to argue about how these institutions do business. The government and companies really want to enslave us all BUT "just" for profit that's it, haha. They want to sell us products, raise our taxes, etc. That's all there is but they won't kill "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs". One can argue that we are doing that ourselves, I just don't see the alternative really, there's no refuge in this earth, it's all taken. Maybe on Mars?

Start watching @51 min for around 10, 15min
https://youtu.be/aA5yGJ4Rj-g?t=51m6s

Never give up.

Allright, now you are losing me. There are no conspiracies, if they are, they are about making money and gain power, that's it (I make it sound so small hehe!). There's no evil masterplan of evil lizards controlling the world. This is the old discussion between 1984 and Brave New World. To me after Nazi Germany and Communism, 1984 is not possible, at least in our age. Brave New World on the other hand is actually the world where we live in right now, and in many years when ethical taboos about genetics and medicine start to crumble we'll actually order perfect babies, have perfect drugs and sex to finally die perfect deaths. And the moral of the story is of course, we the people wanted this, it was not forced upon us by some evil corporations.

Bitcoin is a great technology, with the potential of being the new Internet and redefine our economic system. But concentration of power and regulations are still needed, like we need other things that are "bad" on the surface, they are necessary evils. Oil companies are not developing electric cars not because they are evil, it's because they are EXPENSIVE to produce! When the technology is there, they will be the first to jump onboard because these are people in positions of power. But it's just not profitable yet and oil is still cheap.

I really understand your position, it's not wrong at all but it's thinking way ahead where our most important problems as humans are gone. We'll be free of many of these issues when money, food and energy become non-factors. Maybe we can see it before we die, who knows, a new technology or alternative energy is found and the world changes, we are living in an era of great development that's for sure.

http://www.businessballs.com/nudge-theory.htm

The concentration of power, if it is totally opaque, is not needed and should be rejected.

That was a great read, thanks. Like I said, I agree on the points and examples but I'm a little cynical as you see. I admire your optimism and I know you are right in your logic. To me, a paradigm shift be it from Bitcoin or having decentralized institutions will only happen after the current ones collapse because of their own mistakes. And I'm not yet convinced of how a decentralized system will be better than what we have, for example Bitcoin itself, it generates many doubts while being amazingly innovative. One have to admit pros and cons from both sides.

1
This is what I am wearing right now so to stay protected from google's evil internet rays...
http://s7.postimg.org/nd9z0kbln/image.jpg


2
We can't imagine what we don't know yet: attempts at projecting a future paradigm shift will fail. It is like asking a caterpillar to imagine and describe how it will feel to fly around as a butterfly. The caterpillar will have a description of the future that will end up looking like this:
http://s1.postimg.org/hknbmygu7/image.jpg

Every organism evolves in a defensive or offensive mode. The bitcoin concept goes beyond money as a reaction to what is happening now. Bitcoin is the antibody, a counter reaction.

Our back and fourth makes sens to us because we a both caterpillars...

I use google for just about everything.  Getting away from them would be a great idea though.

Ever since i seen the news on how they were being re structured and such it made me wonder why.  They say it is for business but I believe it may be but I really do also believe they have an alternative motive.  What that may be I truly do not know.

But I can not see them gathering all the information that they do JUST for marketing.  I think they may have other ideas in mind.  If not now but maybe in the future.

I really dont know what to say.

Besides, I DONT TRUST EMM, and I think the distrust is right up there with our own government.

EDIT: Awesome, just realized this post got me to my member level.   Nice.

Hey Hello new member! Don't forget we exist because the bitcointalk.org God lets us. Relax and enjoy the ride...

 :D

I like Google, but generally the larger an organization grows the more difficulty it becomes to resist government meddling, until it grows large enough to step into the shoes of the governments it serves.

Large centralized entities inevitably become a threat to free people...or assist those that are a threat to free people.  Decentralized autonomous entities  could be the fix. 

Maybe.

This generation and the one before it have been fed into believing the concept of self and privacy are old, dead memes.

They are doing that for marketing purposes, but also because it gives them even more power to hold all this information, just in case. It's not that they will start blackmailing people, but they will have plenty of leverage to negociate with governments, one can say that they are much more powerful already that many of them...

However a government can be overthrown or just reelected. Google or companies like this depend solely on their users, if they really mess up an alternative will gain power and put them out of business in a second.

The Facebook and Google generation
https://i.imgur.com/zE5g3OR.jpg

But they are right in a sense, if you have a car accident or fall in the middle of the street, there are morons taking your picture and video, that's not Google or Youtube fault. This is what comes with technology as it advances, for many cases it amplifies human stupidity.

You can't educate everyone and tell them it's rude to do that, however you can REGULATE it and make it illegal. That's my point, it's a fine line and it's not always black and white. One can even argue that the ones taking the picture have a right to do so...so privacy as we knew it is long gone. You are being filmed and tracked almost everywhere either by government, companies or people itself.

10 years ago if someone wanted to look up something, he went to the library.
Today google.com

You cannot create rules and force people to have empathy toward other humans. If it is more important to you to rack up "likes" instead of helping your fellow human then Humanity becomes an old meme.

http://www.worldmag.com/2015/09/a_decline_in_empathy_in_our_smartphone_world

I think he do this because we scare us that we all monitored by him... maybe i can save my life by using tor browser or any browser with no cookies save...
or may we use vpn to be anonimous...

Deep.

Then... The permanent use of tor and vpn would mean, in your mind, you cannot trust googlefacebooktwitter the same way you would pay for an anti malware for protection...

Google exec: With robots in our brains, we'll be godlike

Futurist and Google exec Ray Kurzweil thinks that once we have robotic implants, we'll be funnier, sexier and more loving. Because that's what artificial intelligence can do for you.




I suspect a few of you are looking forward to being robots.

Who wouldn't be fascinated by the idea of becoming someone other than themselves? We do get so tired of being the same dull soul every day.

What kind of robots will we be? Happily, I can provide an answer. For living inside my head all day have been the words of Google's director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil.

For more than a curt while, he's been keen on humans going over to the bright side. He's predicted that humans will be hybrid robots by 2030.

But what will this be like? More importantly, what will this feel like? Are you ready to engage what's left of your humorous humanity when I offer you the information that Kurzweil believes we're going to be quite wonderful people when we're part robot?


Kurzweil has a truly, madly, deeply optimistic view of who we will be when nanobots are implanted into our brains so we can expand our intelligence by directly tapping into the Internet.

This is such a relief. I had feared that when a robot was implanted into my brain, my head would hurt. I was afraid that I wouldn't be quite in touch with my feelings, as I wouldn't be sure if they were real or just the promptings of my inner robot.

Kurzweil, though, has reassured me. Speaking recently at Singularity University, where he is a member of the faculty, he explained that my brain will develop in the same way my smartphone has.

"We're going to add additional levels of abstraction," he said, "and create more-profound means of expression."

More profound than Twitter? Is that possible?

Kurzweil continued: "We're going to be more musical. We're going to be funnier. We're going to be better at expressing loving sentiment."

Because robots are renowned for their musicality, their sense of humor and their essential loving qualities. Especially in Hollywood movies.

Kurzweil insists, though, that this is the next natural phase of our existence.

"Evolution creates structures and patterns that over time are more complicated, more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more creative, more capable of expressing higher sentiments like being loving," he said. "So it's moving in the direction that God has been described as having -- these qualities without limit."

Yes, we are becoming gods.

"Evolution is a spiritual process and makes us more godlike," was Kurzweil's conclusion.

There's something so uplifting, yet so splendidly egocentric in suggesting that man will soon be God, thanks to artificial intelligence. The mere fact that this intelligence is artificial might be a clue as to its potential limitations.

Moreover, I rather think of us as a dangerous species: Primitive, yet believing we're so very clever.

There are so many fundamental things with which we struggle. Here we are, though, believing that we'll be godlike in a few years' time.

Lord, help us.


http://www.cnet.com/news/google-exec-with-robots-in-our-brains-well-be-godlike/

It's scary as hell but aren't we as human race strive for "perfection"? It's just a matter of time when we finally become robots, either we become them or they make us extinct. We already have some persons that can be classified as cyborgs/androids.

Thats all pretty deep.  I dont know if I would welcome that or not.  Being smarter would be great but you know that there would be restrictions in place.  You know certain people wont allow us to all be super intelligent. For fear or what the outcome may be like or any action against them.  Be great to be a lawer or something though with those types of implants.    Maybe it would be more like a career spacific programming or something.  Governments I am sure will not allow for everyone to know everything.  They would lose some power over us eventually one way or another.  Plus I am sure there are people out there that would be against it aswell.  Guess there are a load of ways u could look at this.

Could be awesome though.  Imagine what we could do and accomplish. 

Umm yup ill take the nanobots........

Does an ant colony be considered a perfection and should we, as the human race, strive to emulate one on a planetary level? Who should our queen be? Google?

We reached Mars while ants and bees have been doing the same thing, like tiny robots, for millions of years. That is not perfection. That is why Nature created us to be self aware and decide for ourselves.

We talk about ants and bees. Bees and ants do not talk about the human race.

I see your point, but we can't help ourselves, we are driven by this force to reproduce, for our children to be "better" than us, more intelligent, more beatiful, wiser, etc. That's how we actually choose our partners. Self awareness is also what gives us ego and the illusion we are separated from nature and reality and that somehow we have the power to influence absolutely everything. In my opinion we do have power but to a certain extent, your body is the one doing the digestion, cures your ailments, knows when it needs to feed, etc. We are now discussing concepts extremely metaphysic here but there's no other way really.

As we can't all agree on what the human race should be, either for religious, moral, politics or different points of view, our own instincts will be the ones that take over. To me there's no other future where we eventually become machines or bio engineered gods. There will be plenty of opposition like in the past, but if you know, there are already serious scientists working on creating an artificial brain (not AI), imagine how that can be used, you can actually upload yourself if your brain dies. We already have the capacity for human cloning, but that was stopped on its tracks because of ethics. It's just a matter of time really and I'm talking of technology that really could be available in 20 years if we want to. Imagine what would happen in 200-300 or more.

Like in medicine, blood transfusions, surgeries, pacemakers, implants, transplants, were all taboos a while ago. In a century letting your body and brain degenerate will be like letting yourself die today because of a simple infection or procedure.

As human race we are (since millions of years) at war with nature, trying to transcend it via technology, prolonging our lifespan from 20 to 80 years, improving our quality of life in every aspect. Maybe our destiny is to become living gods eventually, perhaps even transcend the physical altogether. I don't think we have a choice, we may have a rational one depending on the era you live, but that doesn't last and it's subject to change.

We are not at war with Nature. Nature is not at war with us. We are not at war with the Sun and a sun tan, sun block lotion is not a weapon. Nature forces us to be better. Evolution, if you believe this to be true, is what made us better. When a lion wants to eat you, it is not at war with you. A blood transfusion is not at war with you, nor is a pacemaker.

The H.R. Giger's biomechanical vision of the human race should not be based on a .py file recreating the vision of a man, kurzweil whom I love a lot, a man afraid of his own mortality. And Google. Everything we use to make us live longer comes from Nature. We learn Nature. We learn its poisons and its miracles.  Not a war. A learning curve. The more we learn the less we are afraid of the dark.
You see it as a war because of your own mortality and the fact that you will die, not knowing the meaning of life. But this has nothing to do with nature, but more with the nature of man.

Our transformation, adaptation is a natural one, preparing us to spread all over the galaxy. Sure, it will take times. But if the embedded technology does not belong to you and you can't have access to its under layers, then you will be a product. Will you have to subscribe, just like you subscribe to cable TV monthly, to have the right to keep on living? Those are very basic questions google should be able to answer.

I am not telling you we should be afraid of linux, blender, gimp, javascript, html, tcp/ip. If ubuntu decides to push hard for open source robotic and transhumanism and everything can be checked and double checked, then I won't have a problem with it. Make every blueprints open source...

Have you heard of the stagefright bug?
https://startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=stagefright+bug&cat=web&pl=opensearch&language=english

Aren't you happy you own an iphone instead of an Android phone?

We should embrace what we understand to be a free technology to everyone at the same time, at any level/cast of society, like, you know... Bitcoin. That, we could agree on.


I did skip the uploading mind part in purpose because we do not know what consciousness is. Believe me, I love animes like Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex and their long ramblings on what consciousness is (is it a long list of memories, or more?)

But If I upload my consciousness into a Google server then... Who owns it?

I didn't mean we are at war with nature per se, we are nature! Our bodies and brain are made of it. However our sense of self doesn't let us find comfort in it, we are definitely not in harmony. We are just not "perfect" the way we are or the way we were created. We always need something else, no matter how humble or wise you are, even comfort in the spiritual world and after death. We'll be enlightened if that wasn't the case if you are familiar with eastern philosophies.

We both are always discussing the same elements but from different point of views, that's ok haha. You are worried about the "should". Should be like this or like that. If we were greeks 3000 years ago and had a time machine, we won't be very happy to see that, while technology advanced, the rest of the problems affecting the human spirit remained the same today. Corruption, fear, chauvinism, bigotry, prejudice and so on. Actually you seem to think very much like Socrates, who nowadays would definitely be a strong supporter of open source, decentralization, creative commons.

How Socrates died? Like many others like him. These were very important people that challenged the establishment or status quo. They were unique and that's the problem, being different is what also set them apart. People, like Google itself (a company or a government is a group of individuals after all) will always choose to expand and defend their property or wealth. I understand your point, one should keep pushing, driving the hammer down, one day it will be clear as water for the rest. But back then, religion eased a lot of our questions, it was God's will, there were different castes and fate had power. Nowadays we are more alone each passing day, with the same or worse existential questions, depression and anxiety are a plague. Institutions like marriage is at an all time low, people in developing countries doesn't have any children and so many other issues. One can see this as growing pains as we change the old norms, but we are actually losing our "humanity" in the process, children are born in broken homes, people objectifying others, lack of empathy, nihilism, hedonism, promiscuity.

We can't seem to understand we are all in this together, that technological advances should be for the benefit of us all and not be ruled by only a few. However, in my opinion, only when we transcend (by becoming sentient machines perhaps?) the problems inherent in our very own nature (greed for wealth, wrath, loneliness, fear of death, vanity, etc) we will be able to discuss a different world.

They are doing what every company in the world wants to do. Dominate in every field possible and make the most money they just are succeeding better then most companies out there

Based on the number of times it has been found guilty of Privacy Violations in the European Court you should only use Google if, you know how to properly configure it.

Or:
https://startpage.com/

We are perfect, because... we can describe how imperfect we are.

Any thoughts or descriptions of a better, perfect human falls into the construct of a living automaton. Re imitating Nature and the solutions Nature came up with, to make us perfect. The reason why we are never humble, and we have greed for wealth, wrath, loneliness, fear of death, vanity, never to be satisfied with what we have is because of one thing: the hunger in our belly and the fear to feel its pain. This is even true for the Digambara monks.

Unless you are working for google, on their D-Wave computer, next to ray kurzweil as his personal most valued assistant, developing the ultra top secret sentient module near to go online... We are both on the same perspective, only a few degrees apart. Google is the other point of view.

Corruption, fear, chauvinism, bigotry, prejudice: google, google, google, google, google...

Wilikon = Socrates? Hmmmm..... ;D Yes!! Finally!!!!!!

CC and (C) can live together next to each other. Transhumanism Tech should be CC, not (C)

Google will be the owner of your uploaded mind. That is the logical outcome.

Like water. Ineluctable. But not by force, not by driving a hammer down.

The more we become intelligent with our smart phones, the worse the existential questions, the multiplication of anti depression drugs, anti anxiety drugs. Our new perfection is a plague.

Looks like you've described why we should be worried of a google planet better than I would have ever said it myself.

We are already perfect sentient machines, copyright free, until google decides to get a patent on mind upload.

It's not that I don't see your point, we can put this debate to rest, I definitely agree that my future brain (or self? we don't even know!) should be open source and not owned or managed by Google or Apple if that's an option. I'm arguing that to think there would be an option is rather pointless or wishful thinking. Wilikon (aka Neo Socrates) is definitely right to think that knowledge should be shared and not sold as merchandise or used for profit. But we live in a world where we are discussing water to no longer be an human right? What's next? Air of course.

These companies are monopolies, they cast you out of business or cast you out of life altogether. We do have alternatives to e-mail if you don't want to use Gmail, but you don't have real alternatives to many other products that are industry standards (like the Adobe analogy I mentioned a while back). You can't be on Facebook, Skype or Whatsapp by signing up with an alternative because the rest just don't use it. You can argue that you don't need it in order to live, but soon you end up only communicating with your old land line phone.

So I can definitely envision 55% of the people using Google artificial brain, 35% using Apple's and then 5-10% some inferior command-based linux-powered get-your-own-server ones that can't even keep up or are incompatible with the latest "brain apps" like virtual sex or snowboarding on the moon. You'll be missing out!

I'm kidding of course but it will always be like that to me and that's the only part we disagree.

Until now Google never forced me to anything. I hope it will continue this way. they are p2p search engine, email, open source map software and what not. you are free to not use anything from Google.

;)

Neo Socrates says: "I feel uncomfortable being compared to Socrates, as I am uncomfortable in togas..."

I disagree with nothing you've said. A few years back you could sign up without providing a real phone number to google. Now, google knows who you are, thanks to your phone bill, and has your fingerprints, the ones you use to unlock your Nexus 5X or 6P.

Some love for microsoft. Microsoft's Hololens could be the killer app for snowboarders having sex on the virtual moon...

Not knowing the detailed mapping of the veins inside your index finger does not preclude someone looking at it to walk toward the path your are pointing to. In google's case, that path could be evil...

 :)

I wonder whether the title of the thread needs to be change from Google to Alphabet !!!

Yes. That is 100% true. But as far as an impact for a thread title, its level of attractiveness would be low.

Google's new holding company drops 'Don't Be Evil'
Technically Incorrect: Alphabet decides to lose Google's most famous line, perhaps finding it a touch outdated.



When you were little, your mom told you not to be a bad boy.

But when you grew up, you knew you were going to be bad sometimes. What you had to hope is that when it mattered you'd at least do the right thing. Or at least know what that was.

This seems to have been the logic involved when writing the code of conduct for Google's new holding company, Alphabet.

Alphabet had its official launch yesterday and with it came a new code of behavior. It reads: "Employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates should do the right thing -- follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect."

One person's honor is another person's sneaky path to profit. Who will define what is honorable? Google didn't respond to a request for comment.

The code goes on to say that if someone accuses you (or someone else) of wrong or dishonorable behavior, you must still follow the code of conduct: "Never retaliate against anyone who reports or participates in an investigation of a possible violation of the Code."

This language of course omits the most famous line in Google's diabolically famous code of conduct, the opener "Don't Be Evil."

The sentences that come after that opener, however, are very similar to Alphabet's. They read: "But 'Don't be evil' is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally -- following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect."

So there we have it. Honorable behavior has been part of Google's rules for a long time.

Over the years, though, as the company has been caught in one slightly evil-looking act or another -- for example, the scraping of Wi-Fi data from unsuspecting citizens by its Street View cars -- the "Don't Be Evil" mantra has felt at best naive and at worst downright cynical.

Steve Jobs was once said to have observed: "This 'don't be evil' mantra: It's bull****."

Even Google seems to have become uncomfortable with it over the years. In 2014, Larry Page mused that the company's whole mission statement needs something of a polish.

Still, even in removing "Don't Be Evil," Alphabet -- which incorporates some of the most far-reaching Google projects, such as self-driving cars -- has a mission that isn't merely technological. It's socio-political. The company doesn't want simply to change how people behave. It wants to change how human brains operate.

Witness Google's director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, declaring that once you have a little robot in your brain, you'll be "godlike."

Ultimately, whether it's "Do the Right Thing" or "Don't Be Evil," there's a fundamental belief at Google that the company is the moral arbiter of what a just future should look like.

Making people happy just isn't enough.


http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-new-holding-company-drops-dont-be-evil/

In the digital age, information is power. They have every little piece of information about almost everything. Thankfully, much of the web isn't searchable by Google now, but the problem rolls over to sites like Facebook which also have too much information about us.

The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that’s working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House


An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology vendor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley and Democratic politics.

The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts by Schmidt—the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter blocs.

But campaigns—lacking stock options and long-term job security—find it hard to attract the elite engineering talent that Facebook, Google, and countless startups rely on. That’s also part of the problem that Schmidt and the Groundwork are helping Clinton’s team to solve.
The Groundwork is one of the Clinton campaign’s biggest vendors, billing it for more than $177,000 in the second quarter of 2015, according to federal filings. Yet many political operatives know little about it. Its website consists entirely of a grey-on-black triangle logo that suggests “the digital roots of change” while also looking vaguely like the Illuminati symbol:





“We’re not trying to obfuscate anything, we’re just trying to keep our heads down and do stuff,” says Michael Slaby, who runs the Groundwork. He was the chief technology officer for president Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, a top digital executive for Obama 2012, and the former chief technology strategist for TomorrowVentures, Schmidt’s angel investment fund.

He explained that the Groundwork and its parent company, Chicago-based Timshel—named for a Hebrew word meaning “you may” and devoted to “helping humanity solve our most difficult social, civic, and humanitarian challenges”—are “all one project, with the same backers,” whom he declined to name.

Schmidt did not respond to several requests for comment. But several Democratic political operatives and technologists, who would only speak anonymously to avoid offending Schmidt and the Clinton campaign, confirmed that the Groundwork is funded at least in part by the Alphabet chairman.

The Groundwork was initially based in an office in downtown Brooklyn just blocks from the headquarters of its biggest client: the Clinton campaign. There, a staff made up mostly of senior software engineers began building the tools and infrastructure that could give her a decisive advantage.

Slaby has a reputation for being able to bridge the cultural divide between politicos and techies. And sources say the Groundwork was created to minimize the technological gap that occurs between presidential campaign cycles while pushing forward the Big Data infrastructure that lies at the heart of modern presidential politics.

There is also another gap in play: The shrinking distance between Google and the Democratic Party. Former Google executive Stephanie Hannon is the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, and a host of ex-Googlers are currently employed as high-ranking technical staff at the Obama White House. Schmidt, for his part, is one of the most powerful donors in the Democratic Party—and his influence does not stem only from his wealth, estimated by Forbes at more than $10 billion.

At a time when private-sector money is flowing largely unchecked into US politics, Schmidt’s funding of the Groundwork suggests that 2016’s most valuable resource may not be donors capable of making eight-figure donations to Super PACs, but rather supporters who know how to convince talented engineers to forsake (at least for awhile) the riches of Silicon Valley for the rough-and-tumble pressure cooker of a presidential campaign.

“There are a lot of people who can write big checks,” Slaby says. “Eric recognizes how the technology he’s been building his whole career can be applied to different spaces. The idea of tech as a force multiplier is something he deeply understands.”
The technology that helped re-elect Obama

Although Obama’s technology staff downplays credit for his election victories, there’s no doubt they played a crucial role. One former Obama staffer, Elan Kriegel, who now leads analytics for the Clinton campaign, suggested the technology accounted for perhaps two percentage points of the campaign’s four percent margin of victory in 2012.

The 2012 campaign’s analytics team constructed a complex model of the electorate to identify 15 million undecided voters that could be swayed to Obama’s side. They drew on databases which compiled a comprehensive record of voters’ interactions with the campaign—Facebook pages liked, volunteer contacts, events attended, money donated—and assigned them a score based on how strongly they supported Obama.
Those carefully constructed models and databases paid dividends for everything from advertising and campaign fundraising emails—which were rigorously A/B tested to determine the optimum wording and design (subject lines that said “Hey!” were found to be annoying but effective)—to voter polling and get-out-the-vote efforts on election day

Perhaps the standout innovation from the Obama campaign was known as “Optimizer,” a tool that allowed the campaign to deploy carefully targeted television ads. Rather than rely on broad demographic data about programs and time slots, the Obama tech team accessed detailed information from TV set-top boxes to identify the most cost-efficient ways to reach hard-to-reach voters. The campaign’s top media consultant, Jim Margolis—now Clinton’s top media consultant—estimates Optimizer saved the campaign perhaps $40 million.
After the campaign, Optimizer became the cornerstone of a new startup called Civis that spun out of the Obama campaign—and it had its genesis in an election day visit by Schmidt to Chicago.


http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/


----------------------------------------------------
We The People...

‘Your Genome Isn’t Really Secret,’ Says Google Ventures’s Bill Maris



The venture capitalist wants to extend human life expectancy, and he says fears over privacy and the security of DNA data shouldn’t stand in the way.

Bill Maris has a simple proposition for those who are a little freaked out by his efforts to digitize human DNA: “If we each keep our genetic information secret, then we’re all going to die.” OK then.

The Google Ventures managing partner has shifted the firm’s focus this year to investing in companies that aim to slow aging, reverse disease, and extend life. Many of those life-sciences companies do this by collecting customers’ genetic information and looking for trends.

Hoarding this kind of personal data introduces risks, particularly as hacking becomes an everyday occurrence. But Maris dismissed privacy concerns surrounding the prospect of genomic data becoming public. “What are you worried about?” he said at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., on Tuesday. “Your genome isn’t really secret.”

That’s because people constantly leave traces of their genomic material lying around in public. If someone really wanted the information, they don’t need to hack a server. They could just pull a cup with your saliva out of the trash and test it, said Maris, who studied neuroscience and helped form Calico, a company within Google parent company Alphabet that focuses on age-related diseases. Google Ventures is an investor in 23andMe, which sells a $99 DNA spit kit to provide customers with ancestry information.

DNA technology has come a long way. Maris said the technical problems around editing the genome are practically solved. As for his line about how we’re all going to die: He didn’t mean immediately. Maris is a fierce advocate for life extension, racing his own mortality to invest in companies that might keep him and the rest of humanity alive longer—or, perhaps, indefinitely.

In the interview, Maris spoke alongside Peter Diamandis, the chief executive officer of the XPrize foundation, which organizes complex technology competitions. They’re both preoccupied with doubling human life expectancy. Analyzing a large database of genomic data is important to achieving that goal.

If people started living drastically longer, we might find ourselves with some new problems, such as how to feed everyone. Diamandis said that as people get happier and healthier, they have fewer kids. If people would eat less meat, Maris said there would be more room to grow food for them all. Maris, who doesn’t eat meat and can’t stand the taste, touted one of his investments, Impossible Foods, as a company that’s creating meat substitutes capable of satisfying beef lovers. “It was so much like meat that it disgusted me,” Maris said. “I couldn’t finish it.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-20/-your-genome-isn-t-really-secret-says-google-ventures-s-bill-maris



--------------------------------------------
Create a problem no one knew was a problem: to live longer
Create another problem for people living longer: not enough meat.
Create a solution to solve the lack of meat, with an artificial meat product, headed by a meat hater CEO...

SOLD!

All Hail Neo Socrates, you are making me raise both of my eyebrows. Our debate remains the same, but it's scary to learn these new facts. You really made me question some things about Google, I'm still not completely sold on them being ruled by Darth Vader, but I definitely see the company with new eyes now. There's really no justification for some things they are doing, it just seems too much. However I'm still shouting "Resistance is futile". I'll applaud your John Connor efforts from the distance and raise a fist in support  ;D

Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind

The use of technology to track and treat mental illness is deeply worrying but sadly necessary


Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems of the mind. He’s 64 but he’s not retiring. He’s going to work for Google.

More precisely, he’s going to work for Google Life Sciences, one of the more exotic provinces of the online empire. He’s going to investigate how technology can help diagnose and treat mental health conditions. Google doesn’t just want to read your mind, it wants to fix it too.

It’s not alone. Apple, IBM and Intel are among technology companies exploring the same field. IBM this year carried out research with Columbia University that suggested computer analysis of speech patterns can more accurately predict the onset of psychosis than conventional tests involving blood samples or brain scans. Other researchers theorise that a person’s internet search history or even shopping habits (so handily recorded by your innocuous loyalty card) can identify the first signs of mental illness. Computers can now tell when something is about to go terribly wrong in someone’s mind.

That development is striking enough in itself, but the way in which researchers like Dr Insel want to use this new technological power raises even more questions.

Wearable technology has been a hot topic in medical innovation for several years now. A growing number of people choose to track their own physical condition using FitBits, Jawbones and other activity trackers, tiny wearable devices that monitor your movements, pulse rate, sleep patterns and more. Once the preserve of obsessive fitness fanatics, “self-monitoring” has the scope to transform healthcare. The ever-increasing number of people with chronic conditions can track and electronically report their symptoms, reducing the number of routine (and expensive) consultations they need with medical staff and ensuring a quicker response to changes that do require direct professional attention.

Self-monitoring will also surely play a bigger role in preventive public health. Wearing a pedometer that counts the number of steps you take in a day has been shown to spur people to walk more. What would happen to your consumption of alcohol and sugar if a device strapped to your wrist displayed a continuous count of your calorie and unit intake for the week?

Dr Insel is part of a school of thought that suggests this technology is even better suited to mental health. The symptoms of depression, for instance, are inconstant, ebbing and rising without obvious pattern. A short consultation with a doctor once every few weeks is thus a poor means of diagnosis. But wearable technology allows continuous monitoring. A small portable device might monitor your tone of voice, speech patterns and physical movements, picking up the early signs of trouble. A device such as a mobile telephone.

Yes, we now live in a world where your phone might observe you to help assess your mental health. If you don’t find that prospect disturbing, you’re either fantastically trusting of companies and governments or you haven’t thought about it enough.

But that feeling of unease should not determine our response to technology in mental health. In fact, we should embrace and encourage the tech giants as they seek to chart the mind and its frailties, albeit on the condition that we can overcome the enormous challenge of devising rules and regulations protecting privacy and consent.

Because, simply, existing healthcare systems are failing and will continue to fail on mental health. Even if the current model of funding the NHS was sustainable, the stigma that prevents us discussing mental health problems would ensure their prevention and treatment got a disproportionately small slice of the pie.

We pour ever more billions into dealing with the worst problems of physical health, and with considerable success. Death rates from cancer and heart disease have fallen markedly over the last 40 years. Over the same period, suicide rates have gone up.

Even as the NHS budget grows, NHS trusts’ spending on mental health is falling. If someone with cancer went untreated, we’d say it was a scandal. Some estimates suggest one in five people who need “talking therapies” don’t get them. In a rare bit of enlightened thinking, some NHS trusts are supporting Big White Wall, an online service where people can anonymously report stress, anxiety and depression, take simple clinical tests and talk to therapists.

Technology will never be a panacea for mental illnesses, or our social failure to face up to them. But anything that makes them cheaper and easier and more mundane to deal with should be encouraged.

If you think the idea of Google assessing your state of mind and your phone monitoring you for depression is worrying, you’re right. But what’s more worrying is that allowing these things is the least bad option on mental health.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11961415/Google-wants-to-monitor-your-mental-health.-You-should-welcome-it-into-your-mind.html

Take a computer with a fresh OS installation. Start using it for regular web browsing and see just how long it takes before Google starts completing your sentences like a friend who has known you since the age of 5. Tell me that isn't creepy.

Evil Corp for sure.. The question is tho.  when will they be accepting Bitcoin?  Microsoft did it ... its time they moved.

How many lines does Google have to cross before its executives realize – before we realize – that they’re doing evil? It’s easy to forget that Google once had a deep partnership with Apple. Then, while Steve Jobs mentored co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Schmidt sat on Apple’s board of directors, Android magically transformed from a BlackBerry-like phone with a physical keyboard into an iPhone clone.

YouTube (owned by Google Inc.) is suppressing comments on the Obama endorsement of Hillary Clinton.










https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4ng7x7/youtube_owned_by_google_inc_is_supressing/

Standard practice from the Obama admin. Under Bush 2, they only did call anyone not in agreement not patriotic. Now it has gone totally overboard... What I find so stupid about those private companies, is that they believe that they can't become irrelevant (their is so much competition on video sharing with revenu sharing, I looked and found good competitors) and how structurally weak they become. If tomorrow the cia toke over Google and splited in many smaller companies to boost innovation and eliminated Schmidt the traitor I would cheer.


Then I started to use Yandex, it's very good as fast and learning too with more queries...

This is were it become interresting... What does think the national American security apparatus if more and more people start to use Russian or chineses competitive products because national one become impossible to use.

Personally I would hesitate a sec. I would request Schmidt, zuckini and a few other idiots... And tell them in no unclear term: do you wanna live? Stop censoring and become politically neutral. It's your second strike, the 3rd one of you dies. Now leave my office and fast. Have a nice day gentlemen I have a kill list to finish... I hope to not read your name on it. Bye ;)

I always used to like google, but it seems to have got a bit big for my liking and not putting much back into society

I've started using ecosia (http://www.ecosia.org) as a search engine, they are much more ethical and plant trees with their profits!

Cool link.

Google has come out in favour of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/10/google_in_support_of_tpp/

Yes.

They are de facto enemy of Trump... I hope he understand that without the help of the NSA and all the military apparatus he better accepts to see his American real estate collapses and should prepare for a new life in the more conducive business friendly Shanghai treaty area... Where no single corporation or group of corporation can threaten the state. In China using of a dominant market position to fight the central party would be equivalent to suicide by cops in the us.

The problem is that trump must become fully honest... It's not a few millions $ that will change the plight of the veterans. There is a societal collapse under way in America and the west generally. Oligarchs, plunders and thieves thrive in such climate.

Thx for the links about www.ecosia.org... But you know ultimately tree plantings  are only useful to stop desertification... Better protect those still alive and standing in the diversity of a natural forest.

I've been using ecosia as a search engine for a while now - if they don't have the results I need (which isn't as often as it used to be) - I still fall back on google

Hey that is nice, I just planted a tree using ecosia

If Google were just another mom-and-pop shop with a sign saying "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," that would be one thing. But as the golden gateway to all knowledge, Google has rapidly become an essential in people's lives – nearly as essential as air or water. We don't let public utilities make arbitrary and secretive decisions about denying people services; we shouldn't let Google do so either.

Let's start with the most trivial blacklist and work our way up. I'll save the biggest and baddest – one the public knows virtually nothing about but that gives Google an almost obscene amount of power over our economic well-being – until last.

1. The autocomplete blacklist. This is a list of words and phrases that are excluded from the autocomplete feature in Google's search bar. The search bar instantly suggests multiple search options when you type words such as "democracy" or "watermelon," but it freezes when you type profanities, and, at times, it has frozen when people typed words like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." At this writing, it's freezing when I type "clitoris." The autocomplete blacklist can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. As recently reported, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked" – not even, on my computer, anyway, when you type "crooked hill." (The nicknames for Clinton and Cruz coined by Donald Trump, of course.) If you add the "a," so you've got "crooked hilla," you get the very odd suggestion "crooked Hillary Bernie." When you type "crooked" on Bing, "crooked Hillary" pops up instantly. Google's list of forbidden terms varies by region and individual, so "clitoris" might work for you. (Can you resist checking?)

2. The Google Maps blacklist. This list is a little more creepy, and if you are concerned about your privacy, it might be a good list to be on. The cameras of Google Earth and Google Maps have photographed your home for all to see. If you don't like that, "just move," Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt said. Google also maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images. Some are probably military installations, some the residences of wealthy people, and some – well, who knows? Martian pre-invasion enclaves? Google doesn't say.

3. The YouTube blacklist. YouTube, which is owned by Google, allows users to flag inappropriate videos, at which point Google censors weigh in and sometimes remove them, but not, according to a recent report by Gizmodo, with any great consistency – except perhaps when it comes to politics. Consistent with the company's strong and open support for liberal political candidates, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. In December 2015, singer Susan Bartholomew sued YouTube for removing her openly pro-life music video, but I can find no instances of pro-choice music being removed. YouTube also sometimes acquiesces to the censorship demands of foreign governments. Most recently, in return for overturning a three-year ban on YouTube in Pakistan, it agreed to allow Pakistan's government to determine which videos it can and cannot post.

4. The Google account blacklist. A couple of years ago, Google consolidated a number of its products – Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, Google Wallet and others – so you can access all of them through your one Google account. If you somehow violate Google's vague and intimidating terms of service agreement, you will join the ever-growing list of people who are shut out of their accounts, which means you'll lose access to all of these interconnected products. Because virtually no one has ever read this lengthy, legalistic agreement, however, people are shocked when they're shut out, in part because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you … at any time." And because Google, one of the largest and richest companies in the world, has no customer service department, getting reinstated can be difficult. (Given, however, that all of these services gather personal information about you to sell to advertisers, losing one's Google account has been judged by some to be a blessing in disguise.)

5. The Google News blacklist. If a librarian were caught trashing all the liberal newspapers before people could read them, he or she might get in a heap o' trouble. What happens when most of the librarians in the world have been replaced by a single company? Google is now the largest news aggregator in the world, tracking tens of thousands of news sources in more than thirty languages and recently adding thousands of small, local news sources to its inventory. It also selectively bans news sources as it pleases. In 2006, Google was accused of excluding conservative news sources that generated stories critical of Islam, and the company has also been accused of banning individual columnists and competing companies from its news feed. In December 2014, facing a new law in Spain that would have charged Google for scraping content from Spanish news sources (which, after all, have to pay to prepare their news), Google suddenly withdrew its news service from Spain, which led to an immediate drop in traffic to Spanish new stories. That drop in traffic is the problem: When a large aggregator bans you from its service, fewer people find your news stories, which means opinions will shift away from those you support. Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser.

6. The Google AdWords blacklist. Now things get creepier. More than 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue comes from its AdWords advertising service, which it implemented in 2000 by infringing on a similar system already patented by Overture Services. The way it works is simple: Businesses worldwide bid on the right to use certain keywords in short text ads that link to their websites (those text ads are the AdWords); when people click on the links, those businesses pay Google. These ads appear on Google.com and other Google websites and are also interwoven into the content of more than a million non-Google websites – Google's "Display Network." The problem here is that if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards, it bans you from AdWords; these days, with Google's reach so large, that can quickly put you out of business. In 2011, Google blacklisted an Irish political group that defended sex workers but which did not provide them; after a protest, the company eventually backed down.

In May 2016, Google blacklisted an entire industry – companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. As always, the company billed this dramatic move as an exercise in social responsibility, failing to note that it is a major investor in LendUp.com, which is in the same industry; if Google fails to blacklist LendUp (it's too early to tell), the industry ban might turn out to have been more of an anticompetitive move than one of conscience. That kind of hypocrisy has turned up before in AdWords activities. Whereas Google takes a moral stand, for example, in banning ads from companies promising quick weight loss, in 2011, Google forfeited a whopping $500 million to the U.S. Justice Department for having knowingly allowed Canadian drug companies to sell drugs illegally in the U.S. for years through the AdWords system, and several state attorneys general believe that Google has continued to engage in similar practices since 2011; investigations are ongoing.

7. The Google AdSense blacklist. If your website has been approved by AdWords, you are eligible to sign up for Google AdSense, a system in which Google places ads for various products and services on your website. When people click on those ads, Google pays you. If you are good at driving traffic to your website, you can make millions of dollars a year running AdSense ads – all without having any products or services of your own. Meanwhile, Google makes a net profit by charging the companies behind the ads for bringing them customers; this accounts for about 18 percent of Google's income. Here, too, there is scandal: In April 2014, in two posts on PasteBin.com, someone claiming to be a former Google employee working in their AdSense department alleged the department engaged in a regular practice of dumping AdSense customers just before Google was scheduled to pay them. To this day, no one knows whether the person behind the posts was legit, but one thing is clear: Since that time, real lawsuits filed by real companies have, according to WebProNews, been "piling up" against Google, alleging the companies were unaccountably dumped at the last minute by AdSense just before large payments were due, in some cases payments as high as $500,000.

8. The search engine blacklist. Google's ubiquitous search engine has indeed become the gateway to virtually all information, handling 90 percent of search in most countries. It dominates search because its index is so large: Google indexes more than 45 billion web pages; its next-biggest competitor, Microsoft's Bing, indexes a mere 14 billion, which helps to explain the poor quality of Bing's search results.

Google's dominance in search is why businesses large and small live in constant "fear of Google," as Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the largest publishing conglomerate in Europe, put it in an open letter to Eric Schmidt in 2014. According to Dopfner, when Google made one of its frequent adjustments to its search algorithm, one of his company's subsidiaries dropped dramatically in the search rankings and lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days. Even worse than the vagaries of the adjustments, however, are the dire consequences that follow when Google employees somehow conclude you have violated their "guidelines": You either get banished to the rarely visited Netherlands of search pages beyond the first page (90 percent of all clicks go to links on that first page) or completely removed from the index. In 2011, Google took a "manual action" of a "corrective" nature against retailer J.C. Penney – punishment for Penney's alleged use of a legal SEO technique called "link building" that many companies employ to try to boost their rankings in Google's search results. Penney was demoted 60 positions or more in the rankings.

Search ranking manipulations of this sort don't just ruin businesses; they also affect people's opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior, as my research on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect has demonstrated. Fortunately, definitive information about Google's punishment programs is likely to turn up over the next year or two thanks to legal challenges the company is facing. In 2014, a Florida company called e-Ventures Worldwide filed a lawsuit against Google for "completely removing almost every website" associated with the company from its search rankings. When the company's lawyers tried to get internal documents relevant to Google's actions though typical litigation discovery procedures, Google refused to comply. In July 2015, a judge ruled that Google had to honor e-Ventures' discovery requests, and that case is now moving forward. More significantly, in April 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the attorney general of Mississippi – supported in his efforts by the attorneys general of 40 other states – has the right to proceed with broad discovery requests in his own investigations into Google's secretive and often arbitrary practices.

This brings me, at last, to the biggest and potentially most dangerous of Google's blacklists – which Google's calls its "quarantine" list.

9. The quarantine list. To get a sense of the scale of this list, I find it helpful to think about an old movie – the classic 1951 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which starred a huge metal robot named Gort. He had laser-weapon eyes, zapped terrified humans into oblivion and had the power to destroy the world. Klaatu, Gort's alien master, was trying to deliver an important message to earthlings, but they kept shooting him before he could. Finally, to get the world's attention, Klaatu demonstrated the enormous power of the alien races he represented by shutting down – at noon New York time – all of the electricity on earth for exactly 30 minutes. The earth stood still.

Substitute "ogle" for "rt," and you get "Google," which is every bit as powerful as Gort but with a much better public relations department – so good, in fact, that you are probably unaware that on Jan. 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet. And, as if not to be outdone by a 1951 science fiction move, it did so for 40 minutes.

Impossible, you say. Why would do-no-evil Google do such an apocalyptic thing, and, for that matter, how, technically, could a single company block access to more than 100 million websites?

The answer has to do with the dark and murky world of website blacklists – ever-changing lists of websites that contain malicious software that might infect or damage people's computers. There are many such lists – even tools, such as blacklistalert.org, that scan multiple blacklists to see if your IP address is on any of them. Some lists are kind of mickey-mouse – repositories where people submit the names or IP addresses of suspect sites. Others, usually maintained by security companies that help protect other companies, are more high-tech, relying on "crawlers" – computer programs that continuously comb the internet.

But the best and longest list of suspect websites is Google's, launched in May 2007. Because Google is crawling the web more extensively than anyone else, it is also in the best position to find malicious websites. In 2012, Google acknowledged that each and every day it adds about 9,500 new websites to its quarantine list and displays malware warnings on the answers it gives to between 12 and 14 million search queries. It won't reveal the exact number of websites on the list, but it is certainly in the millions on any given day.

In 2011, Google blocked an entire subdomain, co.cc, which alone contained 11 million websites, justifying its action by claiming that most of the websites in that domain appeared to be "spammy." According to Matt Cutts, still the leader of Google's web spam team, the company "reserves the right" to take such action when it deems it necessary. (The right? Who gave Google that right?)

And that's nothing: According to The Guardian, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, at 2:40 pm GMT, Google blocked the entire internet for those impressive 40 minutes, supposedly, said the company, because of "human error" by its employees. It would have been 6:40 am in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered. Was this time chosen because it is one of the few hours of the week when all of the world's stock markets are closed? Could this have been another of the many pranks for which Google employees are so famous? In 2008, Google invited the public to submit applications to join the "first permanent human colony on Mars." Sorry, Marsophiles; it was just a prank.

When Google's search engine shows you a search result for a site it has quarantined, you see warnings such as, "The site ahead contains malware" or "This site may harm your computer" on the search result. That's useful information if that website actually contains malware, either because the website was set up by bad guys or because a legitimate site was infected with malware by hackers. But Google's crawlers often make mistakes, blacklisting websites that have merely been "hijacked," which means the website itself isn't dangerous but merely that accessing it through the search engine will forward you to a malicious site. My own website, http://drrobertepstein.com, was hijacked in this way in early 2012. Accessing the website directly wasn't dangerous, but trying to access it through the Google search engine forwarded users to a malicious website in Nigeria. When this happens, Google not only warns you about the infected website on its search engine (which makes sense), it also blocks you from accessing the website directly through multiple browsers – even non-Google browsers. (Hmm. Now that's odd. I'll get back to that point shortly.)

The mistakes are just one problem. The bigger problem is that even though it takes only a fraction of a second for a crawler to list you, after your site has been cleaned up Google's crawlers sometimes take days or even weeks to delist you – long enough to threaten the existence of some businesses. This is quite bizarre considering how rapidly automated online systems operate these days. Within seconds after you pay for a plane ticket online, your seat is booked, your credit card is charged, your receipt is displayed and a confirmation email shows up in your inbox – a complex series of events involving multiple computers controlled by at least three or four separate companies. But when you inform Google's automated blacklist system that your website is now clean, you are simply advised to check back occasionally to see if any action has been taken. To get delisted after your website has been repaired, you either have to struggle with the company's online Webmaster tools, which are far from friendly, or you have to hire a security expert to do so – typically for a fee ranging between $1,000 and $10,000. No expert, however, can speed up the mysterious delisting process; the best he or she can do is set it in motion.

So far, all I've told you is that Google's crawlers scan the internet, sometimes find what appear to be suspect websites and put those websites on a quarantine list. That information is then conveyed to users through the search engine. So far so good, except of course for the mistakes and the delisting problem; one might even say that Google is performing a public service, which is how some people who are familiar with the quarantine list defend it. But I also mentioned that Google somehow blocks people from accessing websites directly through multiple browsers. How on earth could it do that? How could Google block you when you are trying to access a website using Safari, an Apple product, or Firefox, a browser maintained by Mozilla, the self-proclaimed "nonprofit defender of the free and open internet"?

The key here is browsers. No browser maker wants to send you to a malicious website, and because Google has the best blacklist, major browsers such as Safari and Firefox – and Chrome, of course, Google's own browser, as well as browsers that load through Android, Google's mobile operating system – check Google's quarantine list before they send you to a website. (In November 2014, Mozilla announced it will no longer list Google as its default search engine, but it also disclosed that it will continue to rely on Google's quarantine list to screen users' search requests.)

If the site has been quarantined by Google, you see one of those big, scary images that say things like "Get me out of here!" or "Reported attack site!" At this point, given the default security settings on most browsers, most people will find it impossible to visit the site – but who would want to? If the site is not on Google's quarantine list, you are sent on your way.

OK, that explains how Google blocks you even when you're using a non-Google browser, but why do they block you? In other words, how does blocking you feed the ravenous advertising machine – the sine qua non of Google's existence?

Have you figured it out yet? The scam is as simple as it is brilliant: When a browser queries Google's quarantine list, it has just shared information with Google. With Chrome and Android, you are always giving up information to Google, but you are also doing so even if you are using non-Google browsers. That is where the money is – more information about search activity kindly provided by competing browser companies. How much information is shared will depend on the particular deal the browser company has with Google. In a maximum information deal, Google will learn the identity of the user; in a minimum information deal, Google will still learn which websites people want to visit – valuable data when one is in the business of ranking websites. Google can also charge fees for access to its quarantine list, of course, but that's not where the real gold is.

Chrome, Android, Firefox and Safari currently carry about 92 percent of all browser traffic in the U.S. – 74 percent worldwide – and these numbers are increasing. As of this writing, that means Google is regularly collecting information through its quarantine list from more than 2.5 billion people. Given the recent pact between Microsoft and Google, in coming months we might learn that Microsoft – both to save money and to improve its services – has also started using Google's quarantine list in place of its own much smaller list; this would further increase the volume of information Google is receiving.

To put this another way, Google has grown, and is still growing, on the backs of some of its competitors, with end users oblivious to Google's antics – as usual. It is yet another example of what I have called "Google's Dance" – the remarkable way in which Google puts a false and friendly public face on activities that serve only one purpose for the company: increasing profit. On the surface, Google's quarantine list is yet another way Google helps us, free of charge, breeze through our day safe and well-informed. Beneath the surface, that list is yet another way Google accumulates more information about us to sell to advertisers.

You may disagree, but in my view Google's blacklisting practices put the company into the role of thuggish internet cop – a role that was never authorized by any government, nonprofit organization or industry association. It is as if the biggest bully in town suddenly put on a badge and started patrolling, shuttering businesses as it pleased, while also secretly peeping into windows, taking photos and selling them to the highest bidder.

Consider: Heading into the holiday season in late 2013, an online handbag business suffered a 50 percent drop in business because of blacklisting. In 2009, it took an eco-friendly pest control company 60 days to leap the hurdles required to remove Google's warnings, long enough to nearly go broke. And sometimes the blacklisting process appears to be personal: In May 2013, the highly opinionated PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak wondered "When Did Google Become the Internet Police?" after both his website and podcast site were blacklisted. He also ran into the delisting problem: "It's funny," he wrote, "how the site can be blacklisted in a millisecond by an analysis but I have to wait forever to get cleared by the same analysis doing the same scan. Why is that?"

Could Google really be arrogant enough to mess with a prominent journalist? According to CNN, in 2005 Google "blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year after the popular technology news website published personal information about one of Google's founders" – Eric Schmidt – "in a story about growing privacy concerns." The company declined to comment on CNN's story.

Google's mysterious and self-serving practice of blacklisting is one of many reasons Google should be regulated, just as phone companies and credit bureaus are. The E.U.'s recent antitrust actions against Google, the recently leaked FTC staff report about Google's biased search rankings, President Obama's call for regulating internet service providers – all have merit, but they overlook another danger. No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block access to any website in the world. How frequently Google acts irresponsibly is beside the point; it has the ability to do so, which means that in a matter of seconds any of Google's 37,000 employees with the right passwords or skills could laser a business or political candidate into oblivion or even freeze much of the world's economy.

Some degree of censorship and blacklisting is probably necessary; I am not disputing that. But the suppression of information on the internet needs to be managed by, or at least subject to the regulations of, responsible public officials, with every aspect of their operations transparent to all.


http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated

there is no amendment protecting Google (alphabet) and a "good" intervention for the public good could be the occasion to launch the biggest short of all time. Power can shift soo fast. And I dare them to refuse a national security letter... Nsa isn't cia.

Google i believe actually made it better to a lot more than they think they did. Why would people think they did any wrong.

Well I agree with you. Google made searching easy with just using keywords. It is also inevitable for them to know what we are doing because we always use their services.

It is true that Google is outshining Microsoft in many areas. you could say that Google now rules the internet. But while microsoft was more monopolistic, i think Google gives users more freedom. microsoft made it hard for people to use software and products made by other companies and could therefore be given the 'evil empire' name. But Google has a lot of freeware and offers it in a way that does not tie anyone down. Google is certainly and empire, but i don't think it is evil at all.

Google is just a tool in the hands of the people. Yes, for some people it becomes a weapon . For someone to rescue . For someone else to acquire knowledge - this is the meaning of life . I think it is a very good service . He became part of our lives . Through it saves a lot of time . It is progress that can not take away from the people. If you need someone to protect against this or that information - it is possible to set search filters

Google Fires Viewpoint Diversity Manifesto Author James Damore


The Google employee behind a ten-page viewpoint diversity manifesto that went viral online has been fired.

James Damore, whose manifesto criticizing the politically correct corporate culture at Google prompted outrage from left-wing employees and social justice warriors online, revealed that he had been fired in an email to Breitbart Tech on Monday evening.

In his email to Breitbart Tech, Damore claimed, “They just fired me for ‘perpetuating gender stereotypes.'”

Damore’s writing has revealed a divided Google, in which some employees agree with his outlook, but are afraid to speak out for fear of repercussions from social justice warriors in the company, such as being added to blacklists.

In a memo sent to employees, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly claimed that Damore had violated their Code of Conduct.

Earlier in the day we reported on free speech social media platform Gab, which expressed interest in hiring Damore if he was fired from Google.


http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/google-fires-viewpoint-diversity-manifesto-author-james-damore/

That is really the scariest part Google gives us the full freedom to do everything what we want using their system. That is really scary because behind those will google has been proven a lot of times that they are surveiling its user to everything they do

Google Memo: Fired Employee Speaks Out! | James Damore and Stefan Molyneux



More reactions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc12FbvLGNQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agU-mHFcXdw

They can do anything they want, but i support Google.

I guess there is always bing...

And Microsoft is not an evil empire? How much they have already ruined the talented studios(especially sorry for Nokia.

I'd love to move away from Google but they are just so dang good at search.  I'm going to try Ecosia as others have suggested.  I really don't like how friendly Google is with the US government.  Get one huge powerful entity in bed with another and nothing good will come of it.  Maybe we should list alternatives to Google.

A list of big IT Corps not in bed with the gov? Don't forget most of the new players, Google, Facebook etc, became huge under obama in the last 8 years. I remember no one complaining about Google Boss visiting the White House.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3595166/Google-s-extraordinary-access-revealed-White-House-visitor-logs-meeting-meeting-company-execs-Obama-administration-officials.html
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/


This thread is focusing on Google but it applies to all of them. No escape.

It was the Obama administration that woke me up from my slumber and got me watching these things.  It's when I started to realize I wasn't a 'republican' and more of a libertarian... and the Trump administration and more importantly the current republican congress has convinced me of that fact.  It feels like we're getting squeezed between huge corporations and an overactive government.

because they've become so big that most of the people rely on their products and with that they have to power to influence and push various propaganda to the masses and people are just too dependent on them with youtube, google as a search engine,... similar to facebook, people just don't want to switch to another platform just because.

Everything is based on action and reaction. A pendulum of energy. We do not have enough of a perspective to understand the big picture, but there is always a reaction. Why do you think people like us are on a forum about this amazing magic internet money? Why do you think so many people from so many diverse horizons are here? Action and reaction. Some are here for the love, others for the hate of Bitcoin. Think about the timing. The uni party is not going to let that big cheese go. That is why they hate Trump. They hate the common little peasants as much, maybe more. We have to be ready because they will not let us use their platform in 2018 or 2020, the tools Trump used to win.

This is a glimpse of what's to come.

Has anybody read the actual memo that started the controversy?  I mean the actual memo, not someone's analysis of it.  I read it and I can't understand why he was fired.  Google's reaction to this is very concerning; they've essentially proved his very point.

https://diversitymemo.com/

The worse part is it is not even his opinion, but science facts


Google CEO: ‘Harmful’ James Damore Manifesto Hurt Employees, Made Them ‘Feel Judged’


Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the dismissal of former Google employee James Damore in a blog post on Tuesday, where he called Damore’s manifesto “harmful.”

“First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it,” Pichai opined in the blog post. “However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects ‘each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination,'” he continued.

Pichai then claimed that the manifesto “clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender,” and added, “Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being ‘agreeable’ rather than ‘assertive,’ showing a ‘lower stress tolerance,’ or being ‘neurotic.'”


http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/10/google-ceo-harmful-james-damore-manifesto/

Diamond and Silk rip YouTube, say 95% of videos demonetized over Trump support






Two of President Trump’s most ardent supporters, the YouTube stars known as Diamond and Silk, say a financial stranglehold has been placed on their videos.

Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson of North Carolina, whose support of Mr. Trump and no-nonsense delivery during the 2016 U.S. presidential season turned them into online sensations, said Thursday their YouTube videos have become casualties of the company’s attempt to silence “extremism.”

“@YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped over 95% percent of our videos from being monetized, stating: ‘It’s Not Suitable For All Advertisers,’” the two said in a series of tweets. “Wonder if @YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped the monetization of our videos because we are loyal supporters of the @POTUS. Hummmm. Sounds like Censorship to us, which is a Violation of our First Amendment. A Bias Method used to Silence our Conservative Voices. @YouTube, how was it OK to monetize our videos for the past two years and now those same videos are no longer eligible for monetization?”

The popular duo, who were also paid $1,275 for “field consulting” work by the Trump campaign, boast 89,000 subscribers on YouTube and another 361,000 on Twitter.

News of the largely demonetized channel comes less than two weeks since the company announced plans to fight inappropriate content.

“We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism,” the company announced Aug. 1 on its official blog. “If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/10/diamond-and-silk-rip-youtube-say-95-of-videos-demo/

This is the thing that gets me.  He's stating scientific facts that are proven today, and have been proven for centuries.  He's not saying women have no right to be engineers, he's just saying men are more likely to strive for status type positions.  We're truly loosing our minds; we're choosing peoples emotions over truth.  What's next... people getting fired because they say men are better at growing mustaches than women?  I've seem some women with pretty healthy mustaches but that doesn't disprove the prior comment, nor does it make me hateful.

Men with beards are more likely to be sexist.


Despite the recent popularity of beards, facial hair can be controversial: as we’ve previously shown, it makes men less likely to get hired and more likely to be seen as guilty by a jury. Well, all you beard-haters out there, here’s some more ammunition for you. In this study, researchers surveyed men from the USA and India on both their facial hair and their attitudes towards women. They found that men with beards were more likely to be sexist, and they hypothesized that men who have sexist attitudes choose to grow beards to make them look more masculine and dominant. Nice try, Santa Claus.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/11/25/men-with-beards-are-more-likely-to-be-sexist/


-----------------------------------
Are you red-pilled yet?

Yeah i dont really think that it giving us evil, cause it helps a lot in work and also for the students

Well... there you go.  We truly are driving over the cliff as a society.  The world is so full of micro-transgressions that it's impossible to do anything without being accused of something.

Google Removes Gab’s Android App From Play Store Over ‘Hate Speech’



Gab.ai CEO Andrew Torba took to Twitter Thursday evening to report the social media platform’s Andriod app was removed from the Google Play Store.



http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08/google-removes-gabs-android-app-google-play-store-hate-speech/



-------------------------
Smells more like anti competition than hate speech. Twtr is full of porn and yet Apple got rid of Gab... for porn.

It means the creature is afraid of losing control of its centralized control.

everything was created with corresponding advantages and disadvantages...
But since we are human and being gifted with wisdom then all we need to do is use that wisdom..
You can see if something has an evil effect to you without anyone telling you so...
So if you feel like something's wrong with then stop using it...
:D

Every big company was called evil empire - now it is Google, before that it was Microsoft.

There is anti monopoly legislation to take care of the monopolists.

I don't mind if it knows and sees my personal info till Google doesn't use it again me. I found really annoying the fact Google service controls advertising data, it makes me mad sometimes and suspicious the way they try to convince me to buy smth, read smth, watch smth.

Google is a company that fit into all the secret corners of our lives. Who loves this? Google has become a total spy who gathers information about us even without our knowledge and no one knows where and to whom this information can get. Google is evil on a global scale.

They're using the Google javascript capcha system where you have to click to identify parts of images when you login to this forum now!

People need to say no to Google!

bullshit. Google for now-day one is the most progressive company what bring to world revolutionary developments

It is always possible to find an exit. Only will he be safe? Think, that an answer for this question will give nobody. Technologies are too well developed.

Are you sure your data is not traded by google? There is not enough strong evidence that google does not sell our personal data.

maybe we can find anything everything at google..
but i hate to say this i am not one of this ...
GOOGLE IS NOT AN EVIL EMPIRE >> though manyscammers spread around the world ..
but my definition on google is the new and BEST DICTIONARY EVER

Google is coming after critics in academia and journalism. It’s time to stop them.



About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

This summer, a small team of well-respected researchers and journalists, the Open Markets team at the New America think tank (where I have been a fellow since 2014), dared to speak up about Google, in the mildest way. When the European Union fined Google for preferring its own subsidiary companies to its rival companies in search results, it was natural that Open Markets, a group dedicated to studying and exposing distortions in markets, including monopoly power, would comment. The researchers put out a 150-word statement praising the E.U.’s actions. They wrote, “By requiring that Google give equal treatment to rival services instead of privileging its own, [the E.U.] is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend.” They called upon the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice and state attorneys general to apply the traditional American monopoly law, which would require separate ownership of products and services and the networks that sell products and services.

Google has been funding New America for years at high levels. Within 24 hours of the statement going live, Google representatives called New America’s leadership expressing their displeasure. Two planned hires for the Open Markets team suddenly were canceled. Three days later, the head of the Open Markets team, the accomplished journalist Barry C. Lynn, received a letter from the head of the think tank, demanding that the entire team leave New America. The reason? The statement praising the E.U.’s decision against Google was, according to New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter, “imperiling the institution.” (As of this writing, Slaughter has denounced the story as false, claiming that Lynn was dismissed for failures of “openness” and “collegiality.”)

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.” It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do: Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.” Those with too much power cannot help but be evil. Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

Google did not always operate this way in relation to think tanks, even those it funded. The head of Google’s parent company, Eric Schmidt, served on the board of New America starting 2000 and was chairman from 2008 through May 2016. The Open Markets institute has long studied excessive corporate power and argued for the importance of antimonopoly laws. They were not previously punished for their work.

But in recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views. And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

This year, Google is on track to spend more money than any company in America on lobbying. In 2015, it was the third biggest corporate spender, paying more than Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin or the Koch brothers on lobbying. Much of what it is spending its money on has nothing to do with technical details regarding its search engine and everything to do with using its power in its search engine to shut out some competitors and build power over others.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

The imperial overreach of Google in trying to shut down a group of five researchers proves the point that the initial release from Open Markets was trying to make: When companies get too much power, they become a threat to democratic free speech and to the liberty of citizens at large.

In 1948, in the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Columbia Steel Co., Justice William O. Douglas explained that the traditional philosophy of American antitrust law is that “all power tends to develop into a government in itself. Power that controls the economy … should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men.”

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach. We, as citizens, must respond in two ways. First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional antimonopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

Google’s actions forced the Open Markets team to leave New America. But, thankfully, it did not succeed in silencing them entirely. Open Markets will continue on as a separate organization, which I will chair. Their work exposing corporate monopolies and advocating for regulation is more important than ever. Google shows us why.



http://archive.is/bnBnJ#selection-1377.0-1389.330

Google is a global company. The company will not be able to inspire confidence. It collects information about all and how she manages it no one knows. We can't opportunity to opt-out of our data because without it you will not be able to use many services. I think Google is more evil.

So far 2 (semi publicly known) people got locked out of all their google services all at once (youtube, gmail, cloud, etc) for wrong think. Gmail scans your emails to provide you with ads. I could see google's AI refusing giving you access to your gmail account one day because of what you wrote.

Google makes more good stuff lol

I don't see google established harmful effects to my self,, In my own definition this is my 2nd teacher, if ever i find difficulties in my work and school i simply visit google to find solutions of my problem.. I guess what makes it evil is that when abusing yourself exposed in exploring google might cause you into physical or  mental  dis orders..

So you trust Google 100% all the time. Do you trust your own parents 100% all the time?

If your access to google was cut out, how much would you be able to do on your own, using your own brain?

Next time go to wiki and visit the page of someone controversial according to somebody, anybody. Take a screen shot (png). Revisit the same page a week later. Take another screen shot. It is easy to tell if something has changed or not. It is more difficult to tell with search results from google, but the differences exist.

Google will never be your teacher, nor a replacement for your functioning brain, but google tries hard for this to happen.




Google Issues Ultimatum to Conservative Website: Remove 'Hateful' Article or Lose Ad Revenue




"Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum," Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, wrote on The Liberty Conservative. "Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control."

The ultimatum came in the form of an email from Google's ad placement service AdSense. The email specifically listed an article on The Liberty Conservative's site, stating that the article violated AdSense's policies.

"As stated in our program policies, Google ads may not be placed on pages that contain content that: Threatens or advocates harm on oneself or others; Harasses, intimidates or bullies an individual or group of individuals; Incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization," the email stated.

The email warned The Liberty Conservative that it must either remove ads from that page, or "modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies."

"Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above," the AdSense email warned. "Please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own."

Trejo argued that the article Google specified "contained no offensive content." Rather, it "was merely distinguishing the many differences between the alt-right and literal Nazis."

The Liberty Conservative writer suggested that the article was singled out because it was written by former Liberty Conservative contributor James Allsup. Allsup was involved in the "Unite the Right" riot (which Trejo described as a "rally-turned-riot") in Charlottesville, Va. Trejo said the article was targeted because "it was authored by a man deemed to be an 'unperson' by the corporate elite."

"Due to financial constraints, we had to comply with Google's strong-arming tactics for the time being," Trejo admitted. "An independent publisher such as The Liberty Conservative needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive."

Despite this necessary surrender, The Liberty Conservative writer remained optimistic. "We look forward to the day where rival ad platforms who respect the intellectual freedom of their customers can outcompete Google, but those days have not arrived yet," he wrote. "These tech companies have us all by the short hairs, and post-Charlottesville, they are all working in unison to enforce the Orwellian nightmare. Nobody is safe."

Chillingly, Trejo called on "all conservatives and libertarians" to "realize that the Orwellian nightmare enforced by private hands is just as harmful to human freedom as if the dystopia was enforced by the hands of government commissars. The results will be the same, as freedom of expression will be sacrificed to the God of political correctness."



https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/31/google-issues-ultimatum-to-conservative-website-remove-hateful-article-or-lose-ad-revenue/



Turning Online Censorship Into Our Victory











GOOGLE/YOUTUBE CENSORSHIP GOES TOO FAR









Youtube Crackdown Continues with Diamond and Silk, RedPillBlack, and Others

Google almost have everything information

I never use google again once I know that they can know everything we do on the internet, use duckduckgo.

Google knows everything you do in real life too. Have you ever used their map on your phone to find a direction? That was recorded. Have you ever tried "Hello Google" and ask a question for fun? That was recorded. At least google lets you listen and delete all the recordings made every time you said "Hello google". I did just that.

No. Not just on the internet. IRL too.

(Vivaldi Browser) My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil



I have known Google longer than most. At Opera, we were the first to add their search into the browser interface, enabling it directly from the search box and the address field. At that time, Google was an up-and-coming geeky company. I remember vividly meeting with Google’s co-founder Larry Page, his relaxed dress code and his love for the Danger device, which he played with throughout our meeting. Later, I met with the other co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, and got positive vibes. My first impression of Google was that it was a likeable company.

Our cooperation with Google was a good one. Integrating their search into Opera helped us deliver a better service to our users and generated revenue that paid the bills. We helped Google grow, along with others that followed in our footsteps and integrated Google search into their browsers.

However, then things changed. Google increased their proximity with the Mozilla foundation. They also introduced new services such as Google Docs. These services were great, gained quick popularity, but also exposed the darker side of Google. Not only were these services made to be incompatible with Opera, but also encouraged users to switch their browsers. I brought this up with Sergey Brin, in vain. For millions of Opera users to be able to access these services, we had to hide our browser’s identity. The browser sniffing situation only worsened after Google started building their own browser, Chrome.

Now, we are making the Vivaldi browser. It is based on Chromium, an open-source project, led by Google and built on WebKit and KHTML. Using Google’s services should not call for any issues, but sadly, the reality is different. We still have to hide our identity when visiting services such as Google Docs.

And now things have hit a new low.

As the biggest online advertising company in the world, Google is often the first choice for businesses that want to promote their products or services on the Internet. Being excluded from using Google AdWords could be a major problem, especially for digital companies.

Recently, our Google AdWords campaigns were suspended without warning. This was the second time that I have encountered this situation. This time, however, timing spoke volumes.

I had several interviews where I voiced concerns about the data gathering and ad targeting practices – in particular, those of Google and Facebook. They collect and aggregate far too much personal information from their users. I see this as a very serious, democracy-threatening problem, as the vast targeting opportunities offered by Google and Facebook are not only good for very targeted marketing, but also for tailored propaganda. The idea of the Internet turning into a battlefield of propaganda is very far away from the ideal.

Two days after my thoughts were published in an article by Wired, we found out that all the campaigns under our Google AdWords account were suspended – without prior warning. Was this just a coincidence? Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?

When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions, some of which, they admitted themselves, were not a “hard” requirement. In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users.

We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements.

A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power. I am saddened by this makeover of a geeky, positive company into the bully they are in 2017. I feel blocking competitors on thin reasoning lends credence to claims of their anti-competitive practices. It is also fair to say that Google is now in a position where regulation is needed. I sincerely hope that they’ll get back to the straight and narrow.


https://vivaldi.com/blog/google-return-to-not-being-evil/