Give Your opinion

"If SEO is a Religion then Google is the God of this Religion" --Paresh Shrimali

 

google is far from a god. Its simply a monopoly.

 

No doubt they're the most popular. People have other choices, they could always use Bing instead.

 

I agree, they could. But I disagree w/you in that other thread.

 

duckduckgo.com

no collected data to be sold.

 

SEO is the worship to please Google..
And SEOs are the priests or mediators !!!

 

You were wrong on that other thread. You should know that in the last 48 hrs, I've had no less than 717,254 members of DP sending PM's to say they read that thread and thought you were WRONG. It's true.

@O - Never heard of them before. I would probably prefer Duck Duck Go over Bing.

 

Rebecca: Over 700,000 DM's. Good for you. Contact them back and offer your photography services. You should pick up some customers!!!!

You go girl. big opportunity!!!! Wahoo!

 

Their search results aren't as good as Google, but for most searches, they are more than adequate. Its dawning on me that real privacy will soon be nearly impossible to maintain. Still no need to feed the machine more data than you have to.

 

seriously, man, isn't this boring you? lets go political.

 

Search engines are political. Google has more correlated information on more people in the world than any other company outside of facebook. In their databanks lies information about every place you've been with your android phone, every phone call, text, email you've sent or received, everything you've typed into the search bar to express interest in. They are a 24x7 rolling diary of your life most people would never want to keep. They are likely far better at organizing and mining the data than the NSA. Hell, they are likely a primary data source for the NSA, vis-a-vis FISA warrants that never see the light of day.

From the search engine perspective alone, they decide what is important, what news stories get read, etc.

 

OK. It looks like the founder of duckduckgo.com may think of himself as politically independent. I read this on his website from a post back in 2010, "...Pundits seem to think Obama's speech was partially aimed at independents, i.e. the center. As someone who sort of fits that bill, here were my reactions...."

Source: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/politics/

 

Before reading this response, if its you, o-nation, I have a suggestion:

Sit down. Loosen your tie, take off your shoes, get a stiff drink. You may need a loved one nearby to offer you assistance after you read this.

I agree. With google it is getting worse. If you have a gmail or use a google service such as youtube or anything else they require your agreeing to terms on usage of google plus. Then they have the google bots following your every move on the web. Its insidious.

W/ FB if you don't want them following you....don't use it. Don't sign in to FB. If you don't want google following you everywhere don't use it. For competitive business reasons I'm compelled to spend time in google. For general search I think bing is about as good in terms of results. I haven't used duckagogo. I do know it takes a lot of work to get the serps/ logic of results to be reasonably accurate and appropriate.

Frankly I know google has more intimate knowledge of my computer tendencies than does the NSA. Is the NSA following me? I don't know. Is google following me? Yup. Is anyone in the States monitoring them or limiting their efforts? No. Europe is putting limits on Google. The US isn't. imho it should.

 

Before reading this response, you should sit down.

I think Google needs to be broken up. They control ~65% of the search engine market share which, in my opinion is not enough to qualify as a monopoly, but it is enough to give them an unfair advantage with literally every other product they come up with. Google is the go to for search engines, and every time you open the browser, you have all the rest of google's products pushed in your direction above every other competitor trying to compete for positioning in their search results.

Google the search engine company should be spun off as its own company separate from all the other products including GMail, Maps, Android, Office, YouTube, etc. AngryBirds is a testament to the fact that Google's advertising power puts them in a uniquely beneficial position to turn any of their ideas into a billion dollar enterprise while marginalizing all the competition.

As far as what Facebook or Google collect, it goes way beyond monitoring people who are customers who are signed in, or even people who are Facebook/Google customers. Every last web page with a facebook or google link on the page is gathering data on your behavior whether you like it or not. The most insidious is Google Analytics, which is a core component of practically every last website on the planet. GA provides valuable information about the behavior of customers to website owners, but the architecture of the product is identical to that of the Facebook "Like" icons in that all IP/URL information is cleared through Google or Facebook central clearing house allowing it to be correlated across internet sites.

People who use google analytics see information about what a customer looked at on their site, and how many times that customer has been there, but in Google central, they have a view of that customer across every website he/she has ever been too, and that information cross tabbed with search engine input, which is how they drive their adsense engine. Facebook is doing the exact same thing.

Better still, if you have ever opened an account with any Google/facebook company with your real name, they can match a name to the ip/search/browse behavior. Of course even if you don't, there is often enough information in the URL of the non-google sites you have identified yourself to, for google to take a good guess at who you are.

 

o-nation: The world is off kilter. you and I are in agreement on this one.

Actually, I believe the oft reported ~65% market share is bs. Why the media relies on that is beyond me. On real search there are other reports finding about 80% market share in US search. That is why google's ad revenue numbers kill every other service. Bing and yahoo would kill to get the numbers reported for them that tie to the ~65% reported for google.

You realize of course, calling for google break up mandates big government? lol. but frankly what is the recourse. Even a conservative must acknowledge that. Currently there are no checks or balances on google. Meanwhile google corporate recently started supporting very Right wing political groups just as they the left in the past. Google is playing the corporate game, buying protection from all the pols on all sides.

I do use G-A google analytics. I was a reluctant and late user, for exactly the reasons you suggest. That gives google data inside your website, let alone info on getting to your website. It probably empowers google's knowledge base even more. Isn't that scary? It means google has the data how they got to your website and then data inside.

Inside data has to do with "closing" and conversions. Actually nobody has closing/conversion traffic and data like Amazon. They are the world leaders in that kind of inside dope.

Nobody outside of google knows if they are taking the analytics data and connecting it to their external data. Googlers are a very mum crowd. Its rare that they reveal secrets. They have to have killer non disclosure clauses. They are incredibly close mouthed.

They could be doing that...but it hasn't been revealed yet and nobody has pried any data or confirmation on that suspicion.

Europe has taken a tougher stance on google than the states. They just came to an agreement on some changes versus a massive penalty and the European version of an anti trust case. We'll see if the agreement changes the competitive landscape in the future.

This process of agreeing with you is starting to make me sick. Have a good weekend. Buy some food photos from Rebecca!!!!!!!!

 

Not at all. Anti-trust legislation has been around for a very very long time, and I'm not the kind of Libertarian that believes in a "lord of the flies" type of economy. Some reasonable regulation is a necessity in my opinion, though opinions vary. One doesn't need anywhere near the size of the government we have now to enforce a bit of reasonable regulation. The problem with our government is corruption.

As you point out, Google is now spending money wherever they think they will find receptive legislation/legislators. As you also pointed out, Europe is putting us to shame on the anti-trust front. They have effectively taken on Microsoft and a few other corporate giants, preventing overtly egregious behavior that continues without issue in this country.

Sure you do. Don't be naive. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a F'n duck.

My primary contract is for a company that does indoor location analytics (passively tracking the movement of individuals within indoor spaces, based on signals emitting from their cell phones). If your phone is on, it is constantly advertising itself, which means anywhere you walk, anyone who is listening knows you (or at least your phone) is there. When you are in the business of collecting and selling information, a) you never throw away information and b) you find every marketable use for said information.

Implying Google isn't mining their data, is like implying there is no sex going on at the Playboy mansion. Big Data is the top paying field in software engineering for a reason.

Agreeing with me is good for you. It means you are right for a change . Perhaps the sickness is withdrawals.

 

I have to agree for now. But I am almost sure on that even google doesn't know who will come as the next God.

 

I have been always suspicious of Google, Facebook,... income statements. Even if we believe them, those incomes hardly make sense compared to their stock price. Now that we know that most of these companies have their roots in the NSA and CIA investments, the question is that if these are businesses that also act as spy agency or these are spy agencies that pretend to be a business to get people to finance their spy activities.

 

If they were a spy agency(the government) pretending to be business, they would be incapable of turning a profit. The folks at Google are far to good at what they do to be government employees.

Based on what we know from Snowden, I'd say there are three primary means by which Google effectively becomes a government asset:

1) Promise of favorable legislation and tax dollars/tax breaks for compliance with government data requests (The Carrot)
2) Sealed warrants from FISA courts which force compliance with data requests (The Stick)
3) NSA hackers using hacking activities that would be completely illegal in the private sector to hack Google's data (The Backdoor)

 

So many problems with google's power over others. It starts with its size of monopoly. About 80% US (per StatCounter) I believe that is a much more accurate representation of true search traffic versus overall usage of search engines. Where it counts is in Ad money over the year: Google's percentage of just US ad spend is far greater than any other entity: Source That is one source. Maybe its percentage share is higher.

With its revenues it can spend money in a lot of areas, including areas where it builds "friends" in the public. Between spreading its lobbying money around and buildings friends its working to make itself protected against anti trust legislation.

o-nation: Your writing in a bombastic manner doesn't make it so that google is mixing the data from analytics with its data about search. It is of course possible. Somebody needs to crack that firewall and find out if that is the case. It could be. Regardless, Amazon, a giant in its own right is such a killer on knowing how customers buy... It leads the pack in that regard. Its a giant of its own, and is having the impact on b&m businesses as Walmart did and does. Its crushing businesses. But it also provides items at lower cost. That is ultimately a ying and yang of society and economics causing change and disruption.

Where google's moves bother me is its effort to wrap everyone who uses it into its google plus world. That is insidious. Actually it causes other issues: too many to list here. I'd break the sucker up. I haven't thought about how it should be broken up. Its not my job. But I'd splinter that big beast.