Give Your opinion

My "bombastic" statements don't make your statements on the matter any less naive, especially after Edward Snowden. I'm not sure how carefully you have been following the information that is being released drip by drip, but it is toxic. All of it.

Half the things the government is doing right now, most people ignorantly believed the government either couldn't do, or wouldn't do, but now we know in no uncertain terms they can and they are. Its a new world. Applying that kind of naivete to private companies is equally absurd. They do what they want because a) there is no law preventing them from correlating their information, b) there is money to be made from it, and c) their attorneys and golden handcuffs are a strong enough force to keep any information about said activities from ever seeing the light of day outside the walls of Google.

Regarding Amazon, I have no issue with them. I actually don't buy all that much from them since they started charging sales tax in California. Ebay remains my number one shopping destination, and soon, Best Buy will be rolling out their buy online, pick up locally/local delivery service. Amazon is going to have a hard time competing with a company that can hand deliver your purchase within two hours of placing your online order, at almost no additional charge, especially now that the field is level on the sales tax front. I am, however, a long time customer of Amazon's EC2 cloud infrastructure. Its the best hosting service on the planet by a wide margin.

Anyway, I am probably a bit over paranoid and you are nowhere near paranoid enough when it comes to what these companies, and by extension, our government is doing with our confidential information. I've been working in this specific field since the early 90s, long before the term "Data Mining" was even coined. Its not an opinion formed from ignorance.

 

LOL. They were always making money to finance their business, but traditionally drug dealing, arms dealing and smuggling were the methods to finance such operation. Maybe they have decided to move to stock manipulation, insider trading,... To become respected white collar criminals.

Google email:

Bring more visitors to your website

Get $100 in free ad credit* when you spend $25.
Use coupon code:

Is this $25 , $100 or $125 of income? How about $100 Adwords coupons, sold for $5?

 

Excellent read on quitting google, adjusting search habits, the issues with all that data google keeps, the penalties they have paid, etc etc. etc. Link

 

Very timely article find Dave. It will be interesting to see how well DuckDuckGo monetizes with it's one advertisement, which they appear to be "cleaning" of cookies and cross domain sourced images/scripts. I have adblock on, so I don't even see their one advertisement.

Honestly, I think the whole invasion of privacy by companies like Google has opened up an entirely new market segment for privacy companies to peddle their wares. I have no doubt a variety of scam companies will make their way into the privacy market, like LifeLock, who basically harvest all your private data up front in claims that it will help them protect you. Fun fun fun.

 

funny, o-nation, this is one of the issues or topics we agree on. They are few and far between. On the monopoly issue, I don't like them on the big scale. Early on when I was in commercial real estate a smart wise guy told me that as a business person you want a monopoly.

truer words were never spoken. Some monopolies have more drastic effects than others. Microsoft had a monopoly. On the one hand, you could't buy a computer w/out msn's OS or its suite. It made them tons of money.

But it wasn't horrible. This google thing is far larger and reaches into more areas. It also invades one's privacy. Google has the ability to be murder on businesses in every realm, especially those more dependent on search than others. It has more info on more people than one can imagine. The above article gives a feel for that. If you use google search and have an android...cripes they know your interests, where you are and when you're probably taking a crap, let alone anything else.

They have ever growing funding. I've looked through their financials. There is much that isn't discernable. One thing is they earn so much from the advertising side they have cash to burn enabling them to buy things, put out products, lay fast fiber into areas...all of which buys them friends while they gather more money from advertisers or take a piece of high volume transactions as they have now done with hotel reservations and flights. They can worm their way into industries.

Its an ugly combination. The US feds should be following Europe's lead and slamming them upside the head imho

 

If you think Google is creepy, take a look at new smart meters that should be installed in all the households in USA and Europe during the next few years. They will know when you are at home or not, when you cook, when you watch TV, when you take a shower and when you go to sleep.

 

I suspect we agree on far more than you let on.

You just tend to be a bit bombastic, to borrow your word, when describing the GOP. The GOP is dysfunctional, but no more so than than the Democrats are corrupt.

I'm not sure if you watch House of Cards on Netflix, but it is a must watch for any political junkie. It is by far the most insightful storyline into how our politics work in the US, and Barack Obama's tactics aren't too far off from those used by the star character, Frank Underwood. The mechanics of the system(sausage making), as described in the series, go a long way toward explaining why things are the way they are.

I agree, but again, its hard to call them a monopoly across all those enterprises, or even in the search engine market, unless your 80% numbers prove to be right.

The fact is, the internet is where people shop for things nearly exclusively these days. When one company holds even 65% of the product searches, and especially 80%, they become the defacto source of advertisement. Not sure how you break up the search engine company without simply destroying it, but at least you could prevent the search engine money from being commingled with all the other enterprises google promotes under the same banner.

BTW, my sister is an intellectual property law attorney who works for Google. I got into it a few months ago with her about Google's invasion of privacy. Her response, as a rubber soled card carrying Democrat was, "You know the constitution doesn't have a guaranteed right to privacy, right?". Yeah. There it is.


@gworld: I have one of those meters at my house so the meter maid doesn't have to deal with my blood thirsty dog. The meters know when power is being consumed, and how much, but thats about it. I hadn't thought of hacking the meters to read a stranger's electric bill without accessing the electric company's computer. Interesting idea....

 

On the other hand, I think G-gle is a religion and SEO is God. God should act complying according to religion. Oh...I may confuse..God.....

 

o-nation: politicians of all stripes tend toward corruption. Check out the house that the president of Ukraine had built for himself in the four years he has been in office. Ukraine: poor country, in debt...and this guy had a modern Versailles built for himself in secret.

Possibly the grandest scheme of corruption of recent occurred with the last administration. With the start of the war in Iraq Bush/Cheney granted Halliburton and its successor companies an humongous no compete contract. They declared that only Halliburton could handle this work.

Halliburton. They delivered ice, they fed people. They built tents. Tough kind of work nobody else could do it. Here is how much money they made off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: About $40 billion; the number #1 contractor overseas Non compete contracts. They served food, supplied ice, and put up tents and stuff like that.

The folks from Halliburton and their successor companies keep pouring money into GOP candidates for political office. Those contracts made a lot of people rich. Its all tax payer money. That is pure outright grotesque corruption on the grandest scale, outright lying to the taxpayers of the US by giving them this business without forcing them to compete and continuing it for years and years and years.

that is nothing but a corrupt political payoff game.

Here is how it started: read this link

The folks at Halliburton gave 99% of their campaign contributions to the GOP. That was in 2004. It has continued year after year.

If you want to look at corruption on the grand scale...lets start with some GOP humdingers that skinned the taxpayers of billions of dollars and benefitted the GOP in years of payback.

 

I'm sure the fact Solynda's financiers were Obama donors had nothing to do with the fact they were put ahead of the government on the payout list in event of liquidation. These people made nearly a billion dollars directly from the taxpayers. At least Haliburton setup a few tents and served a few meals for their money. What did we get from Solyndra (and the many companies like Solyndra)?

Back on topic, Google has been exceptionally partisan over the years in where it spends its money. The recent flow of money to Republican candidates an causes is likely hedging their bets rather than an ideological play. Techcrunch has a good write up on it. Hard left wing partisans had absolutely no issue with Google and the mountain of money they threw at their pets in the government until some of that money started to flow to Republicans, at which point they became evil incarnate, like the Koch brothers. Cry me a river.

You can't be against corruption and outside money in Washington only when that money is working against your political pet pig. If Democrats didn't so blatantly and vigorously defend the special interests of their trial attorney's lobby and union donors, they might have some credibility on the topic.

 

The 80% number just applies to search. Various surveys of webmasters over quite a number of years and other larger aggregate sources of search traffic have come up with similar numbers. Search is where the advertising dollars go. Its why google's revenues from search absolutely kill bing and yahoo, and FB. FB is about friends. Its not about buying intent.

I agree. Search is about intent and attracts advertising dollars. I tend to believe the 80% number because of our numbers of websites wherein the data agrees with the many varied attempts to measure this via aggregating data from large sources of actual websites.

hah. that response isn't democratic...its legal and from somebody whose work is tied to a business invading one's privacy only imagined in scary novels from decades ago.

Frankly laws change because the world changes. If google and other companies can track you in ways that are deeply objectionable or problematic than laws need to be established to put a stop to that. Europe is far more protective of privacy rights versus the web than is America.

On an anecdotal basis I've been surprised at "connections" pushed in front of me via linkedin via its scanning of emails and its data. On the plus side a very great old friend found me via direct search by name in linkedin. He must have searched on my name. Then I saw his "profile" turn up in front of me with his name and some linkedin data (his college). I contacted him. Its been great for both of us. On the other hand, I saw a name pop up on linkedin through mining my email that surprised me. Who is this person? How do I know this person? I mined old emails and found some correspondence. That person, based on professional considerations didn't want to pursue something I suggested years ago. Terrific. I agreed. It was his/her option.

Then friggin linkedin's data resurfaced a "connection" that should never be there. That creates problems and further potential problems. Those are potential problems with invasions of privacy.

I saw some cr@p turn up via a google experiment that is similar to the second example. Google currently is mining my gmail for an experiment. Its all by algo and it has no nuance as to be possibly public or not. Its not healthy and potentially problematic. Those are future and possible problems with privacy invasion.


@gworld: I have one of those meters at my house so the meter maid doesn't have to deal with my blood thirsty dog. The meters know when power is being consumed, and how much, but thats about it. I hadn't thought of hacking the meters to read a stranger's electric bill without accessing the electric company's computer. Interesting idea....[/quote]

 

hah. Solandra, or whatever it is called...$0.5 billion. Halliburton $39.5 billion to be more precise. Come up with 79 more Solyndra's to balance the equation.

Actually the Chinese government had a major major builder of solar panels go down. And China had cornered the market on building solar panels. There is evidently too much production world wide and too little consumption. ..............Now. Down the line who knows. That is what occurs with investing in new technologies for businesses, nations, and every entity. When does demand meet supply. Its a theoretical question. Nobody has a response.

One of the largest contributors to the recession of around 2000 was way way way too much investment into building out fiber. It was way overbuilt. To this day there is fiber around the world that doesn't carry a fraction of its capacity and doesn't return investment on monies...even after the businesses went bankrupt and wrote off initial investments.

Your buddies the Bush administration put $1 billion into hydrogen autos. There is NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH to show for it now. That is a billion down the drain thanks to the GOP. But the Feds funded research on computers. The feds put the money in when businesses wouldn't or couldn't. Now that is an investment that has paid off in billions of ways. Damn good investment.

Playing politics with it is stupid...and political. but o-nation you brought it up..... Come up with 79 solyndra's at $0.5 billion a piece to match the corruption that threw $39.5 (almost $40 billion) into Halliburton and its consistent paybacks to the GOP.

That could be the Webster's dictionary definition of American corruption. Its huge. Its unprecedented in size and the monies have simply rolled between a GOP government and the monies tracked back into GOP candidates for years...and its all trackable.

The googlers had choices where to spend their political monies for years. They gave it to dems when the GOP was in power and continued. Now, like many industries, ie banking, they hedge their bets, giving to both sides.

I see it as corrupt in an American way wherein too much money is allowed to go to too many political purposes. Ban it all, imho.

I answered that above. I'll repeat it. ban it all.

The dems and the gop each have their pet groups. Ban it all is what I suggest

 

Funny. That is the same disclaimer I attach to many of your statements, considering you live around the DC metro area. Our society is increasingly becoming one in which those who feed from the trough that destroys civil liberties are the only ones being fed.

I can't speak to scanning email as I host my own mail on my own linux boxes, though they can and do scan unencrypted smtp traffic flowing over the net. I had linkedin connect one of my many shell identities to my real name, even though I've never sent communication of any kind between the two. Its either cookie scraping or ip correlation. I now run a browsing virtual machine that never sees my real identity logged in on it, which I route through hotspotshield or tor. Every time you talk to any SaaS, it keeps your IP, and that of every other identity that also talks to that same SaaS via the same IP. As I stated earlier, if you are in the business of forming correlations between bits of data, you use everything at your disposal.

Obviously not a fair comparison. Haliburton, Flour Daniel, and a few other companies are companies with war logistics business practices. It isn't like there are a whole lot of them. During a war, they're services will be called upon. Its not like you can hire Google to do what they do. You act like nothing was done for the $39.5 billion. Was their waste? Sure. Was the war worth it? Probably not. Were they Bush contributors? Absolutely.

Its a fraction of the nearly trillion stimulus dollars Obama handed out in a discriminatory to his campaign contributors and political supporters. Solyndra's half a billion for quite literally nothing was a drop in the bucket. You have GM which turned out to be 10.5 billion. You have Fisker at 138 million. You have stimulus dollars flowing to states not based on need but rather based on political party in power of the state legislature, with Washington DC getting more money per capita than any state.

Some other interesting factoids about Obama's administration without "a smidgen of corruption":

• Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised more than half a million.
• The big bundlers had broad access to the White House for meetings with top administration officials and glitzy social events. In all, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.
• Some Obama bundlers have ties to companies that stand to gain financially from the president’s policy agenda, particularly in clean energy and telecommunications, and some already have done so. Level 3 Communications, for instance, snared $13.8 million in stimulus money. At least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from government spending to promote clean energy, telecommunications and other key administration priorities.

Yeah, every election year that is the mantra of the party that is out of the money. I have yet to see a campaign finance proposal that is a) constitutionally legal and b) would actually work.

 

Ask yourself why Obama and EU want to make smart meters mandatory which will cost billions of dollars and adds to already high energy bill when people are literally freezing to death in Europe because they cannot pay the bill to warm themselves? Are they worried about dogs and the health of the guy who checks the meter?
The problem with today´s governments is that they want to spy on everyone and everything just because the technology gives them that possibility and damn the costs or effects on the society. Why they don´t want to introduce the new meters as new house are built or a real estate property changes ownership? It is not like you are going to run out and buy a new fridge, TV, toaster,... just because the meter tells you that is using too much energy. I can understand the remote reading of the meter but why the meters have to have a 2 way communication and control structure that measures all your activities at home, saves it and even control your home? What is the use of it right now, unless later on they want to run the whole society as an open prison and know where you are and what are you doing at all time.
Take an good idea like a smart meter which could have been a help in saving energy, involve the government in it and make it a terrible idea.