The Today Network - 8/11/17( The November Issue)
written by Account Terminated
“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” Some great quotes for Today.
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
9
Reads
615
Topic of the Day to Discuss : 5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Google
Chapter 9
You'd be hard-pressed to find a company more beloved than Google. And why not? They make the Internet easier to use, pamper their employees and foot the bill for YouTube even though it loses money like it's got a gambling problem that's made of cocaine. Unfortunately, much of what is awesome about Google also makes them increasingly terrifying with each passing day.
5
Google Has All The Answers (About You)
The Misconception:
Before Google, if you were curious about some weird sexual position or the dangers of sticking glass rods down your pee hole, you had to go to an older sibling or classmate. This would result in either hilarious but ultimately fulfilling sexual misadventure or, if you didn't go to high school in a teen comedy, a mortifying nickname that followed you all the way to college.
Google wasn't the first search engine to take the human interaction out of that process, it was just the best at finding the information you were looking for. And as long as you were sure to delete your search history afterwards, you could read up on any kind of fucked up, degenerate behavior you wanted without another human soul ever knowing.
The Reality:
It turns out, Google records everything you enter into its search engine. The lonely night a few months back when you Googled "how many fists can fit in the butt?" That's stored on Google's servers, correlated with your IP address and a pretty shocking amount of other personal information.
But they're not just passively stalking you via your weird ass searches. If you use Google to help you navigate the Web, there's a good chance they've installed a cookie onto your browser that logs every page you visit, every form you fill out and every conversation you have. Google sees it all and stores it for at least nine months.
Consumer advocate group Privacy International says nine months is the best case scenario. Even if you only use a few of Google's free services, "the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use."
Of course, Google is in the business of getting you what you're looking for, and knowing everything about you makes it better at its job. When you type rimjob into your search window, Yahoo! might return a LeBron James highlight reel, but Google knows better. Google's many products work better the more it knows about you.
Plus, it's not like any actual people will ever read all of the dirt they have stored on you. Well, not until they have a reason to ask for it anyways.
4
Google Isn't Like Other Companies (Unless You Count Microsoft)
he Reality:
Google is not a magical fairy cloud of technology that exists purely to help you find information (that's Wikipedia).
Google is a corporation. Their goal is to acquire as much of the world's money as possible. They are not driven by the desire to "not be evil" anymore than Sprite is driven by a desire to be "sublymonal." If they ever even so much as hinted that they were in the business of "not being evil" in a situation where that involved "not making money" whomever dropped that hint would immediately be relieved of their job.
In the words of Scott Cleland, who has made a career of watching Google and ringing the "seriously, I think these people might be vampires" alarm, "Google does not work for users; Google works for advertisers and website publishers, which provide virtually all of Google's revenues." Google Ads are responsible for 97 percent of their billions of dollars of revenues.
Google is Big Because They're Smart (And Too Big To Continue to Be Smart)
The Misconception:
Google as a company has managed to do one pretty incredible thing: accrue a scary amount of power without being corrupted by it. If we had the money and influence Google enjoys, you can bet we'd flaunt the shit out of it.
The Reality:
Everything we've covered so far, the spying, the advertising networks, have been the result of Google's algorithm working on autopilot. You'll probably be comforted to know that there's not some guy sitting on Google's campus, analyzing what ad to serve based on your uniquely weird taste in music and pornography. All the dirt they've got on you are all just ones and zeroes in a complex equation that works incredibly well.
But things get a lot clumsier when something in the algorithm isn't working, and the humans behind the scenes have to make a decision. Unfortunately, when you control how most of the world interacts with the Internet, there's no such thing as a fair decision.
Google Will Protect Your Data (Until They Feel Threatened)
The Reality:
That's all correct, so far. But it's easy to be the good guy when you're making so much money that the U.S. government feels the need to step in and essentially say, "No fair!" However, last spring with the launch of Buzz, Google showed us how they might react in the face of a little healthy competition, and it was a panicky pants shitting mess.
Instead, Buzz automatically published the contact information for everyone you communicate with on your profile page. "Harriet Jacobs," a blogger with an abusive ex-husband and a history of death threats from Internet crazies, found her entire private life made public to a legion of potential stalkers. The decision to link a service designed for public broadcasting of information to people's private email accounts isn't just a minor brain fart. It's a sign of a major issue with their corporate philosophy. Google was so eager to enter the social media game that no one at Google ever wondered if maybe, just maybe, there were some things people didn't want to share with everyone they'd ever emailed.
Best case scenario, they panicked in the face of competition. Worst case scenario, they knew exactly what they were doing, and just didn't care because they didn't have to care. What are you going to do about it?
Google Stood Up to Chinese Censorship (Because They Are Terrifyingly Powerful and They Know It)
When Google stood up to China, it was because they'd had enough of that oppressive regime and their censorship policies. Google was a comparatively small company standing up to a nation of billlions. It was a clear cut David and Goliath battle of Good versus Evil.
While Google doesn't use all that information for evil, it's a nice insurance policy to know that they could if they wanted to. Essentially, Google is in the "get the world by the balls" phase of their business plan, and they're just waiting to see if anyone's going to make them squeeze.
See, Google isn't just keeping data on you and your friends. Over 60 percent of U.S. state governments have "Gone Google" and now use one or more Google enterprise apps. Thousands of gigabytes of government data, all held in Google's servers. As security expert Sherri Davidoff puts it, "Google now controls our government's access to its own data."
Candy Hyena
WRITER OF THE TOPIC OF THE DAY TO DISCUSS
5
Google Has All The Answers (About You)
The Misconception:
Before Google, if you were curious about some weird sexual position or the dangers of sticking glass rods down your pee hole, you had to go to an older sibling or classmate. This would result in either hilarious but ultimately fulfilling sexual misadventure or, if you didn't go to high school in a teen comedy, a mortifying nickname that followed you all the way to college.
Google wasn't the first search engine to take the human interaction out of that process, it was just the best at finding the information you were looking for. And as long as you were sure to delete your search history afterwards, you could read up on any kind of fucked up, degenerate behavior you wanted without another human soul ever knowing.
The Reality:
It turns out, Google records everything you enter into its search engine. The lonely night a few months back when you Googled "how many fists can fit in the butt?" That's stored on Google's servers, correlated with your IP address and a pretty shocking amount of other personal information.
But they're not just passively stalking you via your weird ass searches. If you use Google to help you navigate the Web, there's a good chance they've installed a cookie onto your browser that logs every page you visit, every form you fill out and every conversation you have. Google sees it all and stores it for at least nine months.
Consumer advocate group Privacy International says nine months is the best case scenario. Even if you only use a few of Google's free services, "the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use."
Of course, Google is in the business of getting you what you're looking for, and knowing everything about you makes it better at its job. When you type rimjob into your search window, Yahoo! might return a LeBron James highlight reel, but Google knows better. Google's many products work better the more it knows about you.
Plus, it's not like any actual people will ever read all of the dirt they have stored on you. Well, not until they have a reason to ask for it anyways.
4
Google Isn't Like Other Companies (Unless You Count Microsoft)
he Reality:
Google is not a magical fairy cloud of technology that exists purely to help you find information (that's Wikipedia).
Google is a corporation. Their goal is to acquire as much of the world's money as possible. They are not driven by the desire to "not be evil" anymore than Sprite is driven by a desire to be "sublymonal." If they ever even so much as hinted that they were in the business of "not being evil" in a situation where that involved "not making money" whomever dropped that hint would immediately be relieved of their job.
In the words of Scott Cleland, who has made a career of watching Google and ringing the "seriously, I think these people might be vampires" alarm, "Google does not work for users; Google works for advertisers and website publishers, which provide virtually all of Google's revenues." Google Ads are responsible for 97 percent of their billions of dollars of revenues.
Google is Big Because They're Smart (And Too Big To Continue to Be Smart)
The Misconception:
Google as a company has managed to do one pretty incredible thing: accrue a scary amount of power without being corrupted by it. If we had the money and influence Google enjoys, you can bet we'd flaunt the shit out of it.
The Reality:
Everything we've covered so far, the spying, the advertising networks, have been the result of Google's algorithm working on autopilot. You'll probably be comforted to know that there's not some guy sitting on Google's campus, analyzing what ad to serve based on your uniquely weird taste in music and pornography. All the dirt they've got on you are all just ones and zeroes in a complex equation that works incredibly well.
But things get a lot clumsier when something in the algorithm isn't working, and the humans behind the scenes have to make a decision. Unfortunately, when you control how most of the world interacts with the Internet, there's no such thing as a fair decision.
Google Will Protect Your Data (Until They Feel Threatened)
The Reality:
That's all correct, so far. But it's easy to be the good guy when you're making so much money that the U.S. government feels the need to step in and essentially say, "No fair!" However, last spring with the launch of Buzz, Google showed us how they might react in the face of a little healthy competition, and it was a panicky pants shitting mess.
Instead, Buzz automatically published the contact information for everyone you communicate with on your profile page. "Harriet Jacobs," a blogger with an abusive ex-husband and a history of death threats from Internet crazies, found her entire private life made public to a legion of potential stalkers. The decision to link a service designed for public broadcasting of information to people's private email accounts isn't just a minor brain fart. It's a sign of a major issue with their corporate philosophy. Google was so eager to enter the social media game that no one at Google ever wondered if maybe, just maybe, there were some things people didn't want to share with everyone they'd ever emailed.
Best case scenario, they panicked in the face of competition. Worst case scenario, they knew exactly what they were doing, and just didn't care because they didn't have to care. What are you going to do about it?
Google Stood Up to Chinese Censorship (Because They Are Terrifyingly Powerful and They Know It)
When Google stood up to China, it was because they'd had enough of that oppressive regime and their censorship policies. Google was a comparatively small company standing up to a nation of billlions. It was a clear cut David and Goliath battle of Good versus Evil.
While Google doesn't use all that information for evil, it's a nice insurance policy to know that they could if they wanted to. Essentially, Google is in the "get the world by the balls" phase of their business plan, and they're just waiting to see if anyone's going to make them squeeze.
See, Google isn't just keeping data on you and your friends. Over 60 percent of U.S. state governments have "Gone Google" and now use one or more Google enterprise apps. Thousands of gigabytes of government data, all held in Google's servers. As security expert Sherri Davidoff puts it, "Google now controls our government's access to its own data."
Candy Hyena
WRITER OF THE TOPIC OF THE DAY TO DISCUSS
