Americans Love Google! Americans Hate Google! - Megan Garber - Technology This morning, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released the results of a February survey analyzing Americans' feelings about online privacy. The main takeaway is something of a paradox: The majority of us are uncomfortable with personalized search and targeted ads. At the same, time, though, we're more satisfied than ever with the performance of search engines. Taken together, the polling shows that there is a great uneasiness about the status quo of data collection on the Internet. And yet, people like using the Internet. In phone calls with Pew, 65 percent of Internet users said it's generally "a bad thing" if a search engine collects information about individual searches and then uses it to rank someone's search results -- because it may limit the information you get online and what search results you see. The disconnect here is striking. On the other hand ... there's that 65/68/73 percent. It's a psychic disconnect as well as an informational one.
Why Hath Google Forsaken Us? A Meditation. (image) Here’s a short overview of Google’s past few months: It’s angered policymakers and pundits with a sweeping change to its privacy settings. It’s taken a beating for favoring its own properties in its core search results. It’s been caught with its hands in Apple’s cookie jar, and despite the fact Facebook and others previously condoned the practice, it was savaged for doing so. Has it abandoned its principles of supporting the open web, data liberation, and doing no evil? Well, those are questions I’ve been pondering for a while now, and I think I have an answer, or at least, some reasonable speculation as to an answer. Here’s the short version of the answer: Google is playing for the long term, but it feels it has no choice but to make these moves now. The longer version goes something like this: Google had identified a central and existential threat to its future, and that threat is….us. Think about it. Now think about Apple.
How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. This is not Google’s version of Siri. "That’s not something I want my computer telling me. “Google has always collected information. Google’s new policy replaces more than 60 existing product-specific privacy documents, for services including Gmail , YouTube and Google Docs. Connecting the dots Further, Google will merge data from the products you use and then analyze it to make new assumptions. Opsahl also pointed out that there are many people who have more than one Google account, such as one they use for business and one for personal communication. “If Google received a warrant to disclose documents, and your business and personal docs are intermingled — that’s a problem,” he said. “Google should make it easy for people to set up and manage separate accounts if they wish to do so,” Opsahl said. Trouble ahead
Use Google? Time to Get Real About Protecting Your Digital Self - Sara Marie Watson - Technology Google's decided to integrate the data it has about you, which means you better think about the digital tracks you're leaving. Search, browser, email. These are the most essential tools of an Internet-connected life, and for many of us, Google offers the best of breed. Aside from sharing a common log-in, it hasn't been clear how complete Google's consolidated view of any given user might be across its suite of products -- until yesterday. Now it is patently clear: Going forward, Google is compiling its user data across all of its products, resulting in an omniscient, informed, one-true profile of you, all in the name of serving you more relevant information -- and, of course, ads. This comes as no surprise. Hints of user-data consolidation started dropping last summer and early fall, with the introduction of Google+. Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. I'm convinced that Google, too, sees this as a very delicate moment. To what end, you might ask?
Is Too Much Plus a Minus for Google? « StevenLevy.com Thursday, January 12th, 2012 On Tuesday, Google announced something called Search, plus Your World (SPYW). It marked a startling transformation of the company’s flagship product, Google Search, into an amplifier of social content. Google’s critics—as well as some folks generally well intentioned towards Google—have complained that the social content it amplifies is primarily Google’s own product, Google+. They have a point. In short, they say there’s too much Plus and not enough of Our World, which has oodles of content on other social networks. Let’s take a step back. Google CEO Larry Page prepped us for this recently by saying that Google+ was only the first part of Google’s social ambitions—the next step is to “light up” all of Google. But when it came to search, there was a big question: would lots of social results will actually improve search for Google’s users? The canonical example is that of Singhal’s dog, Chikoo. Understandable? But there is a risk to proceeding on this path.
Technology - Alexis Madrigal - How Google Can Beat Facebook Without Google Plus Look, Google, we've got a plan to help you win on social. There's only one catch: You have to give up on the notion that animates Google Plus. Out in the Mojave Desert, there's a place called California City that's fascinated me ever since Geoff Manaugh brought its story to the Internet's attention. The city is one of the largest in the state by land area, but its population sits at a mere 14,718. The facts together indicate the grandeur of the planned community's conception and its failure. tl;dr version Google Plus is an abandoned city in the desert.I.e. As pitched by the town's founder Nat Mendelson, California City would be the home of the American dream, a wonderland for sun and job seekers to go after Los Angeles' population burst across that city's eastern mountains. Who did not arrive as expected. Those people did stop going to Los Angeles. Google/Alexis Madrigal Last year, Google, which had dabbled in official social-networking applications, released Google Plus. Ouch. Reuters But.
It's Official: Google Is Now a Hardware Company Last August, Google (GOOG) Chief Executive Officer Larry Page fulfilled a pledge made to one of his senior executives, a square-jawed former attorney named Dennis Woodside. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook had been trying to poach Woodside to make him Apple’s head of sales; Google had persuaded him to stay, in part by promising him a bigger job, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, but who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. Now it was time to make good. Woodside says he was speaking with board member K. Woodside agreed and is now the leader of one of the most storied names in technology. When Google first came calling, it was mostly interested in getting Motorola’s trove of 17,000-plus patents to help defend the Android operating system against lawsuits by Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple, and others. It’s also a huge gamble, certainly the biggest since Page retook the title of CEO at Google a year ago. Google wouldn’t bite.
Why Google will soon answer your questions directly - tech - 06 June 2012 Search engines are morphing into something new: vast brains that don't just show links, but respond directly to questions you ask in everyday language Editorial: "Do internet companies have all the answers?" SEARCH engines have barely changed since Google was founded in 1998. Sure, they run on blazingly fast servers and are powered by sophisticated algorithms, but the experience itself is basically the same: users enter a word or two and the engine spits out links to the most relevant pages. That is about to change.Last month, Google rolled out its "knowledge graph", which serves up facts and services in response to search terms - not just links to websites. "Search does a good job of returning pages," says Shashidhar Thakur of Google. Links are not necessarily the best way to answer a query. Over the past few years, Google and Microsoft have been quietly compiling vast knowledge databases to help them do this. Microsoft is taking a different tack. And Siri may be just the beginning.
Google+ Was Never a Facebook Competitor The social web is a well reported topic within the media today, and for good reason. We are in a transitional change with how we communicate with each other online, how brands reach consumers and how organisations market to their audience. We are undoubtedly immersed in the technology age, and our lives, the way we interact with others, is changing totally. The monumental success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg's world leading social platform, has enticed brands, consumers, investors alike, and the world is continually awaiting for that 'next big thing'. Brad Jordan is Head of Social at U.K. Predicting the next big thing is often easier than some might think. Take the iPod for example. Skype too was not the first online video chat service, but with successful brand building and fantastic integration with offline communication, it continues to be the world's favourite online audio/video communication tool. Better Than Anyone Else Advertising. Social = Data