Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
In a weekend WSJ interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Schmidt said:
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. […] The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating—that serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically.”
Nick Carr, quoting the above, quips:
I hope Google will also be able to tell me the best candidate to vote for in elections. I find that such a burden.
But Carr doesn’t even mention the oddest part of the WSJ interview:
[Schmidt] 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’ve been thinking about this since Saturday. Here’s my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. I think he’s a really weird dude. Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google and privacy: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
The industry is filled with eccentric CEOs — billionaires who, say, wear a wardrobe that consists of nothing but identical black shirts and Levi’s 501 jeans, or who dress as a samurai warrior, including swords, at their home. But Schmidt doesn’t seem eccentric (or at least not merely so). He seems creepy.
Here’s a report by Jon Fortt for Fortune, regarding a talk Schmidt gave in March in Abu Dhabi:
In one of the sharper exchanges of the afternoon, a questioner challenged Schmidt with the fact that Google is collecting a staggering amount of information about who we are, what we’re thinking, and even where we are. “All this information that you have about us: where does it go? Who has access to that?” (Google servers and Google employees, under careful rules, Schmidt said.) “Does that scare everyone in this room?” The questioner asked, to applause. “Would you prefer someone else?” Schmidt shot back – to laughter and even greater applause. “Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”
What can't that rhetoric be used to justify?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
Google's race from cutesy underdog to crazy juggernaut has been fascinating. At least with the bad capitalists of the pre-Google days, we just had to worry about CEO greed. But with Schmidt... who knows what is going through that guy's head!
Jul '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
I'm an atheooglist.
Jun '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
I very much appreciate that when I run a search for myself on Google that I come up with distant cousin in Pennsylvania by the same name. I've always assumed that anything I publish on-line will be permanent and irretrievable. That little ~ in front of my name does not track. It hides me well. A carefully built on-line strategy that says quite plainly who you are to the people you wish to know, but hides the personal data seems to me a wise precaution. As far as it goes, anyway. Why anyone would want to announce themselves to the world on Facebook is beyond me. It's an invitation to trouble.
Aug '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
~Paules: That little ~ in front of my name does not track. It hides me well.
I was wondering what it was for.
Feb '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
As a confirmed crunchy con, I don't trust anyone or anything that gets too big: whether governments, or companies, or unions-- and so on.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is true whether the entity in question is in the private sector or not. If there is no competition to keep companies in check, to make them serve their true masters (the customers, the ones who pay them), then they will be debased and corrupted by power just as surely as any government, union or other group. Their own self-interest is always going to be toward preserving themselves and making a profit; but the larger they are, and the fewer and weaker their competitors, the less their self-interest will be aligned with their customers' best interests.
As messy as it is, this is why I support antitrust actions under certain circumstances. I don't believe a perfect world could exist even if we followed all the right principles. A messy world requires checks and balances between competing powers.
Now if only we had a bigger check and balance on the federal government... because that's where the biggest monopoly on power is accumulating these days.
Aug '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
Busy System Admin: If there is no competition to keep companies in check, to make them serve their true masters (the customers, the ones who pay them)... the larger they are, and the fewer and weaker their competitors, the less their self-interest will be aligned with their customers' best interests.
There is, however, a method more effective than antitrust for keeping monopolies in check, and that is making sure that it's easy to start up new companies so that potential competition is more easily realized.
It is the potential competitors -- those we don't see because they don't exist yet -- who are even more important that existing competitors for undermining companies who have gotten too greedy.
If I charge more (in money, hassle, lousy service, etc) than my product is worth, I create an opportunity for potential competitors to undercut me. If starting a business is easy, this opportunity will be exploited. If starting a business is hard, on the other hand, this opportunity cannot be exploited and greedy big businesses flourish unjustly.
Even antitrust regulation often ends up favoring big business. There are several examples of this happening, actually.
Jul '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
I want Google to tell me what to eat for breakfast.
I want Google to tell me whether to fold or scrunch my toilet paper.
And I'm changing my name to Eric Schmidt so I can start a pro-NAMBLA blog.
Jul '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
Scroogle
May '10
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
I hadn't really put much thought into if i could be 'googled' before this, so I decided to give it a try real quick. Luckily, it seems I have quite a common name. In 10 pages of results, the only link that led to me personally was a link to my profile here on Ricochet. I'm ok with that.
Re: Dear Google: Don't Be Evil. Also, Don't Be God
Kenneth: I want Google to tell me what to eat for breakfast.
I want Google to tell me whether to fold or scrunch my toilet paper.
Sounds like you need to be re-educated, Kenneth. Google is all about options. Google wants you to enjoy whatever you please. It doesn't matter to them what you Google for breakfast. You can Google your toilet paper any way you want.