Dump Google?

[Michael Loftis]

--On Saturday, September 11, 2010 3:51 PM -0700 Robert Holtzman 
<holtzm at cox.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 04:17:06PM -0600, Michael Loftis wrote:
>>
>>
>> --On Saturday, September 11, 2010 12:06 PM -0700 Robert Holtzman
>> <holtzm at cox.net> wrote:
>
>           ..........snip..........
>
>> >
>> > Google's archiving all searches isn't the only reason to dump it. If
>> > you are willing to use a search engine that censors web sites at
>> > China's whim go right ahead. Google puts their profit ahead of their
>> > stated support of the free flow of information. Only the lazy or those
>> > who are uninformed or lack principals use Google....and yes, I do use
>> > another search engine.
>>
>> Wow you really don't pay any attention to reality do you?
>>
>> Google did it's best NOT to bend to China.  But in order to maintain any
>> "official" presence at all in China they had to make available a
>> "Chinese  censorship approved" version of Google search.  They did their
>> best to  legally maintain the full search view for China.
>
> Up until the time the PRC threatened not to renew their license. Then
> they dropped their pants and bent over.

Actually, no they didn't.  They said screw it, and left.  The remaining .cn 
is all in .com.hk, which has different laws.

>
>> So now there's the
>> limited Chinese censored site, but a simple click will get you the
>> unfiltered version still in most cases.
>
> That came as a surprise to me. I remember reading that the PRC made them
> eliminate the HK link.

They can't make them do much of anything to the .com.hk hosted 
infrastructure.  To the best of my knowledge they've basically left China 
over the PRC's censorship requirements.  They tried to make the PRC happy 
for a while, but when it became too onerous to do that, they said screw it 
and left.  Quite the opposite of whatever impression you've gotten.  They 
were, and still are, one of the loudest voices for freedom of 
(search/speech).

>
>> In the cases that it doesn't there
>> are well documented work arounds using proxies.
>>
>> Quit criminalizing/blaming/whatever Google for the *CHINESE GOVERNMENTS*
>> shortcomings and requirements.
>
> I didn't criminalize them but my statement stands. They are just as
> unprincipled as any other avaricious corporation, their self serving
> protestations not withstanding.

If they are so completely self serving then why have there been something 
like 700 published research papers from Google (Yahoo! Research also has a 
similar number) -- why has Google sponsored the summer of code for the last 
six years?  Why has google open sourced so many different technologies? 
Some of Google's papers and research are what helped to start the latest 
evolution in computing (they call it the cloud).

IBM has a LOT more publishing, but they've had decades more to work at it, 
and are a larger organization.  Universities have a lot more as well.  But 
amongst the bigger corporations, in so far as technology research and 
publishing (that is making findings publicly available), and helping MANY 
other open source projects along, Google is pretty generous.

Yes Google uses some of the information as part of recruiting (they're VERY 
clear about that) -- but the code is public domain, it could do that just 
as well without funding any of these projects.

Go take a look at the Google Summer of Code (SoC) information.  Ubuntu has 
benefitted from atleast this years SoC.  I'm not sure about prior years. 
For SoC 2010 Google awards $5500 per approved student/coder.  $500 goes to 
the sponsoring organization, and $5000 goes to the student.  For 2010 they 
funded about 1000 Student Developers.  That's $5M USD (up to, payment 
disbursement depends on a passing evaluation - done by the mentoring 
organization) -- The mentoring organizations basically submit a ranked list 
of possible projects/candidates.  Google awards N% of the total possible 
awards to each org based on the number of applicants (more applicants more 
projects and students get funded).  They did $5M last year too.  So Google 
gave *YOU* $5M in software development, because ALL of the code is open 
source.  Google doesn't even really decide who gets the money, they just 
put a framework in place for well known (open source) community 
organizations to say "we want to have some deserving Open Source projects 
receive some time and funding, and here's our list"

Like it or not, Google does a lot of non self serving (or atleast not 
entirely self serving) good out there.

Even if Google is self serving and unprincipled, they're certainly the 
amongst least so of any of their peers (Bing anyone?)

Also, I think that Google likely makes the VAST majority of its money from 
Adwords and Adwords related services, not from the data it collects (and 
uses in aggregate) for search.

I tried finding similar examples of philanthropy for Yahoo! and actually 
came up blank (using both Google and Yahoo! search honestly)

Microsoft has a pretty well known history of philanthropy, mostly directly 
from Bill Gate's Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.