The Cognitive Algorithm of When-Is-Google-Evil?
Shelley Powers on the spurious story claiming Google hijacks errors page
What really surprised me about this story, though, is that if people are so quick to accuse Google of 'evil' behavior in an innocuous situations like this, why was the idea of Google helping to bail out Yahoo to keep the latter out of the hands of Microsoft seen as a "good" thing? I would think a search engine monopoly in the hands of Google would be potentially more evil than Google providing useful features for default 404 error handling.
This environment is confusingly inconsistent at times.
It's a bit like how Libertarians will argue that the government is intrinsically incompetent and corrupt, but can be trusted with nuclear weapons which might literally destroy civilization as we know it. Or perhaps in general it's little things that people can see make for far better attention-getting articles than big abstract problems which are hard to conceptualize.
Also, connecting back to the "AutoLink" incident a while ago, I think there's a theme of "Don't Touch My Stuff!". You can take over the world, but don't touch the stuff. Which is actually a pretty common reaction.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google | on February 13, 2008 06:49 PM (Infothought permalink)
"It's a bit like how Libertarians will argue that the government is intrinsically incompetent and corrupt, but can be trusted with nuclear weapons which might literally destroy civilization as we know it."
Good point, and analogy.
"It's a bit like how Libertarians will argue that the government is intrinsically incompetent and corrupt, but can be trusted with nuclear weapons which might literally destroy civilization as we know it."
Just to quote you from a few posts ago re: Obama:
"I have the same reaction I often have these days when dealing with an ambitious holder of political power: This person talks a good line and is professionally pleasant - but never ever forget they'd sell me out in a minute if they saw it as advantageous to them. I don't "believe" (and I don't want to)."
Seems you share that same distrust of the system, perhaps at a different level. Your analogy just doesn't hold -- at the same time libertarians (lower-case "L") are arguing on the inherent corruption in the system (something you seem to agree with), they demand transparency of said system. Libertarians are minarchists, not anarchists, thus seek to _improve_ the system. Sure, one approach in this effort is to ensure the government is afraid of its people, not the other way around -- but this doesn't necessitate arming everyone with nukes.