"It is not evil".
Keep telling yourself that.
Google is selling you to the world, and this is just one more way to get you on their site and making money for them.
Keep telling yourself that.
Google is selling you to the world, and this is just one more way to get you on their site and making money for them.
Seriously, I'm surprised to see this kind of comment ranked so highly on HN. Google makes products. Most of them are good, some of them are excellent. In exchange, they show you ads. The alternative is making the user pay. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement; it's the default monetization strategy for a huge number of companies.
The core of the argument seems to be that Google knows too much about you, and is selling your personal data to advertisers. That's not really the case, though. Google isn't going to ESPN and saying, "Here's John Smith from Deerborn, Michigan. He's 38, has a wife and a 4 year old daughter, and cheats on his taxes. Give me $50." They're simply allowing advertisers to target users fitting a certain profile. Now, you may not be comfortable with how much Google knows about you, and that's fine, but targeted advertising is hardly evil.
I wrote a whole blog post about it here: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9910020865/you-are-the-produc...
It's frustrating that they've gobbled up some of the best programmers in the world to make some of the best software in the world--
And then enforced the rule that you can't use their software without being spyed on.
Why not let us pay for software?
Call it what you want, I call it evil.
it's data they have, data they use. what you choose to see doesnt have much to see with it.
i don't think they're move evil than yesterday, but they're not less either
(basically agreeing in greater lengths hehe)
I'd don't think this is true. Consider Internet Explorer. People used it because it was there. Even with better alternatives people used it. It took a fair while to educate users.
People use Google because it's the default search engine. They could get away with having only momentum. Appeasing users would then be unnecessary until a real competitor comes along.