Except, the real answer to that question is: “Oh, keyword advertising will be the single most profitable business model on the Internet.”

I think this is the key to understand google. They are building the "skynet" of terminator. They won't turn evil before they succeed.

Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.

>> But Page's reply has always stuck with me: “Oh, we're really making an AI.”

Well, I burst out laughing when I read this. They've been trying for 12 years and haven't managed major publishable advancements in AGI?

I mean, they did establish the annual AGI conference in 2005... so that's something.

[Edit: Downvotes, why?]

Which of these actions are about making an AI?

Most of the Google search page area is now occupied by ads, or ads disguised as content

http://searchengineland.com/google-results-too-ad-heavy-1662...

Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads.

http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-itor-maybe-not/

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional...

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/ftc-googles-ad-practice-i...

Tracking the emails in the free Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business to build ad profiles, making misleading statements to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to having to make statements to federal court, having to tell the truth about it and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...

Paid inclusion for shopping search results

http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrace...

Ranking Google+ reviews over Yelp results even if the user explicitly searches for Yelp

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-complains-outranked-...

Conspiring to kill SkyHook(and succeeding) with its 500lb outsized influence like Microsoft used to.

http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...

Getting fined by FTC for violating Gmail users privacy by exposing their friends lists in Google Buzz in order to compete with Twitter http://www.netcompetition.org/antitrust/why-ftcs-22-5m-googl...

Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking.

http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

Google employee accesses personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email?

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

Tying Android App store to having Google search engine as default on Android, ensuring that alternative search engines cannot be shipped as default.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/12/documents-shed-light-...

Stopping Acer from shipping Aliyun OS by threatening to pull the Play Store and Android beta access. Bonus points for enforcing this by the duplicitous moniker 'Open Handset Alliance' doublespeak

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/report-google-threate...

Making people literally cry with the forced Google+ integration into Youtube and making confusing UX to make people share more than they want to, in order to compete with Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs (warning, NSFW language)

Extracting petty revenge on CNET for googling(!) information on its CEO

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/

Convicted in the courts for colluding with other tech firms in illegal non-poaching agreements

http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...

Companies over time become whatever their revenue stream requires of them. There are exceptions, but very few.

If you'd like to read further, The Innovator's Dilemma and related material has a lot of examples of companies where inertia around existing lines of revenue was strong enough to kill them.

But it's deeper than that. It's only obvious because those companies had their markets shift under them. I think the same sort of inertia is endemic, but it only becomes visible when circumstances change. E.g., look at the number of newspaper companies that existed before 1994, and look at how many are thriving today.

Google's not immune to this. Whatever wonders they come up with, the company is stuffed with people who are very good at selling their users (that is, us) to their customers (the advertisers). It's entirely reasonable to fear what those people will do with my medical data.

There's that, but I also think some users are still a little spooked about the whole NSA scare, and are hesitant to give up trust to a company that could be forcefully controlled by the NSA or secret court rulings.

It's not Google's fault, but more the U.S. Government for being incapable to reign in control of certain organizations.

Personally I don't care - from a data perspective I'm know I'm not a special snowflake, but for others I can understand their stress.

>>You see Google as a company that is just serving ads. >>I see Google as a company collecting and organizing information.

You can see it however you want. The truth can be found by asking a simple question: how does Google make money? By serving ads. They may collect and organize information in the process, but ultimately they are an advertising company.

I'm on the fence about this detector. On the one hand, yes, there are significant benefits. On the other hand, the costs are also monumental. One has to cast their fanboy/hater hat aside and weigh these pros and cons carefully and objectively before making a decision.

>I see Google as a company collecting and organizing information...

...and then making it hard to access on Windows Phone.

All sarcasm and cynicism aside... that IS 20 years extra life for them to be showing a warm body advertisements

>So you can be directed towards doctors/procedures/products to treat whatever they find? Advertising isn't necessarily bad...

Which promotes those who can pay the most to advertise, not the best in their field or even a given user's area/feasible options.

2018: Google Health Scanner begins operation in selected pilot cities. Lines wrap around the block as people try to make it in while it's still free (even though the crowd is exclusively composed of people who could certainly afford it, because it's in a whitewashed, gentrified suburban neighborhood).

2019: Apple (January) and later Microsoft (October) respond with their own health scanners. Integrating with their respective data silos on personal health data, only people with iPhones or Windows Phones can be screened at an Apple Store Clinic or Windows You location.

2025: A federal case reveals that Google's initial scanner, in an attempt to reduce false positives, left millions with false confidence in their health. Google settles and introduces a subscription plan.

2027: Leaked emails, photographs, and a misconfigured Hangout that was broadcast live on YouTube show decisively that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle are colluding to keep wages low for the medical staff they employ. Oracle doesn't even have any medical staff, it just wanted in on the collusion. The federal government reacts by saying "These people have our medical results now and we're not going near this with a ten-foot pole."

2030: Google announces Nexus Implant, a biometric device that relays data in real-time to Google. This is lauded by the CDC as a major help in combating epidemics. Apple launches iMe later that year. Microsoft released a biometric implant in 2004, but it was derided as "too clunky." Surface You comes out in 2032.

2031: For the 2031 flu season, biometrics users are advised to upgrade to a version with vaccination pods. Capable of being intelligently released if it detects you are exposed to a specific flu strain, this enables the immunocompromised to be "just-in-time vaccinated". Thanks to the tracking data reported back from the implants, flu is at an all-time low.

2033: Massive vulnerabilities rock the now ludicrously decrepit but still used X.509 CA infrastructure. Nobody discusses leaving X.509.

2034: First jailbreak exploits for iMe released, allowing users to circumvent the trusted computing chip on the iMe and load custom firmware. This is initially used by biohackers looking to access raw sensor data.

Spring 2035: Unrest in Bahrain turns coldly bloody as the regime infects anyone with an iMe, Nexus Implant, or Surface Inside with acute vaccination sickness, caused by firing all vaccination pods simultaneously (all implants are now pre-loaded with vaccinations for common infections). A postmortem of the attack determines that the Bahrainian national CA deployed an exploit similar to the jailbreak to issue rogue commands to the vaccination units.

Fall 2035: Protestors in China, Russia and the Ukraine keel over, eyes bleeding, as a custom-made virus is released from backdoored implants. Google defends placing the kill-switches as a cost of doing business in accordance with foreign law in foreign countries.

Winter 2035: As tensions run high during a trade dispute between China, Greater Korea, and Malaysia, rouge cyberattackers kill thousands of people using unpatched implants. Calls increase for implants to be recalled, but the flu season looks to be the worst in a long time, and critics say superbugs caused by on-demand antibiotics use via the CleanU app (YC 2033) could be more fatal than the unpatched implants. After heavy lobbying, Google supports Android Z for the Nexus Implant.

Spring 2036: The trade dispute worsens, and after a misstep on the part of a US mediator, a cyberattack from "patriotic Chinese citizens" kills several local, state, and federal government workers and politicians. Presidential hopeful Chris Schwarzenegger is killed. The United States demands sanctions on China, alleging the attack to have originating from PLA-controlled networks. Both countries enter into an economic death spiral as they try to disentangle their economies. A SpaceX launch is misinterpreted by a Chinese early-warning system as a nuclear launch and, fearing annihilation, the PRC unleashes its now-substantial nuclear arsenal on America and NATO. Russia interprets Ukraine-bound missiles as attacks on its soil and, confused by the stealth signatures, fires on NATO as well. The United Kingdom is destroyed instantaneously. This escalates to a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, New Rhodesia, and France. The world is a smoking ruin. As the radiation slowly declines over the next few million years, the wasteland left behind is left to the lichen.

Moral of the story? Stay away from Google's medical initiatives.

Purely hypothetically: access to affordable medical insurance becomes contingent upon such a scan. You have a developing condition which will render you uninsurable.

I'm not suggesting Google would or even legally could consider creating a bidding system for insurance companies to use clean scans as a leadgen system, but in the unlikely event that they did feel so inclined, it wouldn't exactly be a wild departure from their business model

You blow your nose and find a personalized advert in the tissue :)

I doubt a company would jeopardize their reputation by doing that, and even if they did, the Affordable Care Act would prevent insurance companies from discriminating against you on your medical history or genetics.

There's an incredible amount of regulation with health data/records that force companies to anonymize them and not allow them to sell it.