Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Re: Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Dan Williamson — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 10:29:35 -0000

BMW's marketing / pr dept must be jumping for joy - they've pretty much received global publicity for their used car operations, a division which (in my opinion) has relatively little visibility. All for free.

Wonder if anyone else will try to get 'banned' from Google?

Re: Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Mathew — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:28:41 -0000

Scott:

Thanks for the response. I would agree that the high-handed and
somewhat self-righteous attitude Google has shown towards BMW is
worthy of criticism, and they could probably have handled it better.
And your point about Animal Farm is well taken.

But I still think seeing dark portents in what Google has done is
overdoing it just a tad. After all, Google doesn't even have 50 per
cent of the search market -- excluding a single site is hardly a death
sentence.

If you had used the Orwell reference after Google's China decision, I
might have actually agreed with you there. I think the slippery slope
is a lot steeper when it comes to that kind of thing, and the
potential "evil" much greater.

Anyway, glad to have your input as always.

Re: Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Slava Sakhnenko — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:47:52 -0000

Hehe, clearly Karp is trying to game memeorandum with these childish hysterics... either that or he's a total nut if the fact that Google is blocking the kind of sites that ruin search results for all of us is "keeping him awake at night"

Scott, don't let the bedbugs bite.

Re: Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Scott Karp — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:09:26 -0000

Mathew, if this is such a "ridiculous" issue, then why are you posting about it? And why did Danny Sullivan post a 6-point "apology" for Google on my site?

It would indeed be inflammatory to suggest that Google is "totally corrupt" -- clearly, it's not, and I didn't say that -- I was "wondering," not declaring. Yes, Google doesn't have "total" power over search, but they do have total power over all the traffic they do control.

When I say that Google appears to be behaving in an Orwellian fashion, it is judgment about their tone, not about fairness, morality, or legality -- at least not yet.

I can only hope you are right in your separating Google's actions from "something really meaningful."

Orwell's lesson (I'm thinking here of Animal Farm, not 1984) is that the slippery slope doesn't begin with "a boot stamping on a human face." Each step in the descent can be written off as benign.

If you can sleep well on this, then sweet dreams. But it's still keeping me awake at night.