Randolf Richardson wrote:
[me:]
You're thinking of some other company.
Er, actually I'm not. I'm not at all impressed by Google[*], and have little
faith in its ethical standards or the effectiveness of its self-policing.
([*] except technically)
Granted, Giggle Groups does have it's issues, but overall I'm glad to see
it there because it has increased the awareness of usenet groups to users
who otherwise wouldn't know about it.
That could be likened to a scenario where I steal your car (I do think that
Google's assault on Usenet can be likened to theft), plaster advertising all
over it, and then use it to run a cheap or free taxi service funded by the
advertising. It may be that the cheap/free taxi service would be of benefit to
society as a whole (the poor, and so on); it would certainly be that you car
got more use; but you would still be left carless...
Google running a web-search engine. Fine by me. They do it well, and I have
no objection to their use of advertising. Google running a Usenet archive
(with advertising) -- again, that's ok by me. Google attempting to subsume
Usenet into a sub-section of their own services; Google attempting to move the
/primary/ Web onto its own servers: Google attempting to persuade people to
move their own private data onto its servers -- none of these things strike me
as acceptable (though I view them with different levels of dismay, and for
different reasons).
-- chris
