“Eric Schmidt’s comments at the Abu Dhabi ‘media summit’ certainly sound especially cocky even considering the Google CEO’s past haughty pronouncements,” Tate reports. “Schmidt, Fortune reports, implied Google is more trustworthy than any government on the planet after he was was asked asked about the company’s worrisome stash of private data on its users, Schmidt: ‘All this information that you have about us… Does that scare everyone in this room?’ The questioner asked… ‘Would you prefer someone else?’ Schmidt shot back… ‘Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?'”
Tate reports, “Schmidt also said Google has been known to curb its own creepy impulses: ‘There are many, many things that Google could do, that we chose not to do… One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market. And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.'”
Tate writes, “Fortune wonders if Schmidt’s comments are a sign of ‘a dangerous culture of self-righteousness.’ They are.”
“But the CEO’s remarks are just the latest in a series of prominent self-righteous statements from Googlers,” Tate reports. “There have been plenty of similar cases just in the past couple of months alone. It’s worth cataloging them, given Google’s deep relationship with its millions of users, and given that the Mountain View internet company doesn’t seem to be getting any more humble.”
Six delusions of Google’s arrogant leaders:
1: It’s not about the money
2: Google’s wealth means Google “gets it”
3: Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow
4: Users are hungry for Google synergy
5: Google is a worker’s utopia
6: The outraged users are confused
Full article here.
@Demon
Good idea re Safari upgrade. Let is be so.
I should have mentioned Firefox’s anti-web-bug extension, Ghostery. That will open your eyes, as well.
All Firefox’s anti-tracking and blocking mechanisms means Google will soon pull the plug on its Mozilla financing.
Magic Word: fear
Well, that was an interesting example. I’m assuming predicting the market is NOT illegal, but how they were thinking of doing it was. Perhaps, they were checking email traffic flow between various entities, like one company’s exec team to another. That might help pick takeover targets.
Read the article, then read the links inside the article. Google is swifly metamorphosing into something very scary.
——RM
“‘Would you prefer someone else?’ Schmidt shot back… ‘Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”
Can you imagine the field day the press (and not just the tech press) would have had if . . .
Steve Jobs made that comment?
I want to do more then just Block Google’s Peeping Tom Behavior I want to corrupt the information that is sent to them so that their Database is full of random garbage that appears to be valid. I want their clean-up algorithms not be able to remove the bad data from the good data so, it soon gets to the point that their years and years of collected personal user data becomes worthless. Blocking it will not break Google’s ambitions to control all personal data for all users on the internet. Google wants to be what Microsoft thought it would be, the controller, gatekeeper and owner of the information superhighway. That was Microsoft’s ambitions with the MSN Network, Google is just planning the take over and hi-jacking of the internet. At the pace Google is co-opting the internet and it’s data internet freedom has maybe 10 years before Google controls enough of the internet users personal data to stage a take over, then Google will start imposing Government back, and mandated internet usage taxes and fees that will benefit Google first and the Governments second. Google has already backed and even help write one internet taxation bill that the Senate killed after my company, and a bunch of other small software companies banded together and put pressure on our Senators to vote against it.
The only way to slow and stop Google is for an internet revolt against the Google Peeping Tom. I certainly don’t want Microsoft to replace Google in-fact I don’t want anyone to replace Google and it’s data collection and peeping tom fetishes. I want a new tough International Internet Body that is given the legal authority to regulate what data companies can collect, store, retain and how they then ultimately use, market or sell that data. The Internet Data Collection Regulation and Control Body needs to be voted on and members selected by, not the Governments but, by the Internet community at large. The International Data Collection Regulation and Control Body would be given authority to act, regulate, rule and judge companies Internet Data Collection, storage, retention and usage models independently of but, with full authority of all Countries of the World. The Bodies mandate would be to protect internet user’s privacy and force all companies that collect data on the internet to make the data that they collect about each user transparent and alway that individual to control what data is collect, how long it is retained, what the collector does with the data and finally if the data collector gained any monetary value from using the user data in any way shape or form then the users that allowed the data to be collected would be monetarily compensated for the data.
My complaint on personal data collection is not just with Google but is with everyone that is collecting personal user data to drive their bottom line. Google just happens to be the biggest one currently and the most dangerous because they are cloaked in the “Do no Evil” BS that the tech punters have been lapping up like it’s gold milk. Google also pays for lavish parties and trips for tech punters to keep them writing good things about Google to try and keep the public blinded to Google outrageous and insidious data collection methods.
The list of personal data collection companies is growing everyday, Internet user’s private data is constantly being collected, traded, sold and used to produce revenues for the collectors of the data. Frankly it should have been a crime long ago. Now, it’s out of control and action needs to be taken.
Google is fighting censorship in China right now. Let’s see Apple doing that. Or the US government.
Google > Governments.
@Demon
Thanks for Ghostery work for me
Wake up Google is not fighting censorship is China. Google has been planning an exit from China for years because the Chinese Government has very strict regulations on the types of personal information Google is permitted to collect, retain and use. The Government also as the right of inspection for all of the data Google collects for compliance purposes. This means Google has to remain transparent to the Chinese Government which it doesn’t like. Google also does not like the restrictions on their data collection, retention and usage.
For Google Chinese Government Censorship is a smoke screen for the West to make it look like Google is doing something positive when all they are doing is attempting to get the Chinese government to change the data collection, retention and usage laws so they are more favorable to Google.
In other words, what you are saying is Google does not want to conform with the Chinese governments regulations. That counts as fighting as well.
Unlike governments, Google is a private service, you have the choise and option NOT to use it. If you are addicted or too lazy to innovate alternatives equally as good to it, that’s your problem
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Actually you do not.
Every website that contains Google Ads collects and sends information about each system that loads the ad(s) even if the ad(s) are not clicked on by the user. If the user of the browser as any type of Google Account that information is related back to the user’s Google account and cross linked building on the information Google has about you.
Google isn’t better then anyone else in the Business of Personal Data Collect, they are just bigger. Google search is only a little better the Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. Gmail is not better then anyone else’s and in fact Google doesn’t really do anything better then anyone else, everything they do is just so, so. And outside of Search Google hasn’t innovated nothing. Their ad system was stolen from Overture, Gmail is a knock-off of Hot Mail, Google Maps and a knock-off of MapQuest, and I could go an on. Googles Newest thing Buzz is a knock-off of Twitter.
I’m not in the Personal User Spying and Data Thief Business like Google so I will not innovating in that space. I’ll be innovating in the Data Privacy space protecting user’s from companies like Google!
The only thing I like about Google is Search and Gmail. F the rest of it.
And every site that cooperates with Google is also private and has the right to do so.
Don’t use those either. Simples.
Hmmmm, is this the same ‘trust me’ Schmidt whose word is so sacrosanct and honest with women?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/333056/eric-schmidt-pr-side-bit-have-split
Moreover, do you think what he was getting at with the ‘predict the stock exchange’ bit was, in fact, that they were going to analyse private email and search data from key players? Because that, of course, would be illegal.
What a lovely chap he seems to be. Not quite sure why he was ever on Apple’s board in the first place. It does not reflect well on them.
WOW !!! Google went to Abu Dhabi to espouse how wonderfully virtuous and law-abiding they are.
Oh! the irony of it.
You won’t find any negative search results on Google in regard to Abu Dhabi or any of the United Arab Emirates.
———————
“Foreign Correspondent” has been Australia’s leading international current affairs program since 1992.
In 18 years reporters, producers, camera operators and sound recordists have travelled to more than 170 countries and produced more than 1,500 reports.
—
“Quicksand”
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2841143.htm
Broadcast: 09/03/2010
Reporter: Eric Campbell
—
Just a few days ago a distraught British woman reported to police that she’d been raped by a waiter at her engagement party. Police quizzed her about sharing a room with her fiancée and she was charged with having sex outside marriage. But even more disturbing than cases like this is the way the scales of justice are balanced. What you’re about to see almost defies belief.
This is not a re-enactment. It’s a home video of an Emirati sheik torturing a debtor. His name is Issa bin Zayed al Nayhan, a member of the country’s royal family. His victim an Afghan grain merchant named Shapoor. The Sheik ordered police to bring Shapoor to his farm in Abu Dhabi. They stood by as he filled Shapoor’s mouth with sand, fired bullets around him and drove a car over him. Sheik al Nayhan was so proud of himself he rang his business partner, a Lebanese American Bassam Nabulsi, to boast of what he’d done.
BASSAM NABULSI: And he was telling me all about what he did and honestly it was so unbelievable I disregarded it, I dismissed it, I didn’t think it was true. But shortly after he hung up my mother called me and said we have a man… he’s dying… on the farm, and we have to take him to the hospital.
CAMPBELL: That was five years ago. But Sheikh al Nayhan wasn’t even charged until his former partner Nabulsi released the tape publicly during a bitter business dispute. The Sheikh hired a prominent lawyer, Habib al Mulla to mount a seemingly impossible defence.
HABIB AL MULLA: We believe that film is totally distorted and tampered with.
CAMPBELL: Are you suggesting the tape was doctored or computer altered?
HABIB AL MULLA: That could be one way. I’m sure that today there are a lot of softwares that can achieve such a result.
CAMPBELL: But the tape does show him doing things like firing a gun, putting sand in his face, what appears very much to be torture.
HABIB AL MULLA: We totally deny that.
CAMPBELL: Dr al Mulla claimed Nabulsi and his brother were the real culprits. He accused them of drugging the Sheikh to make him behave this way so that they could blackmail him.
HABIB AL MULLA: Our client was not in a mental capacity that he could be held liable for his actions.
CAMPBELL: The court not only found the Sheikh not guilty, it issued an arrest warrant for Nabulsi in the US.
BASSAM NABULSI: Well to start with his acquittal is a joke. I mean the royal family of the UAE managed to make a big mockery of their own judicial system with such an acquittal. I mean the man is guilty, a hundred per cent, and to be acquitted and in turn also I turn out to be the bad guy? That’s unbelievable.
ANTHONY BUZBEE: If you can be caught on tape sticking a cattle prod into someone’s anus, running over someone with a SUV and then be acquitted and the individual who released the tape to the world is convicted, I would say that that justice system is really non existent and the justice system in Abu Dhabi and in the UAE is truly a joke.”
—
Unfuckingbelievable
Foreign Correspondent
—
“Quicksand”
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2841143.htm
Broadcast: 09/03/2010
Reporter: Eric Campbell
>>> The program continues – about construction workers and their plight. <<<
—
CAMPBELL: If there’s rough justice for rich foreigners, there’s no justice for the poor. Most of the expatriate population are construction workers from south Asia. They live in squalid compounds like this, out of sight of the wealthy and they’ve been the biggest losers from the property collapse.
(TO BANGLADESHI WORKERS) Hello…Ozman…. How are you? …Pleased to meet you. So this is where you all sleep? How many people?
WORKER: Eighteen people.
CAMPBELL: Eighteen people ….in this room…?
These Bangladeshi workers came here to make money to send home to their families. Now only two of them have jobs and even they haven’t been paid in six months.
MAN: After not being paid by one supplier we went to another, hoping we’d get paid there – but they wouldn’t pay either. With no hope, we’re just passing time. We eat once a day, skip meals and live on bread. That’s how life is. Our life is very hard.
CAMPBELL: All want to return home, but they can’t. The construction companies took their passports and are now demanding they buy them back.
MAN: If we complain to the police they say, go to the court to get the passport from the company. We don’t have money. We can’t even afford to take a taxi. Where to go? We don’t know where to go.
CAMPBELL: But for some foreigners, the good times continue to roll. Every Friday, Derek Khan takes to the water in Abu Dhabi to enjoy the Muslim holiday. Thanks to oil, Abu Dhabi is the richest state in the United Arab Emirates and its loaned 25 billion dollars to its brash neighbour to service its astronomical debts. Like Derek Khan, Dubai has been given a second chance.
Is that reassuring for people here?
DEREK KHAN: Oh absolutely. I mean after the bad press and everything that started coming obviously we were all afraid there might be a rush on the banks and all of that but no, Abu Dhabi came to the rescue and as we say here, Hamdala.
CAMPBELL: It remains to be seen what lessons have been learnt from this debt-fuelled binge. Those who fled Dubai or are caught in its harsh legal system will only see this as a place of nightmares. But for some this strangest of desert states, remains a city of dreams.
This article gets it right. But it glosses over the fact that there is still a culture of benevolence at Google, tarnished though it has been by several of their recent not-so-benevolent actions.
Just because Google is now much more powerful than Microsoft doesn’t mean that Google’s internal culture will ever be nearly as toxic as MS’s has always been, and will always be.
Google definitely needs to take its blinkers off, and either get back to its founding philosophy, or publicly acknowledge that it has shed that philosophy. And that would involve admitting to everyone, not least themselves, that the current situation is fundamentally dishonest.
I like it how the apples talk about other company’s internal culture, as if they actually know it, instead of just recycling their own opinions and words from one to another, driven by an almost autistic attachment to a brand. (It’s okay. Kids used to kill each other in ghettos over shiny stuff as well. It’s the human nature of the beta class)
I wonder how many of said commenters have even designed a toothpick, not to mention something technological.
“6: The outraged users are confused”
That point alone makes it clear that Google is a techno-geek corporation and act like it.
Google’s attitude is entirely in line with what all of us in the industry encounter every single day from the geek elite (933|< 1337).
It’s all about personality and personality clashes. I’ve been through it with plenty of Google trolls as well, the guys who are out for blood if you criticize anything Google. Each of us has a skill side and a BLIND side. To the user peasantry, Google easily come off as bizarro, ‘arrogant’, self-righteous and haughty. That clash is centuries old: Engineer, meet housewife. Now what do they talk about? How her sewing needle was invented and molded? Or about how to stop the cat coughing up furballs in the living room?
It’s all about diversity, the requirement of mankind to have a variety of different kinds of people in order to have a successful culture and society system.
The danger of course is handing ANYONE lots of money and power. Expect corruption to follow. Google set themselves up for a very unusual fall over their own manifesto of ‘Don’t be evil’. I hope they keep striving to live up to that goal. Be they are just as human as anyone else.
funny how Google has the balls to pull out of China and Apple doesn’t
Google doesn’t depend on slave labor — yet.
Generic ‘rt10’ may have a point!
“funny how Google has the balls to pull out of China and Apple doesn’t”
However:
Google is NOT pulling out of China. They’ve been quite clear about that. The only thing Google has done so far is loudly reveal Red China’s criminal nature as demonstrated by
(1) Their long standing hacking of the Internet all over the world
(2) Their deep seated paranoia
(3) Their penchant for murdering dissidents
(4) Their addiction to censorship
Apple don’t have to deal with all of the above. As generic ‘@rt10’ pointed out, Apple is very happy to have wage slave labor in China. However, Apple have been very vocal about their contracted manufacturers treating their slave labor force with excessive cruelty (to the point of suicide in one case) as well as their use of child labor.
Do US corporations have dirty hands from dealing with Red China? Damned right. But at least Google are kind of, sort of, attempting to not do evil. I’m a Google critic, but I have to applaud them for what they have done so far regarding Red China’s crimes. Meanwhile, I’d rather Apple go find slave labor elsewhere. Feeding Red China’s vast and growing military machine with $$$$$$$$ is a very bad idea. Huge DUH factor there Apple.