What is the most evil corporation in the world?

[Barrister]

Yes, that's exactly what they do.  And it's enormously profitable for them.

As well it should be, it's an amazing search engine.

But who the hell types in "Romney Baptizes Famous Dead Jew" into Google, gets a bunch of links about Romney baptizing dead Jews and stops there?  Presumably they want to read an article on it.  So they click a link and the content provider gets a hit and their own ad exposure.

So then you go, read the one article on, say, the NYT, then go back to google for your next query.  NYT gets one ad hit, while google, based on the aggregation of millions of different sources, gets many more.

Ask Brazen how the web model is working for media companies these days.

[frunk]

That's a Marti-esque bad analogy.

The problem isn't that google "dlivers" content to you - it's that they don't pay the content creators anything, yet profit by selling ads.

So the content creators would prefer if Google didn't link to them?

[Eddie Teach]

I second Google. Facebook is trying, but they aren't quite as evil as Google yet.

I find Google useful, unlike Facebook and Twitter.

[Valmy]

Facebook is amazing if you are trying to find somebody.  Family members, old friends, and all that.  It was suprisingly hard to do before.

[Admiral Yi]

What frunk said Beeb.  It's not a zero sum game.  If I go straight to CNN to read about baptizing Jews or link through Google it makes no difference to CNN's bottom line.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm amused by all the gene-modified food alarmists.

I don't have anything against genetically engineered food.

[Syt]

That's a Marti-esque bad analogy.

The problem isn't that google "dlivers" content to you - it's that they don't pay the content creators anything, yet profit by selling ads.

So the content creators would prefer if Google didn't link to them?

In Germany, the news media push for legislation to charge anyone who links to a news story and offers a quote (short quotes suffice) and makes money from it (a blog with banner ads would qualify) and means to move against those who don't pay their share.

[PRC]

What frunk said Beeb.  It's not a zero sum game.  If I go straight to CNN to read about baptizing Jews or link through Google it makes no difference to CNN's bottom line.

It actually might.  Going to CNN through google helps CNN's own search rankings on Google and other search sites which increases their exposure on search engines and might translate into more ad revenue for CNN itself.  Going directly to CNN by typing the url into your address bar doesn't help with exposure on search.

[The Larch]

What about Fox? Rupert Murdoch makes for a good James Bond villain.

[PRC]

Yes, that's exactly what they do.  And it's enormously profitable for them.

As well it should be, it's an amazing search engine.

But who the hell types in "Romney Baptizes Famous Dead Jew" into Google, gets a bunch of links about Romney baptizing dead Jews and stops there?  Presumably they want to read an article on it.  So they click a link and the content provider gets a hit and their own ad exposure.

Marketing teams, research companies and web developers will type anything and everything into search and not continue on to the article.  They're looking for who ranks where on search, how many results their phrase returned, who is paying to use AdWords (sponsored search), etc.

[frunk]

I'm trying hard to think what makes Google evil and I'm not coming up with much.  They bungled a lot of censorship policies with relation to China, and the Android deployment model has some critical failures (mostly due to phone companies' desire for platform control).  Beyond that, having advertising on search results isn't even a 0.1 on the evil scale.  The site they are linking to can also have advertising, which if they were any good at could be tailored to the content even more closely than Google's.  The difference is most companies aren't even close to as good at it as Google.

[Admiral Yi]

It's like restaurants getting pissed at taxi cabs for bringing them customers.

[CountDeMoney]

Facebook is amazing if you are trying to find somebody.  Family members, old friends, and all that.  It was suprisingly hard to do before.

There's usually a reason why we don't want to be found.

[frunk]

It's like restaurants getting pissed at taxi cabs for bringing them customers.

They'd be fine with it if the taxis didn't have ads on them.

[CountDeMoney]

It's like restaurants getting pissed at taxi cabs for bringing them customers.

They'd be fine with it if the taxis didn't have ads on them.