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Re: Google as Big Brother

• Subject: Re: Google as Big Brother
• From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@i...>
• Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:11:22 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EEEACF4E@h...>
• Reply-to: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@i...>

Don't discount the 'crank' nature of people that want to game a system.
Assorted sayings apply here and doubtless also some behavioral science theories.

People that do something cool will forever be despised by those who can't/won't.
Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
The boy who cried wolf.

The amount of cage rattling by everyone "worried" about when someone gets "too
good" at doing something seems to be at the very core of all this "concern".
The distractions here would make a magician blush.

At one point everyone thought altavista was cool too.  Things change.

One fantasy that the developers seem to believe is that web services will be
used in promiscous fashion.  No organization with even a shred of sanity is
going to abdicate their control over what software/services are used.  Let alone
let the software decide for itself.

Often times the esoteric nature of relationships is influenced by factors
completely outside the realm of the activity at hand.  More simply, what web
services a given entity uses (note I'm not saying 'business') will probably be
determined not on the merits of the service consuming software but by the people
running it.  The same old rules of understanding and satisfying the comfort
level of the PEOPLE involved apply here.  The services from one's golf partner's
would probably get a lot more use than something some software programmatically
detected.  That is, if they let you cheat a few strokes or are known to pick up
the greens fees.  While this may seem inefficient from a technical approach,
those are the folks holding the purse strings and making the decisions.  Arguing
against their desires has zero chance of success.

Build trust/brand identity is something Google's been very good not to screw
up... yet.

I prefer services that provide a clear audit trail.  None yet do a good job of
this.  When I engage in legal/financial transactions there's an audit trail of
the various parties involved.  It's mature, reasonably respected and dependable.
When the [expletive deleted] hits the fan the various parties 'cover your ass' mechanisms can
be called into play to untangle just who's at fault..  It doesn't seem like too
many web services are trying to behave this way.

Google, thus far, has been very good at being clear enough about how they do
things such that it satisfies the comfort levels of the people using it.   Not
so open as to waste tremendous amounts of time and resources coddling the
technologically curious.  Just enough to keep people intrigued but not worried.

-Bill Kearney

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
To: "'Paul Prescod'" <paul@p...>
Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:03 AM
Subject: RE:  Google as Big Brother


> That's interesting, Paul.  A crank?
> It is easy to game google so he must
> be an incredibly incompetent crank.
>
> The comparison to Microsoft and IBM is
> really specious and I am surprised you
> are making it.  Individuals choose to buy
> these products, companies choose to buy
> these products and so on.  Same game.
> Google is free to use and uses the
> information they get freely.  Some
> joker puts out a spybot that takes
> a hour or so to get off my machine,
> and multiplied by all the machines they
> put it on, is an incredibly costly game.
> Should they be prosecuted for malicious
> mischief, or is that just the way the
> web works?
>
> It's almost funny.  Barlow wants "information
> to be free."  Adm Poindexter (ret) wants
> "information to be free".  Google wants free
> information.  Seems like a consensus to me.
> As I said, Google isn't evil; they become
> as they say in the police business, a very
> fine field contact.  A resource, so to speak.
>
> I prefer services and interfaces with all of
> the rights and privileges reserved to all
> parties right up front.  That is the business
> approach and it works incredibly well when
> it comes to understanding in advance the
> games to be played.

• References:
  • RE: Google as Big Brother
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>

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