Tag Archives: google

Do No Evil – Ursula Le Guin, The Authors Guild and Google

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dr_evilDuring Google’s formative years, the company decided to come up withthe equivalent of a short mission / vision statement that summed up what it was to be Google.  After some serious thinking, the slogan emerged.  ‘Do No Evil’.  Nice…although as someone pointed out – it really is just civilised good manners to do no evil.  Why make such a fuss about it?

Well, the years pass and Google just keep dipping a toe in the muddy waters of naughtiness, with occasional activities that, whilst usually not up there with breeding sharks with head mounted laser cannons, a la the handsome fellow top left, might be construed as being pretty darn close to very bad indeed. 

Take a look at parts of John Batelle’s book ‘The Search’.

Anyway….enough of the history lesson.  Recently Google have been scanning books.  Hundreds of thousands of books.  MILLIONS of books!Some old and out of copyright…other…not so old and definitely not out of copyright.  And they’re going to be scanning millions more.  Their aim is to create an online scanned library of books to equal the scope and reach of national libraries.  Now, various settlements have been agreed and Google take efforts to try and restrict copying of copyrighted materials, but there have been a number of legal blocks to Google based on their breach of copyright.

The US Authors Guild – an organisation that supports the rights of authors in the united States – has recently entered in to an agreement with Google to support the project.  In many ways, this gives the project the apparent support of a large number of authors, but some individuals – like Ursual Le Guin – are quitting the AG in protest.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/24/le-guin-authors-guild-deal

I can see the point of the author’s protest – after all I’m a published author myself – but at the same time agree that Google seem to be taking steps to restrict the amount of the book that you can read online.  However, my fears are for the future.  This set of agreements seem to have given Googlean incredible’head start’ on what is effectively a large tranche of the world’s written knowledge.  What happens in a few years time when a library or a publisher hits hard times, and that nice friendly Googlecomes along and says ‘Hey, we can help.  Just let us have the rights to display all of each of your books online, and an e-book publishing right, and we’ll buy you out / licence your stuff.’  All of a sudden Google starts becoming the arbiter of what’s published across the board.

At themoment,  Google can effectively make or break web sites the world over by the simple expedient of adjusting it’s search engines or, in some cases, excluding sites directly.  Google currently only takes the latter steps when they’re compelled to by law or someone like the Chinese Government tells them to do so, but the technology is there.  Again, see ‘The Search’.  Now, imagine 2015 when Googlehave the online rights to the book collections of a few major publishers.  And you happen to run ‘Bill’s Books’ – a little shop still selling books the old fashioned way – and you have old stock that might just conflict withthe publisher that Google have just bought up.  You might just find yourself falling off the search results… Conflict of interest, maybe?

I’m afraid I don’t trust anyone withthe sort of control that Googleis getting over the world’s knowledge and information.  It’s an extreme idea, but could Google end therevolution of available knowledge started by Gutenberg.  If all knowledgeis increasingly online, and access is directly or indirectly arbitrated by one corporation, that is a Hell of an opportunity for censorship of the sort last practised in the Middle ages by the Catholic Church or by the Totalitarian Governments of the 20th Century.

Like most of us – I use Google quite extensively.  I’m just not quite sure that the spoon I’m using to sup with is long enough anymore.

Real Time Search – how important?

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searchglassWell, both Microsoft and Google have stated that they’re adding the capability to search Twitter feeds in real-time to their search engines.   What does this mean to us mere mortals who tweet and search?

The example that I’ve seen given about the usefulness of Real Time Search (RTS) is to do with skiing – not a topic close to my heart, or one which I know much about.  My knowledge stops at things strapped to your feet and the requirement for snow…  Anyway, the example given is that you Google your favourite ski resort and along side the nromal search results returned by Google, there would also be a number of relevant, recent Tweets, that could, for example, include information about current conditions on the slopes.  The Tweets will appear based on their content or, if the Tweeter has set their account up accordingly, the location from which the Tweet has been made (geocoded Tweet).  On a purely technical basis, this is quite something.  The hamsters powering Google’s server will be running around in their wheels like crazy…

There has been an add in available for a while for Firefox using Greasemonkey that does something similar, and the effect is pretty cool, although I’m yet to be convinced about the value of most Tweets in terms of conveying information meaningful to alot of people, except in a few sets of circumstances. 

As for the importance of this combination of Tweets and Search Engine results, it’s pretty early in the game to tell but I have my own concerns and thoughts on the issue that I’ll share here.  And then in a few months time I can come back and either pat myself on the back or quietly remove this post…

Privacy

A little while ago I published this item – ‘Google and The Dead Past’ in which I commented on the convergence of search technologies – Search Engine, Twitter and Facebook being three data sources – and expressed a fear that we might be moving very slowly towards a form of voluntary surveillance society, where our regular use of Social Networks  would result in much of our lives being available for review on search engines in near real-time if we weren’t careful.  Well, we now have Tweets being folded in to the Search mix; I assume that it won’t belong before Twitpics get included, and then if Facebook open up their API to facilitate searching,  my comments in that article are coming closer to reality!

Of course,  just as with standard Search Engine manegemnt on a website, it is posisble to exclude your tweets form this search.  Google have had a few gremlins with this, but they’re getting there, and it’s likely that, were they ever to join the party, Facebook would do the same thing. Whether people would avail themselves of these tools is another matter.

Relevance

Just how the search engine’s ranking system will be applied to Tweets is an inetersting question.  For example, Google’s Pagerank algorithm relies on many things, including links to a page, links from it, the nature of the links, etc.  as well as content.  This is simply not going to work on Tweets, so it’s safe to assume that some other form of relevance rating will be used.  And Bing will have something totally different – as will any other Search Engine involved in searching Tweets.  I am forced to wonder how relevant the results of Real Time Search will be.  Obviously it will improve with time, but so will the ability of spammers to game the system.

Perspective

Those of us old enough to remember the TV news reports of the Falklands War in 1982 would remember that events could happen in the South Atlantic a good few days before we saw it on the news.  By the time of the First Gulf War, CNN was reporting on events as they happened from it’s own reporters and within hours from the wider military theatre of operations.  By the Second Gulf War, in 2003, there were journalists embedded with infantry units carrying satellite phones and digital cameras and literally reporting on ongoing fire-fights.  It’s been said that the Falklands were reported from the point of view of the Government, the First Gulf War from the point of view of the generals and the Second Gulf War from the perspective of an infantry Platoon leader or tank commander.

The result is that whilst the Platoon Leader point of view gives us immediacy, it allows no time for contemplation of wider issues.  And the immediate perspective of one person in a large news event, for example, can give a very distorted view.  I very much expect that Tweets in search result could easily give rise to ‘firestorms’ of rumour that flare up and then get corrected within minutes.  What impact this will have on news gathering and the general emotional health of people doing searches on new stories – to be seeing a view of the world that is from the bottom up, changing every few minutes, I’m not sure.  Whilst this sort of immediate citizen journalism is great in theory I’m not sure that it’s good in practice;  tweets available to all on a Real Time Search might manipulate the news as much as report it.

So…Real Time Search important?  Conceivably yes – but perhaps in the wrong way.