Cowboy Confessional

Google is evil.

Sorry Sergey, Lawrence. You know as well as I that your manta of “don’t be evil” is transparent, and that like any powerful entity – be it corporate or government – it succumbs to sins of opportunity and convenience.

How has Google gone evil? Let me compute the ways.

First and foremost are multiple modes of censorship. A recent spate of reports showed Google playing religious games by censoring insults to Islam (note to Brin and Page – that is actually an insult to your customers). When one typed into Google’s search engine a phrase such as “Christianity is” or “Judaism is”, Google most helpfully filled in the top suggestions from its vast database, most of which were derogatory. Yet when the search phrase began “Islam is”, Google was oddly silent.

Some PR flack at Google suggested it is was programming bug, which this former hacker knows is not. Data queries operate on four simple models, and no others can exist. A search dumps nothing, dumps everything (obviously not the case here), allows a defined subset of information out (the general Google operation based on keywords) or dumps everything but disallows certain data to escape.

That last mode is the system that filtered insults to Islam but not to any other religion. This is not caused by a bug, it is caused by a configuration decision. Ipso facto, someone in Google took specific and premeditated action to avoid displaying what people think about Islam, yet leaving uncensored what people think of other faiths. I have my suspicions that Google was prostrating itself before yet another brutal government.

Evil.

It should not surprise us then that Sergey and Lawrence unevenly endorse censorship and other forms of evil. Google’s relationship with one of the most evil entities in the known world – the tank rolling, protestor squashing, summary executing, labor camping and (yes) censoring government of mainland China. With better than a billion head and a growing middle class, China is an obvious place for advertising companies (like Google) to make a dime. Thus, Google bent over forwards for their PRC puppeteers, willfully excluding information for consumption by the average Chinese netitizen. Searching for “tiananmen square massacre” in google.cn produces a highly redacted set of responses than for google.com.

Evil.

Yet Brin and Page threw a harmonized hissy fit when the same source of evil (the Chinese government, not Google, though it is increasing difficult to decide which is more ruthless) hacked into Google’s systems to troll for dissident data – emails to and from human rights activists. Google stomped its corporate feet and threatened to exit the Chinese market, where unlike the rest of the world, Google is not the market leader.

To summarize, it is OK for Google to unilaterally (Islam) and collaboratively (China) perform evil acts on the world at large, but it is not OK for evil to be committed against Google.

But Google won’t leave China. Instead, Google is ‘discussing’ with tyrants what can be done to accommodate freedom, which is nothing. As evidence, China issued a most interesting quote about the incident, saying “Properly guiding Internet opinion is a major measure for protecting Internet information security.” In the end Google will accept their 35% share of 1.3 billion people because that’s real money, something more important to Silicon Valley than right and wrong.

Evil.

Google’s grotesqueness is greater than just its major non-movements. They have taken lessons from other organization and engineered recurring forms of minor mass thievery. After all, most of Google’s wealth comes from advertisers, and numerically most of their advertisers are small operations. The past year brought light to a tiny Google scam where by Sergey and Lawrence recruited new advertisers with a teaser of 100 free pay-per-click dollars. Readily available coupons allow new account owners to start running Google ads everywhere. Just give Google your credit card number (in case you go over your $100) and everything is set in motion.

The problem is that the usage and click rates are initially not shown in the new user’s account, leaving them to think that their ads ineffective. Newbies continue to tweak their ads, and many stop tracking performance daily. They are delighted somewhat later when click-through begin to appear. Nuevo advertisers are equally undelighted when they get a hefty bill from Google. The oddly silent initial ineffectualness of Google’s ads cause new users to believe that subsequent clicks are billed against the free $100. In fact, that gift has been spent on the unreported clicks, and the surge of activity seen by Google’s new users is billed to their credit cards. Since the initial $100 basically costs Google nothing, it is an elaborate scam to suck money from otherwise attentive people who previously had no interest in advertising via Google.

Evil.

I myself encountered an odd issue with Google advertising. Having decided to pimp my book AFTERLIFE in multiple ways, I ran some Google display ads. The campaign’s end occurred at the start of the Christmas holiday travel season, and I disabled all campaigns before boarding the whisperjet. Naturally I was somewhat surprised to receive a bill from Google for advertising that ran during the holidays, and to discover that one of my campaigns had been reactivated without my permission.

Evil.

I can suffer this minor economic rear-ender. What cannot be suffered is a witch in corporate clothing. Google’s transgressions – petty theft, mass censorships of the masses – are sins against the common man. Powerful as Brin and Page may be, they cannot abuse governments because governments have the off switch for data routers. But the caustic indifference to Google shown by governments is the same indifference Google shows to people, the ones that directly and indirectly made Sergey and Lawrence wealthy and powerful. Until they quit being evil, it is up to the people to quit aiding said evil. Maybe we need to ping Bing.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Economics, International, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.