"Don't be evil" ;-)
Is it still Google's motto?
Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
21–30 of 271 posts
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#22Out of curiosity, I tried searching a number of "$X Net Worth Queries" to see how it looks today. Snoop Dogg, Mike Trout, Will Smith.
For each I got an infobox sourced from Wikipedia or a news article and Celebrity Net Worth was somewhere in the top 1-3 organic results.
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#23I read the statement and think Google used and then and abused their service, but at the same time, publishing a database of people's net worth strikes me as being pretty unethical. Would they have been able to handle a GDPR request? Why didn't they put their own and their families info up there first?
In Sweden, Finland, and Norway, everyone's income tax records are public. Is that unethical?
Ethical is a bit of a wide term but I’m sure it’s easy to construct situations that are problematic.
E.g. an abusive ex partner can check whether you’re likely to have switched job, even from the most basic info. If tax paid is revealed then you can work out what government benefits a person might be on, including those relating to health and disability.
Isn’t the implementation in Norway such that the press have special access not afforded to individuals? That also seems pretty questionable.
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#24I think Google is in the right here. Facts are not protected by copyright and they shouldn't be. Imagine being able to copyright the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. It would be a disaster.
Some things are facts, like the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. But other things aren't facts, and where something isn't a fact but instead is implicit knowledge derived from a set of both data and assumptions (like a model or an algorithm) Google should absolutely not be taking that data and treating it as their own. Given the PDF includes this quote " I decided to build a company that atte…
This is interesting. The final outcome could be that CNW shuts down. Then, the data won’t be updated. So then google will have to drop the info box. And then someone will come along with an idea to track the net worth of celebrities...
Has Google set up some kind of hysteresis that results in the long term, repeated building and subsequent crushing of data aggregation companies?
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#25It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results? From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publ…
It's the business model of many online blogs and sites, and get payment through ads. Of course it's not a really strong model now that ads revenue are going down. It was a strong one not so long ago.
Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft.
Plus it's not really smart from Google given their prior contact and request to this company on APIs and providing it for free.
Now the real question: Is Google going to go away with it blaming it on "rogue employee" and continuing on dispensing huge sum of cash and free advisory to gov and internet NGOs in their constant advocacy effort...
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#26"Don't be evil" ;-) Is it still Google's motto?
They deprecated that years ago.
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#27"Don't be evil" ;-) Is it still Google's motto?
It’s a low bar and doesn’t fit with Googles actual mission.
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#28It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results? From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publ…
It's the business model of many online blogs and sites, and get payment through ads. Of course it's not a really strong model now that ads revenue are going down. It was a strong one not so long ago. Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft. Plus it's not really smart from Google given their prior contact and request to this company on APIs and providing it for free. Now the real questi…
>> Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft.
I don't quite see the legal basis for it being theft. Can you explain?
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#29And yet I constantly get CAPTCHA's just from blocking tracking cookies. The biggest scraper of them all goes to incredible lengths to prevent scraping. How ironic. I hope the US govt demolishes these monopolies. It's not just in web either, the closest historical precedent I can think of is the Robber Barons of the 30's
There’s a thing called a robot.txt.
Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]
#30Out of curiosity, I tried searching a number of "$X Net Worth Queries" to see how it looks today. Snoop Dogg, Mike Trout, Will Smith. For each I got an infobox sourced from Wikipedia or a news article and Celebrity Net Worth was somewhere in the top 1-3 organic results.
When you consider the impact/cost of an anti-trust case vs. the ease for Google to change rankings so that the evidence site (CNW) is back in the top 3 results...
Of course you would do that if you were Google... And here there's nothing illegal, it would just defuse more journalistic bombs for Google. Smart move.