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Welcome to Google Island

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Re: Welcome to Google Island

#61

Post by moultano »

gaius wrote: post #49
derekp7 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really mind the personal data collection, except when the results are too obvious and exactly opposite of what I need. For example, after reading some articles on Social Security disability (and how some areas have as much as 25% of there population drawing it), I got curious and started doing some basic fact checking. Now, for the next several days, every web page I visit has a Binder & Binder ad on it. On t…

One day you'll make a claim on your health insurance, and having bought your search history, your provider will say "pre-existing condition, denied".

Google doesn't do that. http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ "We don’t sell users’ personal information."

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#62

Post by tmoertel »

ender7 wrote: post #20

(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs) At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient p…

> Every argument is trivial to win if you first convert your opponent into Mecha-Hitler.

The problem with this metaphor is that Mecha-Hitler's early studies were in rhetoric and formal logic, making him a skilled opponent in arguments of all kinds. It was only later, after the infamous radiation-and-remechanization incident during which his personality module was irreparably damaged, that his resulting monstrous disfigurements led people to believe him a simpleton, easily defeated in arguments.

But I suspect that what people are concerned about regarding Google is whether it's best represented by the powerful and happy-go-lucky pre-incident Mecha-Hitler or by the powerful and scheming post-incident Mecha-Hitler.

Without examining the personality module, how can you tell for sure?

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#64

Post by ippisl »

jmillikin wrote: post #44
H3g3m0n wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The "Star Trek computer" interface that everyone wants can't function if it doesn't have a sense of the world and the person it's talking to. Sure it can, at least the sense of the person. I don't need your life story to know how to handle simple instructions like "what year was movie X released", or "Gimme a list of all the elements on the periodic table that contain the letter U in their names". Sure things like "…

"what year was movie X released" is an easy query to answer. It doesn't require much context, it doesn't need any information about the user, and movie release dates are widely available in many public sources. But there's no reason that search engines should be limited to trivial searches of public data. A modern search engine needs to be able to handle situations like: * User has a reservation at a local restaurant…

Even with those use cases, there should be some technologies and controls who help keep privacy who help filter, encrypt , store locally, anonymize and transform all kinds of types of information about a person's searches and surfing.

A simple example would be: give me an easy option to disable recording only my health related searches.

And those are relatively simple technologies to implement.

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#65

Post by tomkarlo »

derekp7 wrote: post #55
tomkarlo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks in real life make judgements about you, and what you want, all the time in most cases it's entirely acceptable. Maybe it's disconcerting because online matches are often based on more tenuous information and less context. It can be ham-handed. As someone who has been harassed for urban photography, by law enforcement, I think that's a very different situation. Having someone in a position of authority mis-inter…

Yes, it is on a different level -- that was just the first example that popped in mind (and I hesitated posting it, worrying that I could offend someone else). But you have the same problem with any analogy; there are always differences between the two items being compared. I think the problem for me is that I see it as a software bug, and since it is a bug that comes to light based on personal actions / data, it get…

Part of the issue, I suspect, is that we aren't as forgiving of computers (and in particular, ad servers) as we are of people, due to different expectations.

If you went to a video rental store (back when those existed) and the guy recommended 3 videos to you and 1 was a clunker, you wouldn't be annoyed. But when your Tivo does the same you may not be as patient, even though it's making rational decisions based on your past behavior.

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#66

Post by ippisl »

scilro wrote: post #19
mindcrime wrote: post #16

Hmm... as a Libertarian / Voluntaryist / Anarcho-capitalist / whatever-you-want-to-call it, I am sympathetic to what Larry Page is saying. But there are definitely aspects of this story that are fairly unappealing (Larry Page naked, for starters). I'm not sure what the answer is though: By now it should be clear that "government" as a tool to social engineer a perfect world, isn't working. Corporations are always the…

Technology can never solve social problems. The answer is to simply work on fixing the problems we have in society the only way we actually can: through discourse, activism, democracy.

Technology can be a huge help in solving social problems. For example , the pill has caused the biggest impact on the goal for woman equality, by far.

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#67

Post by proexploit »

stevenbedrick wrote: post #43
ender7 wrote: post #20

(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs) At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient p…

> Keyword search isn't good enough anymore Citation needed. I'd actually be quite satisfied if the current state of the art for general-purpose web IR stayed about where it is now- it's pretty dang good! I can't remember the last time I needed to find something using text search and was unable to. And when Google folks talk about making search "better", what they seem to generally be talking about these days is makin…

As a programmer, you're probably a lot better at understanding what a search is/does and how to pick good keywords or which keywords you can swap and refine to get better results. Most of the general population isn't there in my opinion (just based on what I've seen around other people trying to search thing). The general population doesn't use site: to restrict results, - to remove a word or even " to search for an exact phrase.

I think those are the people who could benefit more from a more context-knowledgeable search, and I think that's still a huge majority of people.

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#68

Post by saurik »

ender7 wrote: post #20

(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs) At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient p…

> Whether it's people writing polemic screeds about Glass despite knowing nothing about how the devices actually work (which they make up for by imagining a host of capabilities and features that it doesn't have)..

So, obviously, that wasn't this article, as it didnt mention Glass (and if it did, it was a fanciful story anyway). Do you have such an example? (I ask, because I auite possibly haven't read enough articles, but the ones I've seen do not seem to make this mistake, even while I can easily imagine people making the opposite one of not taking into account that it is an open platform. As an example, the killer feature mentioned in the other big article this morning--taking a picture with a wink--is a real feature Google hid that didn't even need to be coded from scratch when Mike DiGiovanni released the hack to turn it on.)

http://m.cnet.com/news/google-glass-code-lets-you-snap-a-pho...

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#69

Post by pyre »

ender7 wrote: post #20

(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs) At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient p…

  | the Google of today
The problem with concentrating power is that 'the Google of today' is not necessarily 'the Google of tomorrow.'

Re: Welcome to Google Island

#70

Post by moultano »

tonfa wrote: post #39
ihsw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then you can't sell ads.

Google could definitly still sell ads (it doesn't need to give private data to third party to do that).

And in fact, it doesn't. http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ "We don’t sell users’ personal information."
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