71–80 of 82 posts
edit: yay, it's dead. Maybe I should take back this comment :]
Caution, monopoly at work.
Before Latin American countries privatized their telecom companies, it would often take weeks or even months to get a new phone line. Despite being owned by the government and not operated to generate a profit, a monopoly service resulted in extremely poor service. I think it's a good comparison to Google. The big G can say "We're not being evil!" all it wants. But the fact is that it has a near monopoly on search en…
Radio, Newspapers and Television were traditional media monopolies which limited the number of advertisers and limited the overall range of opinions and content that became available. They still exist, in fact, and if Google rejects your ads or content, you can take it to them - except they really are still quite a bit more limited than what you put on the Internet.
Google is the opposite of a traditional monopoly. It uses automated filtering of content in order to charge the lowest rates and offer high rates to its users and high profits to itself. The fact that Yahoo and MSN provide "good customer service" proves that it's available - it just isn't profitable.
Indeed, today's ultra-competitive world is going to force people to deal with automated systems rather having other people help them. Google is just one part of this world. It can be a pain to deal with but this is very different kind of pain than the pain of a monopoly.
There are plenty of things that are a pain about Google but monopoly isn't a label you can pin on it.
All of the articles I've seen thus far on studiobriefing.net are scraped verbatim from another source, assumedly celebrifi.com. This is against Google's terms of service, and this activity is likely to result in a ban. Instead of whining about how Google is persecuting an innocent website, these guys should have an honest discussion among themselves about what they are trying to do with the website and why their acti…
And there needs to be a better appeals process than the current system of "find someone who works at Google to escalate your issue for you."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://begthequestion.info/
It's easier to change what the minority thinks it means than what the majority thinks it means.
Others (like myself) believe that the dictionary is just a catalog of how people actually use words and that if there's a disconnect, it's because the dictionary is out of date.
All of the articles I've seen thus far on studiobriefing.net are scraped verbatim from another source, assumedly celebrifi.com. This is against Google's terms of service, and this activity is likely to result in a ban. Instead of whining about how Google is persecuting an innocent website, these guys should have an honest discussion among themselves about what they are trying to do with the website and why their acti…
As a separate issue from the quality (or more precisely, lack thereof) of studiobriefing.net's content, I do think it's reasonable for studiobriefing.net to want to know what, exactly, they have done that is against the terms of service. Yes, you are in theory supposed to pay close attention to all of the terms of service, understand completely how your web site complies with said obligations, etc. But in practice, people don't always know what the problem is, or understand the legal and/or technical issues involved.
So even if Google is 100% justified in cutting off studiobriefing.net, I think that as a matter of courtesy, Google should be willing to state specifically what studiobriefing.net did to get cut off, i.e. the enumerated paragraph/sentence in the terms of service that governs the issue.
Of course, that is assuming that the studiobriefing.net account is an accurate report of the communications from Google.
My heart bleeds. If you've ever tried to remove or alter one's personal information in IMDB (I am aware that this article references a blog operated by IMDB rather than the IMDB itself), all you get is a boilerplate non-response, even as a paid subscriber to the pro version. A company which declines to allow its users any control over the privacy of their information has no business whining about being fobbed off by…
All of the articles I've seen thus far on studiobriefing.net are scraped verbatim from another source, assumedly celebrifi.com. This is against Google's terms of service, and this activity is likely to result in a ban. Instead of whining about how Google is persecuting an innocent website, these guys should have an honest discussion among themselves about what they are trying to do with the website and why their acti…
OK, quick: Everyone who, upon installing a new piece of software, reads EVERY LAST SENTENCE of the terms of use and prints out the terms for future reference before hitting "install", raise your hand. As a separate issue from the quality (or more precisely, lack thereof) of studiobriefing.net's content, I do think it's reasonable for studiobriefing.net to want to know what, exactly, they have done that is against the…
Its ridiculous to assume that a popular newsletter and site which had been running for 15 years would be "left with no alternative but to shut down" because one search engine won't index their content. I don't buy that for a second. Does ALL their traffic comes from organic search? Also, as someone else pointed out this company's meta tag structure is awful. They've clearly invested no time in trying to optimize thei…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is not a monopoly. You can go elsewhere for your ads, email, and search. If Google starts sucking even a little bit, other people will do the same, and Google's market influence will decrease even further.
From a consumer's point of view, yes, that's true. It's easy to switch to a different email provider or a different search engine. From an advertiser's point of view, that is just not the case. Advertisers are forced to use Google, because that's what an overwhelming majority of consumers use. The alternative is to be crushed by your competition. It's interesting to me that so many of Google's paying customers compla…