Blarney Google
I started writing this as a cautionary piece against Google. It's certainly merited. Many other people have pointed out the danger of having a company whose fangs are gently pressed against the pulse point of the infosphere. See the end of this note for a change of heart:)
Google can affect what we think is important by tweaking their search algorithms. 75% of external referrals on the average website come from Google. Even a good-faith algorithmic change would reflect the bias of the company, just like a librarian's view of obscenity and appropriateness affect the offered reading material.
Google could hose up the intellectual property rights of millions of authors. They're digitizing the world's knowledge and quickly too. Who knows what they will do with it? They're the single biggest interpreter of the Fair Use Doctrine at the moment; everything that they do becomes a cultural norm.
Google could spy on everyone. Google Maps and especially Google Earth is getting too good. They're becoming a benign, public sector version of the National Security Agency.
Google is poised to be a privacy problem. Google could privacy-hump gmail users if they wanted to. They dip into email to present relevant banner ads. By itself not a problem, but oh, it's very close...
So with all this, Google is poised to become a big, big problem. But I'm not worried yet. The reason is that so far, they've shown a marked inclination to be benign, they respect technology and believe that the flow of free information is important to society, they treat their employees well and so far, the founders haven't gone gotten out of ego control, publicly anyway.
Somebody has to do what they're doing. I'd rather that it's them than the government. So I have three suggestions for Google to keep them on the straight and narrow:
1. Be transparent. Expose search algorithms and relevance ranking strategies.
2. Be ethical in your data dealings. Be Caesar's wife, do more than the law requires. Consider appointing an outside ethical advisory board.
3. Don't make backroom deals with the government. You may have already, although I hope not. The potential for abuse is frightening.
Emulate Dr. Frankenstein and not the monster and we global villagers can leave our torches at home when we come to call.
Posted on November 14, 2005
