hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0284.txt

Episode: 284
Title: HPR0284: Roundtable 1: Is Google Evil?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0284/hpr0284.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 15:35:06

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You guys are trying to start the show before I started recording, and everyone is
quiet.
Welcome to Hacker Polic Radio. This is the first official round table. My name is Quatt
two. I'm the moderator of this episode and with me on the panel I have Drake and Ubis.
Howdy. I've got Plexi. Hi. I have got Deep Geek.
Yo. And Skirlit. In the house. And Morgane, the low tech mystic.
Oh, Lord. There he is. Today the topic, the exciting topic, the first topic that we chose
to tackle for the round table series is whether or not Google is evil. And I think that when
we talk about whether they're evil, I don't know. Do we want to try to grasp what the
concept of evil is first like do we or we all just kind of have a general idea of what
we're talking about when we say evil? I think you should discuss it a little bit just
because, you know, so we know what we're talking about. And if I'm calling listeners
too, we might be wondering what are they talking about? Yeah.
I think we would agree that Google is not evil on the scale that there's mass slaughter
or death camps or we don't know that though. Can I disagree? Is that possible?
Yeah.
I'm not sure. Well, someone could use Google to find people to tell them.
Ah.
But would itself would not represent an entity that would desire such a thing?
Okay. I'm going to concede. I'm going to concede to that right now, but with the option
of bringing that up as an issue later on. Yeah, they're not killing people. They're not
like, they're not imposing any kind of police state anywhere that we are aware of.
So when we talk about evil, we talk about just privacy violations and stuff.
I mean, at least for me, I just think of like surveillance issues or privacy issues.
That's what I think of when I think of it.
Could we surmise that our usage of evil would be in relation to its ability to have power
over another individual and undesirable way or something that one would not naturally do
themselves? Well, then they are definitely evil into that definition. It's almost a
totology, you know? I mean, if you have to have an order to be found to be listed on Google
and they can just de-list you, they can just blacklist you, then and you're a web business,
they can literally put you out of business. How far does that happen though? Come on.
It depends on what you're doing, I think. I mean, well, it's so child porn. That's the thing.
That's different than self-flowers. Right, right? But I mean, we also, I mean, I just think
that was a presentation about Google ads, you know, about how just the word hacker would get your
ad like blacklisted. Oh, I've ever trained my site before I requested Google ads and stuff.
And they're collecting all this information that we're, you know,
creating and can they use that against us at some point? Like, is that accessible by the government?
That kind of thing? Are they creating?
Which of these against us?
The dad said it's definitely scary. I just, I just heard that they have never
deleted a search query ever. Then, of course, there's a whole issue of people using them as
their email server. That means they know everybody, they know who knows everybody else as well as
what their personal communications are. Yeah. You can just turn that over to our, you know,
to the government. For anything, it'd be so easy just to find out what people are talking about.
That's that is scary.
Remember that like Google's, uh, Google's function has a company. Their mission objective is to
gather information. So from Google's standpoint, they're not deleting their search query.
They're collecting every share of information as part of their ability to coalesce information
so that they can relay other search trends upon what you're looking for.
Whether it's this to you when you're looking for puppy scars or something like that.
So, but I mean, I have like watched some of the group presentations and they clearly say that
their mission objective is to gather all the information in the group.
Not only to gather it, but to own it.
That's true. That's a good point. It's not like they're, well, but I guess someone has to own it.
I mean, you wouldn't want your information just pushed out into the public sector.
That's true, but we don't own it. They own it.
Yeah, and this is also a problem. I mean, it's not like with the government, we have some kind of
checks and balance. You know, we have a freedom of information act. We don't have any such
check or balance. That is very true. Yeah.
All right. There's even cases of government agencies purposely subcontracting out their
database maintenance to uh, private firms just to get around the FOIA.
Another point that I was just thinking about is just kind of annoying. It's just forcing people
to have to do things like I used to have a blogger account and then Google
ate up blogger and then they, they literally forced me to create any account with them.
Yahoo, did the same thing when they bought quicker and delicious. I don't know about delicious,
but when they bought quicker, you had to get a Yahoo account eventually.
Google not evil.
They can, they can fully, definitely, scare without being evil, I think.
Or does people need like the big mean evil because they just keep getting bigger and bigger
and bigger and eating things and getting bigger and bigger and the fact that they all like the
blog. Yeah, exactly. Pat Marron.
Okay, so it sounds like we've all changed our mind all of a sudden, so they're actually not evil
because they have all this information and they're using it for our own good. They're helping
us find things to buy. It's great. They're using it to make money on their own bottom line
period, their company. Deep geek, I'm shocked at your, at your cynicism. I mean,
in the time of economic recession like we are in, I think we still have a show, a little
space in our, in the market. And, yeah. I wonder if you're going to appoint Barack Obama as the
honorary CEO of Google. We need some change at Google for, for sure. We choose hope.
Let me ask you a question now. Now, I'm glad I have all these illustrious panelists here
because now let's say that, now we're all computer, computer, some level of expertise. Let's say
we invented some wild ass technology and it just took off. Now, eventually the corporate mechanism
is going to come in and buy us out. And then does that make us evil for having been taken over
by corporate types? Makes you wealthy. Makes you wealthy. And then by being wealthy or evil.
I don't know if it's actually serious or not, but I'm serious and I'm saying, yeah, I agree.
And I think that if you, I think, yeah, you're evil or you could be evil in that case because
there's always the option of some kind of, you know, creative commons or GPL or some kind of
entirely beneficial kind of release of that technology. Well, what's wrong with making an
invention patenting it and selling it to like, you know, Cisco and making money? You know,
you can donate it to a charity or something. It's okay to have money. It just doesn't make you
evil just to sell something. There's a problem with consolidation of too much financial
ability that is always plaguing large multi-state corporations that does not plague individually
on businesses. And now there's just things that a Fortune 1000 company CEO will do that a crack
dealer won't. And that's all there is to it. Yeah. Would we all agree our illustrious panelists?
Would we agree that part of the fact that would even make Google possibly evil is the fact the
size of its scale or the fact how large it is say if Google was say a small time company, not
capable of, you know, storing the data of so many people. Would it be such a threat? Would we
be discussing it right now? It wouldn't be such a threat, but it wouldn't be useful either and
we wouldn't really care much about it because it wouldn't be as useful. I actually, I disagree
actually because some of Google's services are really appealing at first like Google chat,
Google Docs, things like that. And then you read who actually who uses it? Yeah. I've never,
it's not some flex. I never talked to anyone on Google chat. Well, no, I'm actually on it all day
because people that I communicate with on the opposite coast or on it and and that is all they
will use. They will not date on the opposite coast. Who is that? Is it big like in not California
or something? I don't know, but for some reason. I don't want to know about Google chat.
I use that quite a bit. I even use it to SMS to other people. So I have people that
text me from their phone and it pops up in the Google chat. So yeah, I use it quite a bit.
Yeah, I think about it. I mean, and you know what it is. I mean, if you start using it and
another of your friends starts using it and then they get someone else using, you know, I mean,
it kind of grows and your little group of friends is suddenly a little Google click, you know.
Yeah. Well, I think with something along the same lines with them being big and powerful,
it's just like the internet is everybody's internet and it feels just keeps getting bigger.
What are they going to do to threaten that and take that away from us? Because right now there's
just so much freedom online and we want to keep it that way. They think. But what are they doing
to restrict any freedom? I mean, what direction are they going in that suggest that? That's the
thing to, like, think progressively like where can they go, you know, try to, I guess,
to pay because if you just develop some kind of humongous presence, you just can be able to
leverage that and possibly, you know, change things for the way you want it.
And they're good and they're good interest to be limiting anyone's behavior or anything online
because that you would stop using them and that they would stop selling ads.
What would people stop using them and get their dependent on them?
That is true. I think that they really, I mean, there is a danger of getting people,
I mean, people start to rely on so many Google services that are just the familiarity of it
and suddenly you start saying, well, yeah, they limited that, but I still know them best,
so I might as well stick with them and it just kind of gets worse and worse in theory.
What happened to Microsoft, right? That's what I'm thinking, exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah, because I mean, I might be the old fart here, but I remember that when Microsoft was the
rebel on the block and now that they're the establishment, it's a different story.
And you could say the same exact thing of Apple because they were, for a while, at least in my
world, they were the resistance, and then you're like, oh, shoot, they're doing all this stuff with
iPods and DRM and stuff and they're not the resistance, they're actually just as bad.
I don't care that they got rid of the DRM now. I think that was just a marketing
play. They want DRM just as much as anyone else.
Why would they want DRM? What benefit do they have to have in DRM?
Well, on their software, they've got all kinds of restrictions.
Why I mean, on the iTunes and music store, so you're talking about the iPod? I thought you had to
comment. When your old one goes out, you're going to have to buy another iPod if you want all
that music that you just dumped a bunch of money in to work. They never were very good at keeping
your music straight for you, you know? What would you buy besides an iPod? What other MP3 player could
you possibly want that's even on power? Well, I always buy talents because they're all compatible.
That's what I was just saying. People seem to really be impressed with the Iodias.
My first podcast I listened to was, oh, those guys in England.
Love radio. And since they released Ogg and I knew Ogg from Linux,
I insisted on getting Ogg and so I ended up being in the Cowan camp.
There was that same evil Marguelen laugh, I'm not sure why.
Yeah, Marguelen, what's the laugh about? What are you laughing at, man?
Just notice that there's been a recent kind of insertions in the whole Ogg cast and having the
proliferation of Ogg only media casts. So was it the juice penguin podcast? I think they're
talking about coming out and doing an Ogg only cast.
An Ogg only cast? Why would you do that? You lock out like 80% of your audience,
amazingly. Yeah, but who cares? You're not making any money out of your audience anyway.
Yeah, I mean, if you're a podcast and you're a volunteer army, then if they paid,
it'll be a different story, you know? I don't wonder how many people really put podcasts
on their iPods or do they just listen to them on their computer? I think a lot of people do.
I think a lot of the market is people who commute. Oh, but I'm the moderator. I should be,
I should be more focused. Sorry. Google.
I think patients go about into Google conversation. I'm just saying.
Well, it is. Yeah, I mean, it can go back because one of my problems with Google is that they do
not support Linux as well as I think they should. They're not as multi-platform as they should be.
I don't know if that makes them evil. It just makes them... How do they not support Linux?
No video chat in Linux. I mean, in Google chat for Linux users. Chrome was very related.
Yeah, but people with a great Firefox, you know, loyalists. You can't really get them to switch to
Chrome either way. Sure, sure. But I don't know. In my impression was that Chrome got a lot of
attention from the... I mean, people who use Linux are just like tech... They're tech addicts.
So when Chrome came out, you know, they were really talking about it a lot. But then they were
realized that they weren't going to be able to use it on their favorite platform. You know,
if they wanted to try it out, they'd have to boot up Windows or something.
Why don't some people who run some really high-profile websites never tell me that
they'll look at their Google Analytics stuff and they got a big hit of Chrome users when Chrome
first came out and it's been tapering off ever since. People look at it and play with it and they
kind of... A lot of them move back to whatever they were using before. That was kind of my impression,
too, because that's kind of how the press coverage or whatever kind of went. You know, you heard about it.
It was like the topic and then suddenly no one cared about it. But I mean, what about Google? Some
of Google's licensing schemes and things like that. Like the Spine print. I don't know if you've
how much you guys have read the Spine print of some of Google's stuff. You know, I kind of know
that they're on everything that we do. Right. I got to tell you guys something. I have a fantasy.
Okay. I have a fantasy where I get drafted for a jury and the whole crux of the case that
matters is about the guy clicking the yula. And my fantasy is to hang that jury because it's
ridiculous. No one reads these agreements. Yeah, of course. So when something comes to a court case,
is anyone going... Is any jury... I mean, tell me because I don't know about normal people.
I know a shoot of people. You tell me, is any jury going to take yula seriously?
I would hope not. Me too. I mean, I've never... I can't remember the last time I actually read one.
I think I did like recently just for kicks, but I mean...
You have like an hour to kiss me. It's Friday night. Let's get the yula's out.
That's hysterical.
Yeah, what do I think? And that's a good point. One day's pull-up leads a little summer out of it.
Well, a lot of the yula's just to protect themselves. Like, do you use, you know...
You're not going to swallow that story, are you? I'm giving you a kick. Come on.
To protect the prosecutor under a yula. To protect them.
No one. That's a strong statement. Do you have backup for this? I want to see proof.
I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for a yula violation that you made either of us.
Well, actually, technically, haven't you though. I mean, like, isn't software piracy just boiling down to yula violation or no?
No, that's just been a dip.
About making a summary at the beginning or something, it would become like a contract.
Like, the summer would become a contract, so if you violate something that's in the long agreement,
you would just say, well, I read the summary and the summary didn't say anything about that.
Right.
No.
Right. So, it would make it a new contract, so might as well just give you just the summary and then
bring this out on, you know, limiting you a lot.
Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense.
I think what we need is yula list operating systems. I think that will be the way with the future.
Yeah. You think so?
Yeah. How could such a thing exist?
Well, I'm even more...
Just anywhere online.
Yeah. I mean, it was fun because I use Debbie and if you guys know, and you know,
Debbie has ice-weasel instead of Firefox.
Mm-hmm. That's the stupidest thing I've ever had.
And you can say, you can say, it's stupid, but you know what?
I saw someone install Firefox and they had a click on a yula.
And I said, wow, what a great feature I have.
Yeah.
I don't have to click on something.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I never noticed that, but you're right.
Yeah. Ice-weasel doesn't bug you about that.
Yeah. It's just the GNU license.
That's the GNU license.
That's it.
Yeah. That's a feature for me.
Yeah. Totally.
And this relates to Google somehow.
Well, it does. But you were talking about Google's license things, which I've never even heard of.
Well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking primarily of Google Docs, which has this clause in it that
basically killed it for me and a collaborator of mine.
We had been collaborating via Google Docs, publishing all our papers up there.
And then one day he read the license and 0.12 was that they have right
to everything that you post into Google Docs.
They're real?
Wow.
Yeah, totally.
It's either 0.11 or 12 for some reason.
I kind of remember it.
But I'm going to read that wrong.
I can't be accurate.
Please read it.
Go go read it.
I know companies that use Google Docs.
Okay, there's a separate agreement.
Me and Chad Wallenberg from Linux Basement.
We're arguing about this very same thing.
And I was like, no, read 0.12 and you read 0.12 is totally different.
And then we're going to find the user one is just if you go to your Google account,
which of course we all have, even though we're all talking about how evil Google is.
What?
I don't have a Google account.
Get off the call.
You don't even know your teachings about that.
Yeah, go to Google, go to Google Docs, and go to like terms and terms and agreement or something.
That's not an option.
There's a help.
Oh, additional terms.
Okay, terms here.
Where's that?
It's service.
You got to help.
You can find it.
Okay, so 0.12.
Yeah.
That's software updates.
Well, since we're talking about Google and whether or not they're evil,
you know, what about Google and the man's in effect?
The what effect?
I'm sorry.
The the Charles Manson effect.
You've never heard of it.
What?
It's like last week.
Charles Manson was a cult leader, as we all know, and he was so glaring about it that he
actually distracted people from other cult leaders that were around at the time,
because they were there were many.
And so I'm wondering about Google as a distraction,
for like the moves of other big company like Yahoo, because while we're all looking at Google
and we have Google Watch and this watch and that watch and Google taking over the worldwatch.com,
Google quietly buys up Overture all the web, AltaVista and ink tome.
And what other search engines are there?
Now we have two companies, right?
They bought AltaVista.
They bought like five people, Greg.
There are other alternatives, search engines out there and some that function in completely
different manners. The first one that comes to mind is Clustery, which is a cluster search engine.
Starts with a K, K, L, U, S, T, A, B, Clustery, Clustery, something. I don't know.
I'm having no power.
So I can't.
No, you can't look at it.
So I'm trying to go through this, which one?
Not working, but it's Clustery.
But it's a search engine that searches by cluster.
So you put in the topic and it brings up in different ways.
It's a different way of searching through topics.
And it's very handy to say if you've got a topic that has different meanings or say like a
resistor. A resistor could be an electronic component. It could be other stuff as well.
So as far as like an individual.
Yeah. So anyway, that's neat.
I'm spacing on the name of it, but there are anonymous search engines out there as well
that will anonymize what you search for.
So for those that are a little more want to be cautious about what they're looking for or what
not. So I mean, there are alternatives out there to Google. It's not like they've all been
bought up or just not as big. Everybody knows what Google is. It's almost a household word.
It's a word. There's known by the quote unquote normal people. You can say, hey, Google it.
Just about grandma will understand what you're saying. So it's a different level.
And a lot of people don't even stop to think about the other search engines other than MSN,
Yahoo, and Google because they're the big three. And they're the ones that are always hyped and
pumped up about. So I think that that's half the battle, too. So well, to be fair, a lot of
search engines like live.com, they really suck. That is true. I mean, Google has them on
Apple because they make a really great product. Well, that is true. I've tried like, you know,
there were been a couple other little engines that have come up and said, hey, we're going to
take over Google. And they're just not any good. By the way, I just hit up Clusty, it's clusty.com.
Thanks. Just for the listeners. But all Clusty does is search other search engines.
Well, then it also functions as an anonymized, too, doesn't it? Clusty?
Yeah, it should be it. Clusty. Well, yeah. So is that, I mean, that is, oh, go ahead.
That's just a good tip. Yeah, to anonymize it.
Yeah, that's what I was going to go with. I mean, is that, I mean, we kind of mentioned it,
but we didn't go with, we didn't go far with it. I mean, what about the whole issue of them,
keeping track of, you know, when I'm logged into my account and stuff, keeping track of exactly what
I've searched. A lot of people, we know this, but a lot of people don't really understand that.
And so they're sitting around searching something and then they're puzzled as to why,
from then on, you know, all their feedback, all their results are centered around this topic
or something like that. And apparently, Google isn't deleting any of this information. And so,
suddenly, especially if they have put in their real information, which believe it or not,
some people do, a lot of people, I think, probably do, then, you know, there's all this information
about them that Google has. And there's no agreement with Google that there, you know,
there's no sense of protection that they're going to ever be non evil with this information.
We just don't have no idea what they're going to do with the information whenever they decide to.
I've heard of cases where people have had, like, you know, friends or visiting friends or
visiting relatives used their terminal and all of a sudden, all their searches are tainted.
Right, yeah. You know, in a different way.
Yeah. You know, I mean, there's no way of resetting it, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah.
You know, and the other thing is, is people say everyone knows what Google is.
Everyone knows what Google is. Well, I mean, do people really know what Google is? I mean,
do people think that Google is the internet? Some people might. Some people do, yeah.
You know, I knew somebody who thought if you wanted the internet, you had to get MSN,
because that MSN was the internet. Right. Right. Which internet are you using? Are you using
the internet? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'll use the AOL.
I'll write that down, which internet that's really dumb.
Well, maybe one of the things we can do to empower listeners is to publish that,
as shown, it's like a whole bunch of alternative search engines.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't have. Google Chinese, Google Japanese, Google France.
I'll turn it. I guess, is it, like, totally passé to mention Google's, you know,
going ahead with the Chinese government in terms of filtering content?
The source is every company. Okay.
We can't ignore a billion people. That's, well, they aren't ignoring a billion people.
They're ignoring the, the rule is over that billion people is problem.
I mean, if you were saying, you were the one thing that the internet is a big free,
unexplored territory without any laws, you know, but here's Google saying, okay, well,
if the signal is piping in the China, we'll filter this out, we'll filter that out.
I mean, it's just, it's propaganda or censorship or something.
I heard that Google wasn't even that big in China.
Are you kidding? Google's not big in, they're big everywhere.
No, no, I'm almost positive in China. Some other search engines that people use, it's not Google.
Yeah, I was like, what was your plan? How much time do you use this, Pat?
Erasing. Just keep laughing. I'll come up with it.
It's a good point though. Like, would you want all the people in China not to have access or do
what you really want to be able to communicate with them in a known way? It's just an interesting
thing to think about. Well, I think we would want to be able to communicate with them and
have access. Oh, it's a bad, I can't pronounce it. B-A-I-D-U-B-D-U-L.
Then all that compromise with the government.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not convinced that just because they're not big in China means that it's okay for them
to censor information on another law. No, not at all. You should be able to like
tell someone to Google something, expecting them to find the same thing you did, and then probably.
Yeah. Well, given the ultimatum, hey, you either censor your data or none of it gets in at all.
I can almost understand then saying, okay, we'll censor the data because to me,
one of the most important things in life is information that's power in a lot of ways.
And so the fact that, okay, you know, at least most of it will get through and some of what the
government doesn't agree with or a lot of it may tend to be political, but a lot of other information
can get through. Then I say, yeah, go ahead and send it through. I mean, if some people want to
throw some sticks and stone and yell, that's fine, but at least there's information that's there
that's available. And the reason that it's not, some information is not available. It's not
Google's fault. It's the government's fault. It's China's fault. You know, because if it weren't
for China saying, hey, you can't send this, this and this through our firewall, then Google would send
it. It's not Google going, hey, well, I guess we'll send China this, this and oh, no, they don't
need to see this. Never done that. I mean, I'll kind of, you know, I kind of have to almost
not give Google a lot of hell about it. I don't, you know, it'd be nice if they would just send all
the data, but then at the same time, that would get Google blocked. And so, and they wouldn't
want that because that would mean their market share would be affected and all their money would
go down. I mean, that's their goal. They're not worried really about sending information. They
don't care about that. They're just like, China, lots of people, lots of potential for ad revenue.
Let's do it. Did you guys hear, I guess you didn't. Eric Schmidt, I mean, he wasn't Eric Schmidt.
So I'm exactly different, Google said something like, well, that, that, do you know, evil thing?
That's really just a suggestion. Well, I heard about that. That was originally a catch phrase
that these guys used to, you know, caution each other. They say, we can't do that. Why not? Well,
that's evil. Well, it's looking to a deep, more deeply. I didn't literally mean that there was
a code of conduct in a place that they were using at the time. Plus, I don't know about a verbal
code of conduct in this business world, you know, I mean, like between me and you, Yekhar,
right? If we say something, we can pretty much trust each other. But I mean, if Google just says,
hey, guys, don't worry, we're not evil. Don't worry about it. Don't let it. I'm like, okay.
That's a good reason to suspect them of being evil. It's kind of going to be on, right?
Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't, traditionally, companies have not been able to kind of maintain
that kind of honor for that long. Okay. So they're evil. We still want to use Google. What's,
I mean, what? Just use a fake identity. And then we're safe, basically. Is that a good idea?
I mean, having a fake identity doesn't work out much because there's so many, I mean, it's
inconvenient to have to Google accounts when the factual yours are handled. And then you end up,
you know, doing the forward thing, the forward, all your accounts to one forward, one account,
and then Google knows that you're so all these people. Right. Yeah. That's a good tip to help
people not to do that whole, you know, consolidation thing if you want to remain anonymous.
Right. Yeah. It's a good, happy tip. Yeah.
You know, one thing with Google, I mean, think of all the services that they've gotten,
the way they kind of outreach. I mean, in some ways, it's almost, you know, it can be a bit much
as far as I think like the Google Earth and the Google Street. I think I much that brings to the
ability to go out as far as if I'm playing a trip. If I want to see where, you know, my destination
is going to be if I'm driving, you know, to a building I can look down at a satellite level and see
what's going on or over the street view. But at the same time, the privacy versions are some people
that are not happy with the fact that they show up on street view or where they show up on street view.
So where's the middle ground between the availability of information for convenience and they,
you know, are privacy? Well, I mean, that's a big thing that they have in their
favor is that they're very, very, very convenient because they're very good at what they're offering.
They're very prolific. They seem to be, you know, I mean, they're on phones. They're in browsers.
They're on mobile devices. Yeah, they're just really, really simple to use.
And why is that? Why are they? Why are they more prolific than other companies? Is it because they
are doing something evil? Are they hijacking? Are they a mobster company? Or is it the fact that they
are actually maybe outreaching more to mobile devices and actually outreaching instead of
demanding that the mobile device mold to the way we say things should be? Maybe they're trying to
adapt their selves to any particular form. So the fact that they're adaptive to be able to pop up
easily and quickly on any kind of device. Is that necessarily evil? Where other companies
just refuse to bend and mold? It's not like just because Google did it. Nobody else can do it.
Right? Yeah, I mean, that's true. They're not proprietary at all. They support
lots of platforms. They turn up at different events. They sponsor a lot of different events.
20 minutes ago, you were just complaining by them not having good Linux support.
I'm the moderator. I can go back and forth. All I want.
Well, I know that I'm definitely a fan of Google for the amount of information that it brings to me
and the rapidness that it brings to me. But if we're going to talk about actual things that I would
consider evil or the way that Google could actually damage me physically, one of the things that I
would think about is, okay, well, the manner in which Google was able to so rapidly reply
in a response and accurately is, you know, there's a whole lot of servers sitting somewhere
sucking up a whole lot of electricity to reply back to me whatever I'm searching for. And if
that happens to be puppy dog collars or silly cat pictures or who knows what I'm looking for,
there's a sizable amount of electricity that me and everybody else that goes to Google is pumping
down for. And it gets to the point, well, if I'm doing research and I'm going to Google and wow,
Google can translate this page that is in Japanese and I can understand what's going on and I can
read this schematic and now that's schematic makes sense because I understand the Japanese part
of the page that I cannot read because I don't read you could on and hear it on and all that stuff.
So wow, that's really convenient. But, you know, if I'm looking up silly pictures, am I effectively
using Google? How much energy am I consuming in a Google search? How much damage to the planet?
If we want to take this angle, is Google doing to us, to everybody, to people that don't even have a
computer? Yeah, I mean, they're a pretty rich company. So how much responsibility should they
have to go like the whole green computing thing? That's a compromise I have to do because if they didn't
let you Google puppy scarves, you know, random stuff that you'll need, you will be spending as much
time using Google and you won't be so addicted to it and you won't be such a good customer,
advertising customer. Right.
No, no, I'll agree with you on that comment because there's a bit creepy
the amount that the ads and email seems to abstract quote unquote randomly from your emails
and then interject as far as ads. I've seen some really kind of spooky ads as far as, you know,
how can that be random? How, as far as what's popping up is as far as my locality and related to
that email that just popped in to my email logs. It is kind of a little creepy.
Well, supposed to be random. That's the whole point of them gathering all this data so that they
can deliver really great targeted ads that you might actually like. And well, maybe do they ask us
if we want that or not? Maybe to opt out would be a nice option that would make them less evil.
But see, that's part of the agreement, I guess. If you're in Gmail, then you get all your data
stored by them because that word is right. Well, I believe there are methods to turn off the
bad words in your Gmail. Whether it's a hack or it's in the Google labs settings. I know I've
seen it. I believe it was on life hacker. And what does that turn off? Just the bad words
literally or I mean, there it's not turning off them keeping track of all your data and relating
it to other things, obviously. The display. The display. Okay. So yeah, I'm sure they're still
collecting it. You don't see it. Right. And so is this anything peculiar to Google? Do we know?
Just because Google is collecting all the data and keeping track of it forever, does that mean
that other search engines aren't? I mean, if you have an account with Yahoo, do they do the same thing?
Do we know? Like, yeah, they do. There you go. So are we just saying that the answer is to have
your own server, have your own email address. And then your search engine? That would be great.
Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously, if you're just searching for random without an account,
they don't really have any way of keeping track of your information.
They take your IP address. That's true. I'm sure they have cookies.
We need an HPR episode on how to change your IP address. Right, exactly.
Well, I don't know. I just had a kind of weird, yeah, pop into my mind here and take it with a grain of salt.
But, you know, we're just asking about different search engines and stuff. And it's like,
would it be possible for the open source community to make an open source search engine?
I mean, it's clearly not been done up to this point. But why isn't it? Because somebody's not
had the weird thought to, could we do a peer type of web browser? Or excuse me, not web browser
search engine? But is this feasible? Is it possible? I mean, yeah, we don't all have, you know,
math servers like Google. But if could we do it in a peer-to-peer manner?
That would be really cool. I don't know really the, I have no idea what goes into searching the web.
I know it's the idea, but yeah, that's a great idea. I think that's cool. I'd love that.
That would be really amazing. Because instead of popularity of link being what makes
you go at the top, you would probably, how many, how many individual web browsers have bookmarked
your site? Right. You would probably drive it. That would be really interesting to write.
Yeah. Yeah, having a search engine, that's not, that's open source and supported by the non-corporate
type people would take a lot of resources that you would need to donate, so if it's not being
supported by advertisement. So that's not going to work. It's not realistic.
Yeah, just because what you need a lot of like server spaces, that would go into that.
That's right. It's interesting. It's an interesting technological speculation.
Yeah, for sure. I think it sounds really cool.
Like it. Okay. Well, I don't know. Many last words or thoughts anyway to make Google
either better or less evil or more evil that you want to talk about.
Yeah, let's make them more evil.
I say we just, yeah, I mean, let's really, let's start distributing each other's information
over Google. This will join MemStreams tomorrow. Yeah, exactly.
I don't know. What I think is Google does invade privacy, however, it also loves me to invite other
people in privacy. I mean, it gives me the option to Google people, you know, Google stop people.
And I find that very cool. I think that might be evil every day. Yeah, exactly. I think that might
sum up the verdict, actually. Google is evil and it enables us to be more evil all the time.
Well, people Google hear all their information on Facebook and, you know, my space.
So people don't care that much. I mean, people who don't care that much.
Why would we, why would anyone care about their privacy? Because they don't care.
Yeah, that's true. We've got to care about yourself a little bit, right?
Right. And I mean, if you don't care, then you, you, that's fine that Google is using that
information. But then if you do care, you have to boycott Google, which would kind of kill your online
this. Google is awfully convenient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I would say just a call for responsibility
and also input from users like if they're so big and the internet is this thing that's just
always changing and growing. I would think they're so like such a force. It would be cool if they
wanted to know what, what all our users wanted and that they, I mean, I would be really innovative
of them and they, they could do that. That would definitely make them less evil.
Cool. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Anything else, guys? There's that, said, all we have to say on the subject.
That's all I have to say. If nobody minds, I'd like to plug my Twitter,
I'd drag a new one on Twitter because I, I need followers. All right. Okay. Well, that's been
the first roundtable episode. It's been exciting. It's been, it's been controversial. It has been
action-packed and daring. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I'm, yeah. So we'll do another roundtable sometime
and if anyone wants to be a host, either me or a nigma or winter mute will be sending out, you know,
a general email to the HPR mailing list. So just try to coordinate time and stuff and YouTube
can be a host on the second roundtable HPR episode. Thank you. Oh, really?
Sandy, I go next Friday. I'm having a Yula reading party. We're going to come over. We can do this.
I'll be there. I will make that happen. Wonderful.
Um, that's it. Let's see it.
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