See? It's not just me

Yes, Google is trying to take over the world.

Google's truest and most formidable foes are much older and more powerful. Today we call them Verizon and AT&T, but their real name is the Bell system. Their ideology, which today governs the cell phone world, is called "Vailism," and it can be traced back to 1907 and the origins of AT&T's domination of American telephony. The Bells' philosophy, as promulgated by AT&T's greatest president, Theodore Vail, is based on closed systems, centralized power, and as much control as possible over every part of the network. Vailism is the antithesis, in short, of everything Google stands for. It is this—conquering the business culture of the telephone, as opposed to the computer—that is Google's great challenge.

Great article. Please read it and then stop shaking your head dismissively at my paranoia. Thanks.

Paranoid Android

I once wrote that Google frightened me. But they also do some wicked cool stuff as well. Like the demo above, which is for a development platform that Google has created for phones called Android. They've engaged loads of handset makers and will let them battle it out for making the phones Not exactly Motorola Razr type phones, but combo devices like the iPhone or a smart phone. Check it out and see what they've done in the prototype phase. It's pretty impressive. Additionally, the tools are free for developer nerds like me and will eventually be open source. As an open platform, I can develop apps for my phone for free.

It's completely the opposite model of the super-closed, super-controlled iPhone Apple model. There have been lots of rumors about an gPhone to compete in the cell phone market. But clearly this is not that. Instead, Google couldn't give a crap about which phone you're running. They just want you to be using their software and by extension, viewing data that they send to your handset. And they will give away LOTS of free functionality to do that.

So, I'm in a weird position. I'm still a little dubious of the ever increasing control that Google seems to like to have over information. While they are probably benevolent now, that could change. On the other hand, the phone looks sweet. As a gadget lover, I want one (especially if I can trade if for my windows mobile phone - what a POS) and it would be tons of fun to write an app for one. Anyway, I find the whole notion truly fascinating. I'm gonna download it and try it out.

Google Frightens Me.

We may eventually be longing for the days of Microsoft's ruthless marketing and licensing practices. Google is starting to freak me out a bit. Because they are so darn good at helping us find things on the web they have become an enormous influence on what we see. This, of course, is completely fair as they've earned that. However, as they continue to expand in every direction, we become more dependent upon them. What if they lose their apparent taste for benevolence?

I came across this tidbit the other day, when Answers.com had to answer their stockholders regarding why their site traffic all of a sudden dropped 28%. Here's what they said.

Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW) announced today that, due to a search engine algorithmic adjustment by Google, Answers.com has seen a drop in search engine traffic starting last week. As a result, overall traffic is currently down approximately 28% from levels immediately prior to the change.

"We are working diligently to analyze and address the recent algorithm change," said Bob Rosenschein, CEO. "We will update investors on the financial impact of this development during our upcoming Q2 earnings conference call on August 13."

Let's think about that for a second. Here's a relatively small $5 million company who, in the blink of an eye, lost more than a quarter of it's traffic and had it's stock pushed down to a two year low. Wow. That's pretty incredible, isn't it?

So if you're a company that relies heavily on internet traffic finding it's way to your site, you are at the mercy of some spoiled geeks at the Googleplex? Maybe.

Or, is it this really the business model that Google has been planning all along? They built the best search engine and rightly everyone started to use it. Google is a fucking official verb now. They have a huge portion of the mind share related to searching. It's an institutional part of the internet experience. To test that, just imagine if Google ceased to exist. Sure, there are other engines, but Google has almost half of all searches. If they wanted to steer the results in a particular direction for a fee, why couldn't they? If they wanted to steer the results away from a particular place in the absence of a fee (what could have hypothetically happened to answers.com), why couldn't they? Would anyone notice? How often do you run a search in Google, and then again in another engine? Ever done that? Would you know if you were getting slanted results? In many ways, this is potentially more insidious than Microsoft's aggressive OS licensing. Trying to control a desktop that will be obsolete in 4 years is one thing. Controlling a living, breathing behemoth like the internet is another. They don't control the content, they just control finding the content for a large section of the population like me.

Now realize that Google's method is also to continuously expand it's reach into every where that puts faces in front of monitors. Not just that, they've already branched out into 411-Phone information. They're driving around taking pictures of our cats. They're building giant data centers to store the pictures of our cats. The more they expand, the creepier they become.

What's the 411?

Google is the 411.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Check out the page, there's little to it. I don't have much to add, except that this is yet another place for Google to pimp their "sponsored results". And, since it won't cost $1.25 (What I believe verizon wireless charges for 411Connect) a shot and has the Google brand attached, I bet people will use it. As always, quality of results is king, but I had no problem googling my place of business - I just programmed that number into my cell phone.

NB: ONLY FOR BUSINESSES. Not White Pages searching. Bummer.

Verizon's gotta be cranky.