Google Conspiracy Theory?

Yesterday, I was rightly picked up on a few points in my article entitled 'Google's Gonna Get You' by SEO expert and entrepreneur, Mark Lewis and he was worried as to whether I was fuelling some 'Conspiracy Theory' on Google. I am not sure that is the case, as I have stated before, I am a huge fan.

But now that he has raised the subject, it is worth exploring that the company that has done so much for releasing the power of the web has big plans for the future. Whether those plans were the brainchild of the two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it is not clear. What is clear is that CEO, Eric Schmidt, is taking a greater lead in the company and perhaps he has a point to prove. Schmidt was the driving force behind Novell which had so many high hopes of being the dominant network player. Schmidt is an unusual man in Silicon Valley terms, he is one of the few, if not the only, people to become a $billionaire via stock options, perhaps he considers that to be the 'nearly man' route.

In the final quarter of 2008, Google had revenues of $5.7bn and made a profit of $382m, down from the previous quarter of $1.29bn - Google is a seriously huge and profitable company. And this revenue is almost all due to its search engine technology which creates rankings.

In theory, for any string of words you enter in the search box, Google will report back impartially based on its complex algorithms which work on raw data acquired by 'crawlers' which go through the vast amount of content on the web. This is called 'naturals' and is supposedly very distinct from the paid-for results which is the box of 3 or so main choices at the top of the page and the context sensitive adverts down the aide. To get higher up the rankings and so appear more regularly in the 'naturals', SEO experts advise the use of 'keywords' embedded in the html on your web pages - these are invisible to the readers but Google's army of crawlers knows how to find them.

For mortals like me, it's a confusing subject. My website and my blog contain my name and yet if you 'Google' it, only my LinkedIn and Ecademy profiles occur, no mention of the fact I submit articles to ezine, Newsvine or author a blog. In fact, only if you use the exact titles of my blog articles will you ever get to any of them, and that is by no means in all cases. Yet I have written over 200 articles and written hundreds and thousands of words. By contrast, Nigel Dunn, a jeweller in Worcester, a wood shavings expert and a song writer appear many times before I get a mention despite the fact at some points in my life I have been on national radio and quoted in National Newspaper articles as well as industry magazines (I haven't had my full 15 minutes yet by far, believe me).

It's a perplexing subject and, having been in involved in parts of the industry, I know that some companies specialise in getting you much higher up the 'naturals' and that costs money.

What Conspiracy?

No company becomes this big, this quick by being benevolent.

It is obvious and a commercial fact that those who pay the bills get the service and that is perfectly fair. Also, no company gets this big without aspirations to get bigger and, as usual, Google has Microsoft in its sights. Would this have been the strategy at outset by Page and Brin? I doubt it - they were kids who had a superb idea, had great fun making it work and getting rich beyond their dreams as a nice side effect. When Schmidt took over, things changed somewhat.

Google Apps was to be the way of the future. Google Mail is already a very interesting and useful take on email. Hosted entirely online by Google, it arranges mail by subject strings and it means it is far easier to search for things than, say, MS Outlook. Again, the founders' influence is very much at the fore. But things get a little hairy after that. Google Apps is all about hosting your entire set of office applications in 'The Cloud' along with all the content. Across the globe, a vast network of storage and servers, owned by Google, is being commissioned to support this. Some major companies have already switched to this new suite and embraced the 'devil' of hosted applications - they have fantastic economic and, for that matter, environmental advantages, which I have blogged about before.

Then up popped, iGoogle. This neat application sat as a dashboard/portal in your browser, it arranged and delivered your chosen content regularly to your PC. The weather, sports news, interesting industry snippets - you name it, you can have it. The trouble was, when you first downloaded the tool, there was an innocent looking option to allow your progress across the web to be recorded - by Google. The outcry was similar to the furore surrounding Facebook's bodged implementation of something similar. It was, in the view of many, an invasion of privacy in order to be able to make more money. In essence, this was true, but it did not fit with the shiny, friendly face of the Google we knew.

More recently, there has been furore about Google's addition to its Maps facility. Not only do we have terrain, road and the highly detailed satellite views but we now get cameras with 360 degree views of the areas at the addresses entered. Whinging civil righters felt this was an intrusion on privacy while there was a real case where a woman who had changed address to avoid a violent partner was in view outside her new home. Google's ability to fuzz out faces and number plates had not worked properly and some people or vehicles were recognisable. Of course, all views were freely available over the entire web.

In reality, Google Street View is a fantastic addition to already amazing facilities at Google Maps. I don't think anyone would really think theives are going to get better ideas on who to rob and where but they may check a target address as before. Terrorists aren't going to get any better idea of a place than a satellite view or going in person to check out an area. But for me, as a visitor to an office in Valencia next week, I could even check out what the road looks like, the office block and the parking facilities.

How cool is that?

Google and The Future

There is always a risk that companies who grow fast have to become more aggressive and grabbing on order to grow similarly in the future. Microsoft became an all-consuming ogre off the back of a virtual monopoly in the PC market and many, like myself, would argue they have some of the least innovative products on the market but get through by sheer presence, the old IBM way - you never got fired by choosing them even if the products aren't the best. Microsoft and IBM have shown that there is a time when you are big enough, that you can become complacent and the innovative edge wanes. Companies like Microsoft need to be challenged to keep moving and Google is certainly doing that.

But Google is different. There is still a nerdy, geeky feel about what you see. Presentation isn't everything at Google and the information is the important part still. They may be exercising too much muscle over the content providers like newspapers but we could equally argue they have had a good long run at things and maybe it is time to innovate more. Google genuinely is still providing excellent products and facilities and is clearly innovating at every step. It is still free to consumers in the main, corporates are different. I like 'The Cloud' concept and I have little fear of the idea of hosted applications and data - I have worked for two companies in that field and use datacentres and hosted applications extensively today. I disagree with companies that believe there is either a risk or that the web is unreliable - data outages on private networks are so common that people don't notice anymore while the web is obvious.

To get prominence on the web costs money and requires some skill - it's clear I haven't got enough of either to get my blog or website into real prominence. I have only been at it 3 years and still those crawlers and bots haven't found me. I don't blame Google for that - I'm just glad, like so many others, that I have a little pitched area of my own where people can find me if they look hard enough.

Unlike my net-colleague, Mark Lewis, I am cynical of the 'big company getting bigger' syndrome but like Mark, I think Google is a company to embrace rather than fear. There is no conspiracy other than to make money and bring cool services to all users.

Who could deny them that?

Google's Gonna Get You

I am a massive Google fan. I think they have done more to open up the web and unlock the information on it than any other company. It's all very well having browsers and content but finding what you need in the morass is what has made the web exciting, to my mind.

But all this comes at a price - despite the recession, Google clocked up $5.7bn in revenue last quarter and while profits dropped to $382m, they have made as much as $1.29bn of profit in Q3 of 2008. It is, by any measure, an extraordinarily profitable business.

One of its main functions is to aggregate content so that we can all easily digest information, like that from newspapers. While having amazing deals with newspaper firms which nets it enormous advertising revenues, papers are finding it hard. In a recent conference organised by the newspaper industry, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, was both critical of papers and criticised by them.

On the one hand, news companies saw the incredible revenues Google was making effectively off the back of their content, for which they have to pay handsomely to produce. On the other, Google believes that newspapers should revolutionise and get with the fact that they are useless at distributing their content. Schmidt criticised the newspaper industry for 'pissing off' its consumers and that Google were the heroes for distributing the content more effectively.

The Big Machine

Producing news is an expensive business, much more expensive than aggregating and distributing it. If someone delivered a paper to your doorstep which was just the information you liked as a synopsis of cuttings that would interest you from all papers in just one copy, small enough to digest the headlines but expandable if you want to read the detailed article, then that's what Google does. With it comes all that context sensitive advertising, carefully targeted to get us to click through and earn fortunes for Google.

It is, undoubtedly, a terrific service.

But it is just that. The content is what drives the interest and it's easy to forget that. I write this blog but the wider world beyond a clique of readers never get to see it as Google does not rate it and I do not pay them for anything. The result is that even if I have some practical advice for SMEs, beyond a few dedicated readers, the wider world never knows about it. If I wanted to expand my readership, I would have to pay Google to take interest. That does not stop them hosting the blog or popping adverts on the side. My content still earns them some money.

Google was described by one source from within the newspaper industry as a 'tapeworm', parasitically dependent on the content produced at great expense by the news industry. The consumers, though, want it all ways. I read the Telegraph from time to time because I like to do the crossword but if I want to find out about something quickly I 'Google' the subject and choose a prominent news story - it may not be the best written, the best informed or indeed written by a factual journalist in this country even, but it will be from the company with the highest Google rating which is ultimately driven by money.

The Future

Rupert Murdoch, that bastion of honest content and fighter on behalf of the consumer, has asked if aggregators like Google should in future pay for the content. It's a relevant question from the wily proprietor. There is a long term risk that if news is only ever presented on the web then Google and others will have all the power in terms of distribution whereas in the old days the news companies controlled the chain right down to the vendors in the street. It was easy to see how money could be made from news. Now it's not so clear.

Google always comes back to the 'fair use' argument - if this is what consumers want, why fight it? While newspapers would argue that the intellectual property rights to their content is being constantly eroded by having such ease of availability. The problem really boils down to, if content aggregation becomes the dominant way in which newspapers are distributed and read, then how will newspapers make money on their content? There is a small kickback of advertising revenue to newspapers, but you can rest assured that Google has the lion's share for itself.

Much of what is reported in papers is rehashed and blogged on - some bloggers making some pretty profits on the back of the original content. News opinion like mine, derives its subject matter from content on the web - I make no excuses for that. While I make no money from it, it would be quite an easy thing to do - so for once, I have some sympathy for the man who took away the Ryder Cup and stuck it on Sky.

News has always been big business and while ticker feeds like Twitter claim that it is the new way to spread word faster when terrible events occur, feeds such as Reuters have specialised in this for years. The power is that Twitter could create a new army of 'amateur journalists' across the globe who provide short, sharp news from source rather than rehashing news on line.

Or so we would like to think. It comes as no surprise that Google is rumoured to be targeting Twitter as a takeover. It is a short hop to believe that Google is then going to become not just the content aggregator but also content provider of millions of 'news' feeds.

The News Revolution

The problem for people like me is that in a busy day with other things to do, getting news needs to be in short bursts and I turn to quality sites like the BBC, Sky, Bloomberg and others to get my feeds. I have tried Twitter but it really is like sitting in a large room with thousands of people talking and maybe one person in the room, at just one point in the day says something of real consequence. The rest is just a blur of irritating noise. To get anything from it, you have to use the aggregation devices, many of which are available like Tweetdeck and these can even be fed to your mobile.

You can then 'follow' your Tweeters into the toilet, through the supermarket and down the golf course and see what they are doing, reading and knowing. The problem is that the VAST majority of the 'Tweets' are just nonsense and trivial to the point of pathetic. Like watching Big Brother, unless you are interested in the armpits of yawning contestants lounging on a settee talking garbage, Twitter provides you nonsense.

The world of news still is all about sifting through the mass of data and source bites and putting together something of interest - reporting both facts and content. Reading Michael Parkinson's superb analysis of Jade Goody's life in the Radio Times was brought to me by Google but the content was all Parky. Without his insight, and the thousands of writers who provide news content and make it interesting and informative, Google would be nothing.

We have this dichotomy all the time. My wife's Uncle, Terry Tyler, is a watercress grower and his cress is grown in the clean riverbeds between Sarrat and Chenies in Hertfordshire. He is not a big producer and he cannot afford the fees and chemicals to go 'organic' (perhaps another story of a sham industry awaits) but he uses no fertilisers at all to produce the most peppery and delicious watercress you will ever taste. You will never, ever buy it at any supermarket in the UK or even on market stalls in 'market towns' which advertise fresh, local produce. You will find it used by some of the top restaurants around Britain, however. The reason being is that he cannot afford to sell his product at supermarket prices as he hand grows and picks the lot. Despite knowing this, I still buy most of my watercress in supermarkets as it is more convenient, even though I am know I am buying inferior product and supporting large faceless suppliers who would put Terry Tyler out of business if they could.

We are a consumer society, and we want our product here and now, conveniently and cheaply. I think what will happen to news will be the same as has happened in Terry Tyler's industry - the value of the content will diminish and the value in distribution will grow. We will see a fall in quality but a gain in availability. No longer will stories arrive at us based on the quality of the journalism and the facts but on the who has paid to be at the top of the search.

Don't knock it, we asked for it.

Big Brother Is Watching You - Hey, It's Good Thing!

'We get sued every day', said Eric Schmidt, CEO at Google. It was a comment worthy of his more bullish rival, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, and it shows how companies who purport to change the world for the better develop a thicker skin as they mature.

It's a thin line between use and abuse of data in this modern age. So much information on us as individuals is collected and then we lose control over what is done with it. What starts as essential information for a transaction becomes a commodity to be traded itself. The issue of late surrounds Google's Street View service which was launched in the UK this month and got its first formal complaint put to the Information Commissioner (ICO).

In the complaint drawn up by privacy campaigners it cites over 200 reports from members of the public identifiable by the service.

Cool Google

Google has the reputation of being the soft mega-corporation who offers its employees cycles to get around its Bay Area Campus, who brought us the ability to search the web in seconds and who brought cool new applications and gadgets to make the computing dream come alive. It is also a highly profitable corporation and it is hell bent on replacing Microsoft as the dominant player in the future. Google Street View does not seem to be one of those sinister moves by a big company, it seems more like the kind of 'really neat' or 'cool' stuff from a company whose two founders are pleasant multi-billionaires who are ethical, nerdy and general all round cool dudes. Street View, we would like to think, has to be one of their zany ideas for people to try as they could not possibly be any other agenda or money to be made from it.

Street View allows a viewer of Google Maps to actually go and take a look at 25 cities in the UK, and get 360 degree views. As with most things in the computer world many might initially ask 'Why would you want to do that?' But as with Google's satellite views, I could not stop myself taking a look at my own address and seeing that the picture was taken in high Summer and you can see two sunbeds with yellow towels in my garden and my car parked outside the garage. It was way cool and has now become part of everyday browsing. Google Maps is just an amazing service which I even have on my PDA and, yes, I have used it when looking for addresses in London.

My theory is if I use then it has to be simple and useful, believe me.

So What's The Beef With Google Street View?

After the ICO had given permission in 2008 for Google to go ahead there is now a threat due to the complaint that Street View may have to be turned off. Prissy privacy campaigners would tell us that there had been 'clear embarrassment and damage' caused by people being viewed. This was also in breach of the permission granted by the ICO to Google in the first place.

Google had said that they would blur people's faces and car registrations when it was launched.

It sounds just another pathetic attempt by campaigners to spoil our fun. However, there is definitely risk here as one of the complaints received was from a women who was identifiable and had moved house to get away from a violent partner - she was pictured outside her new home. Another complaint came from two work colleagues found to be in a 'compromising position' - the image was subsequently circulated amongst their workmates.

You can see how this can quickly develop.

The Legal Position

Legal Eagles argue that data protection is all about taking reasonable steps and the argument is that if Street View is breaching privacy then almost anything you can do with data is a breach of privacy.

That is one point of view. However, in this instance, the data is being collected without the express permission of those in the pictures to have their images distributed. If you do not have their permission to distribute the data then actually presenting it to millions of potential viewers on the web is pretty irresponsible to say the least, particularly if the images can result in embarrassment or damage.

The same argument can be applied to You Tube and other picture sites which now flourish on the web. In the business world, giving your business card to another person can mean your data can not only become freely available on the web but also sold many times. Services like Jigsaw actively rewards its users for contributing full business card information on contacts made which are then sold as a highly targeted services to other individuals and companies to find contacts and build lists. LinkedIn is similar is some respects but has curtailed access to some information unless of course you pay. There is a very definite implication when you hand someone your card that no permission is granted for the recipient to distribute it and certainly for any third party they should hand it to. But it happens.

The problem here is that already people have proved that they can 'lift' the images from Street View and distribute them and that means that Google really has not taken enough precautions to stop that. But all you have to do is send the link to everyone to achieve the same results, so it boils down to the collection of the data in the first place, how it is subsequently displayed, who has access to it and what might they do with the data once viewed

Will Google Get Around This?

Inevitably they will. They got through to China by taking on board their rules and I guess if they can make sure their blurring technology is more effective then they can re-launch pretty soon. The concept has great merit but as always there is a tendency to trivialise the risks of potential outcomes. We can all point fingers at 'nanny' campaigners but when we are personally affected by it then we suddenly become very indignant - and rightfully so.

The obvious argument goes the other way. If you put yourself in a compromising position, there is always a risk you pay a price. People like Max Mosley have argued successfully that is not true and may even have claim to have 'lost his dignity' because of it and get a large amount of compensation - he was filmed in an orgy with dominatrix prostitutes dressed in strange pseudo-Nazi outfits.

If he can get away with that then Google Street View doesn't stand a chance. As always there has to be a balance. It looks as if Google's first effort got it wrong - but the cool dudes among us hope they put it right as it looks a great tool.