Google BECAME an advertiser. Some of us remember the pre-advertising, and later pre-Doubleclick-acquisition Google.
I'm not implying Google's motives are "cloak and dagger," just that they are not transparent beyond "index all the world's knowledge" (with all that implies.) This is the mission it started with, which isn't in and of itself a complete business model. It's the model of an intelligence agency, and that's what I meant by my statement. Right now, advertising brings in the money, but it'd be a breathtaking failure of imagination and intellect for that to be the "best and highest use" of Google's corpus.
An optimist would say "advertising subsidized google's mission which is essentially one of public service." A pessimist would say "who knows WHAT google will do (or may already be doing) with what it knows - but it's probably evil." I'm neither, valuing the services Google provides while distrusting the power it has based on its data and reach.
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Google BECAME an advertiser. Some of us remember the pre-advertising, and later pre-Doubleclick-acquisition Google.
I'm not implying Google's motives are "cloak and dagger," just that they are not transparent beyond "index all the world's knowledge" (with all that implies.) This is the mission it started with, which isn't in and of itself a complete business model. It's the model of an intelligence agency, and that's what I meant by my statement. Right now, advertising brings in the money, but it'd be a breathtaking failure of imagination and intellect for that to be the "best and highest use" of Google's corpus.
An optimist would say "advertising subsidized google's mission which is essentially one of public service." A pessimist would say "who knows WHAT google will do (or may already be doing) with what it knows - but it's probably evil." I'm neither, valuing the services Google provides while distrusting the power it has based on its data and reach.