Posted by: music
Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 14/04/2007 00:49
Don't Be Evil? What?!
On what planet is buying DoubleClick "not evil" ?
If you look up "Evil" in the dictionary, it specifically mentions DoubleClick.
At the end of Time Bandits when he warns his parents NOT to touch the Concentrated Evil, he was talking about a small piece of DoubleClick which had broken off an ad banner and fallen backward in time!
I like the Googmeisters in general, but what in the hell are they doing here?
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 14/04/2007 01:06
Um...I think I missed something...
Posted by: Shonky
Re: Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 14/04/2007 01:22
Google bought Doubleclick for 3 odd billion
Posted by: adavidw
Re: Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 14/04/2007 05:14
And Microsoft was rumored to be wanting to buy Doubleclick. So, it's possible that Google thought that the combination of Microsoft+Doubleclick would be more evil than Google+Doubleclick, and extended their "Don't be evil" credo to also mean "Make a potentially very evil situation a little less evil when time and 3 billion dollars permits".
Or, they could be buying Doubleclick just to shut them down... Not very likely, I know.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 14/04/2007 12:46
Most people don't see the wolf under Google's sheep's clothing. They are no more nor no less "evil" than Microsoft or Adobe. All three of them are less evil than Walmart.
I can't get over the price. $3B. More than AMD paid for ATI. More than the (also insane) price eBay paid for Skype. Wow.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Don't Be Evil ?!?! - 15/04/2007 02:32
I don't work for ATI (anymore) but I still think AMD got the deal of the year for ATI. That needs to be taken in perspective of course. Based on the technology and promise the company had, I feel its stock was undervalued. NVIDIA's stock on the other hand was way overvalued. Even buying NVIDIA at the same price as ATI would have been a foolish mistake. NV is still far behind the curve where it counts for AMD - integrated and mobile graphics. They do much better than ATI with marketing and that helps pull the wool over many people's eyes, but most of their stuff is shite. I suppose AMD could have pieced-off NV and made quite a bit back...
ATI has plenty of issues on the desktop graphics side too, so don't get me wrong. NVIDIA was offered to ATI at what would now be considered a "gift" back in the Riva days. It wouldn't have been that big a deal to acquire them, but I'm not certain it would have been a good move as it would have changed the landscape in some pretty unpredictable ways. I don't know what the future will hold for AMD, but at this time I still think ATI got the short end of the stick (I don't feel they needed the buy-out and I haven't seen it grow their business in a big way yet).
Spending $2B on Skype was ludicrous, even if it has some decent buzz. Unfortunately that buzz has stolen some thunder from more meaningful (for non computer-based talking) VOIP providers.
Doubleclick still gets a lot of traffic and use by a lot of popular sites. If you have an otherwise "unlimited" pool of cash lying around I supposed "why not" spend $3B.
None of this is as mind-boggling as the amount of money being flushed down the toilet by the US government on military and defence spending year after year.
Posted by: music
Supplementary Evil - 16/04/2007 14:37
Today's News:
Google plus Clear Channel something something.
oh, man. must think happy thoughts, must think happy thoughts. fingers in ears. la la la la la.
Quick, here are 3 things I still like about Google.
- Uncluttered front page
- gmail
- Google Spreadsheet
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Supplementary Evil - 16/04/2007 14:58
Eh, they're just buying advertising space on Clear Channel stations to resell to advertisers.
Posted by: SuperQ
Re: Supplementary Evil - 12/05/2007 06:17
I'll add to that Maps/Earth
Even if a lot of what I want out of maps I get from yelp.. they do a very good google maps API overlay.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Ancillary Evil - 12/05/2007 12:03
Wow, the synopsis of that proposal doesn't mention anything that should prevent them from operating google.cn. It seems to allow for the sensorship as a last resort, once the legal case has been established, so long as it is documented and made public. Seems totally reasonable and the right thing to do.
Personally, I've never felt Google is very much different than any other corporation, though I know a lot of people see them as some sort of white-knight company. They're here to make money in the end. Some freebies and goodwill might come along the way, but they're all going to help the bottom line in the end. Can't forget Microsoft also gave and still gives some freebies too.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Supplementary Evil - 17/05/2007 14:05
But what if I *like* wombats?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Supplementary Evil - 17/05/2007 14:18
Jakob Nielsen's web site.
It's certainly "UGLY-ASS". I don't know that I'd go so far as to call a nearly undifferentiated list of links "usable", though.
Edward Tufte's web site.
Has the potential of being better, but what with all the blurbs at the top, taking up prime real estate, and the completely undifferentiated links down the right-hand side, it turns lousy pretty quickly. He's more of a graphic artist than a web designer, though.
Posted by: frog51
Re: Supplementary Evil - 18/05/2007 07:17
Or always use your personalised Google site - make it look however you want, and with Greasmonkey and a couple of other firefox plugins you can have it entirely without ads as well if you like.
I see no evil here...
Posted by: rob
Re: Supplementary Evil - 18/05/2007 11:48
The UK site hasn't changed, but I much prefer the new US layout. It looks even cleaner than it did before, and it was already super cleany clean clean.
Rob
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Supplementary Evil - 19/05/2007 00:35
Damn, it wasn't easy...
Click here for a web formMaybe there was a more direct route, but froom the initial Contact Us I had to do a big loop with no less than 10-20 clicks before I landed on that page.
Posted by: lectric
Re: Supplementary Evil - 19/05/2007 03:24
Haha, if you think emailing them is hard, try contacting them by phone sometime.
We had an amnesty deal at work where if you had an attachment out for your arrest for an unpaid parking ticket, you could pay the ticket without having to pay attachment fines. One of the higher ups thought it would be a good idea to list every person's name and address that had an attachment on a series of web pages, sorted by last name, so it would be easier to check and see if YOU had an attachment you didn't know about. It was public record anyway, so they didn't see a problem with it.
3 months went by and the program was concluded. Then we got a call from a lady that was mortified that her contact info was easily searchable in google. Since the pages did not require an logon, and since the genius that put up the page didn't tell the spiders not to cache it, her name was stuck in google's cached pages, along with her home address.
What makes this a big deal is that she was a victim in a spousal abuse case, and was currently hiding from her ex. Now, google has a tool to wipe http sites from their cache, but it's broken when you try to kill an https page. I called for 3 days and could get NOONE but extremely basic tech support, who had no idea how to get a hold of anyone with any power. Thankfully, the cached pages expired without her ex seeing them, or we could have been on the hook for a lawsuit that we should have, and probably would have, lost.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Supplementary Evil - 19/05/2007 12:35
Out of curiosity, if it was a matter of public record then, doesn't it remain a matter of public record?
Google.com takes me to .co.uk
Try
www.google.us - that takes me to the USA site.
Posted by: tman
Re: Supplementary Evil - 22/05/2007 14:00
http://www.google.com/ncr will take you to the US one.