Comments on: Clarifying a couple points

By: George Andrews

George Andrews — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:56:49 +0000

I notice that Matt avoided one repeated question. Why is the default opt-in? If Google cares so much about privacy, why auto insert us and make us have to opt out? Why not let those who want to opt-in?

Google will probably respond with something about convenience to the user but we know that is bunk. The reason is because they know that if the default is opt-out, more people will not opt-in because it is inconvenient, than would voluntarily opt-in if the default was opt-out. Google crows that 4 times as many people reduced their privacy as opted-out with Buzz. If this is true, there is no reason why opt-in should be the default.

I remember when Yahoo was King. Then they started doing silly things like having ads swim accross your screen blocking your view. Ads where the “X” to close the ad was tiny and hidden. They got greedy and look what has happened to them. The same will happen with Google if they continue to give in to their greed. Google used to be a great company. Looks like that is changing.

The love of money……corrupts absolutely,
George Andrews

By: David

David — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:12:01 +0000

Thanks for the posts.. I don’t like the google’s way though.. Next thing is they can track you down, not area located, but fully. So ads of companies will show up from like 2 blocks further in the the street..

Thanks for your post!

By: Sam Deane

Sam Deane — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:04:23 +0000

Matt,

I dont want to get involved in the rights and wrongs of what Google are doing – as the organisation you work for is so huge, inevitably there will be a distinct sector of humanity who will kick against it. I am not one of those people.

However, it is clear to one and all that at some point over the last week or so Google reframed your search algorythms. The result for me has taken my site about solar power for homes from number one or numbre two (where it has been for over a year now) to number 11 or 12.

What has replaced my site? All sites that pay Google money for adsense.

Clearly you are gaming the system – promoting your own traffic buyers through Adwords ahead of people who are working hard to deliver genuine value to our audience.

In this regard, I do not side with you or your organisation. You should come up with more ingenious ways to increase your $11billion per year revenue rather than adjust the ORGANIC search area of your pages to favour those who give you the most money.

I implore you to change this approach for the sake of democracy and freedom of speech if nothing else.

Yours

Sam Deane

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:21:27 +0000

Hello,
First off I would like to say that the following is my personal only. I’m not taking sides here(I don’t like that), I’m just saying the facts as I see them.
I think that there isn’t a company out there that can guarantee you ‘okay, we have your private info and we won’t share it with anybody’; like there probably isn’t a bank out there that can assure you your money is 100% safe with them. There are companies who probably respect the privacy of their users more than others do. I couldn’t actually point fingers saying that one company did not respect my privacy and shared my info with the world or they did that to another person. To be perfectly honest I didn’t actually read all there is about privacy policies and such, and let’s face it who actually takes time to read it all?
In my opinion Google offers a lot of great tools and services for free, unlike others who sell you products and the quality of that product is questionable. They post a lot of articles, video tutorials and conferences. I think that they’re doing an amazing job for the community.
I have a question for the users who visit your blog and in particular this blog post of course: Do you think that all the social networking website that you are a part of and share very detailed and personal information, can actually guarantee that they will protect/not share your information no matter what? I don’t think so.
While you’re connected to the Internet you’re never safe. (No, really, I’m not even being paranoid about it).

Good day.

By: Evans

Evans — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:56:58 +0000

You don’t need to clarify anything Matt as no matter what you say some press will still show the negative side of Google. Remember what Martin Bashir did to Michael Jackson. But I just believe that “Even negative press is good press” so long as you are in the press.

By: Yuhong Bao

Yuhong Bao — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:57:16 +0000

And on Twitter too:
https://twitter.com/hunterwalk

By: Yuhong Bao

Yuhong Bao — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:55:20 +0000

“Ron, I’m sorry, but I’m really not the best person to discuss Totlol; the people on the YouTube team are the right people to talk to about their Terms of Service.“
I read that some YouTube Product Managers are on Google Buzz, such as Hunter Walk. Maybe you can contact them.

By: KenP

KenP — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:44:17 +0000

It is interesting that Gawker is unranked while Alexa has it up there and reports over 12K in bound links. My own site had a 2/10 that went away overnight. And, Robert Cringely’s latest blog asks, “Is There a Google News Blacklist?”

The government comparison seems telling in both directions. Maybe your algorithms and the nanny laws of congress aren’t too far apart.

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:05:22 +0000

There is always going to be slanted criticism. We users and website optimizers have benefited from the innovations offered by Google but it’s the nature of the beast to find fault and be wary. Thanks for taking the time to answer your detractors. It’s always nice to at least know someone cares!

By: Tim Wintle

Tim Wintle — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:24:37 +0000

Slightly at a tangent, I’m actually in the middle of writing a FLEX scanner as I read this post – had no idea that Eric Schmidt had been one of the original LEX authors

Have to say that’s far more encouraging to me than knowing he worked on Java… but perhaps that’s showing my language preferences a bit too much.

Back to your point – I think you’re spot on that it’s a question about thorough testing – and it sounds like it should have had more time – but I also agree that the average internet user would probably have complained if it was in closed beta first, it’s a tough call.