Here are two polar opposite viewpoints from two prominent businessmen with blogs.
Direct marketer, Bob Bly says:
Google makes no secret of its contempt for copyright and intellectual property ownership — believing, as so many Netters do, that “information should be free.”
To which I say, “Bull*(#$%*!!!”
Serial entrepreneur, Jason Calacanis says:
Google doesn’t steal anyone’s content.
So which is it? Granted, Bly was talking about YouTube (which is owned by Google) and Calacanis was talking about Google News, but for our purposes here that doesn’t matter much. “Does Google steal?” is what matters.
Saying they steal is a pretty nasty character attack on a firm that believes in “doing no evil.” Not to mention the fact that stealing is a totally reckless strategy for any firm to actively engage in. Yet, Bly has a point about copyrighted material appearing on YouTube without the owner’s consent. This seems like a bottomless argument to me.
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They say ‘do no evil’ sure. But we all know human nature, and what is bound to happen.
If google ends up having access to, and basically controlling whatever available information there is – personal and otherwise – then what?
All they’d need is one little slip to open the floodgates.
Trust that they don’t want to do evil. Sure. Trust that they won’t at some point? Not a chance.
On another note…this just in from http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/national/article/0,1406,KNS_350_5478083,00.html
In an effort to raise awareness about atrocities in Sudan, Google Inc. has updated its online satellite mapping service with images of burned villages, refugee camps and wounded children.
The project, done in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, offers users of Google Earth a bird’s-eye view of the aftermath of four years of fighting between the East African nation’s Arab-dominated government and the largely black residents of the Darfur region.
Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, said the new high-resolution images are intended to encourage individuals to act against what he – along with U.S. officials and many human-rights groups – describes as genocide.
“We’re joining with the museum … in this initiative because the situation in Darfur is a global catastrophe, and because we believe technology can be a catalyst” for education and action, he said at a press conference in Washington.