Google in sheep's clothing.
Google,
I'm Unfriending You
...
you untrustworthy,
money-grubbing
son-of-a-microsoft
I'm baaccckk --- as Google.
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Google in sheep's clothing. |
Google,
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I'm baaccckk --- as Google. |
(2011 Dec blog post ; updated 2015 Sep)
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2011 Dec Post - I used to use Google search, and when I would try another search engine like Yahoo's, I would feel a warm fuzzy feeling for Google --- because Google distinctly showed the 'sponsored' ads, isolated, on the right of the page of search results. I found Yahoo's approach --- putting the sponsored ads at the top and bottom of a page of search results --- with no clear demarcation between the search results and the ads --- REALLY, REALLY OFFENSIVE. Well, guess what? Sometime in 2011 Google started doing the same thing! Sponsored ads started showing up at the top and bottom of each page --- WITH NO CLEAR INDICATION OF WHERE THE SPONSORED ADS STOP AND WHERE THE SEARCH RESULTS BEGIN. Google used a very-slightly different background color for the ads ... BUT the difference was so slight that you would have to use a screen capture and image processing software to bring out the color difference so that it would be noticeable. Maybe the Google legal department told the tech guys to do this, so that the Google legal guys would have something to stand on, if there were litigation. I always found it offensive that Google is tracking everyone's searches and saving their search queries for years and years --- apparently as long as they have digitial storage space to do so. Furthermore, it is offensive that Google uses 'opt out' rather than 'opt in' --- with regard to storing web searches and with regard to almost everything else in the Google-and-client 'contract'. On top of that, the surreptitious ads were just too much. Unfriend! This 'sponsored ads creep' --- from the right-side of the search pages into the search results --- is the last straw for me. No matter how much Google executives insist, in interviews, that they are beneficent 'philosopher kings' who mean only the best for their users --- well, the evidence is TOTALLY TO THE CONTRARY.
UPDATE: Maybe they realized that they were indulging in so many deplorable actions that their 'no evil' motto just made them look like hypocrites. From now on, I am using less obnoxious search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, which has a stated policy of avoiding many of the obnoxious practices of Google. Google ... consider yourself un-friended. (See 2015 update below.) |
Zip-up, Google. The true you is showing.
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2015 Sep UPDATE: Sometime around 2014, Google started using a little orange 'Ad' icon to indicate the ad links on the Google search-results pages. A 2015 September example follows. |
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I have to wonder if I helped Google make the decision to do this --- because just a month or so before they started labelling the sponsored ads, I had gone to the Google search page and entered long strings of text, such as
and
Since we know that Google collects our queries and uses the more common ones in their 'search suggestions' drop-down menu, it seems likely that someone in one of their tech departments saw these messages --- especially since all the messages included the word 'google'. For comparison, here is what a DuckDuckGo search page looks like, in 2015, September. |
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Note that DuckDuckGo also tags their sponsored ads with a small 'Ad' icon. But note that DuckDuckGo does not 'swamp' you with ads --- there are no ads on the right of this DuckDuckGo search page, like the ones seen above on the right of the Google search page, for the same keywords. I would like to express my appreciation to Google for starting to label the sponsored ads more clearly. But in 2015, I found an even more disturbing Google practice ... that keeps me from considering Google a friend. In the 2014-2015 timeframe, I was finding more and more cases where my web browser was slowing down to a crawl --- and even freezing up --- when I visted certain web sites. There is a 'status-line' at the bottom of the web browser that I use. It shows the name of a web site when the browser is trying to connect to a web site because of some Javascript that is being executed within the web page that I visited. Too many times, I could see that the slow-down (or freeze) was occurring when trying to connect to a 'google.com' or a 'doubleclick.com' web server. (Doubleclick is owned by Google.) Google is far from the only 'internet monetizing' company that was responsible for the many slow-downs and freezes that I was experiencing. I have documented many other 'internet ruiners' on this web page about Performance-Degrading '3rd-Party' Internet Hosts. But the fact that there are many other companies 'ruining the internet' does not make it OK. Google is certainly one of the top offenders --- partly because there are so many web pages that execute Javascript that is on (or that tries to connect to) 'doubleclick.com' and 'google.com' web host machines.
I see why Google wants to do these offensive things. As the gangsters in the movies say "It's nothing personal. It's only business". In other words, it's about the money. Well, I do not see an end to Google's 'quite intrusive' monetizing-ways in the near future --- so --- Google, you are still not a friend. It is rather ironic that in doing some web research for this page, I did a web search on the phrase 'monetize this', and ... I 'landed' on a web page of video links, as seen in the following image. |
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Note the 'YouTube Privacy Warning' popup. I find it rather disgusting that Google labels their popup in this image as a 'Privacy Warning' --- and then proceeds to say that Google is going to track my viewing. No, Google. The title on that popup should be something like 'Lack of Privacy Warning' --- or 'You Click. We track.'. To cut this story short: This is just another reason that Google is not my friend. I guess Google's old motto --- "Don't be evil" --- was not actually a statement that "We're not evil". Apparently, they were commanding that EVERYBODY ELSE should not be evil. I say --- contrary to Google's past attempts to suggest that "Google is not evil" --- "Google, you ARE evil." Google, you are driven into sociopathic practices in your insatiable desire to 'monetize the internet to the max'. You're pathetic. |
This image reminds me of simpler times
--- pre-historic times --- before the internet
--- back in the 1950's and 1960's --- when
monetizing seemed so much less intrusive.
Nowadays,
it's "Bend over. We're going to monetize you."
--- but without the "Bend over ..." warning.
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