Originally Posted by Frappacino

You think ethics is a concern to any corporation ?

The rest is some pseudo-socialist rant. Move along, nothing to see here.

I think that's a hand wave on your part. You're just slapping a label on the author's assertions and then jettisoning them without analyzing it and providing a reasoned response. The author is simply stating that every candle lights the darkness around it -- but it still casts a shadow. The question here is not whether Google (or any company, organization, or group) has done wrong, but whether the good outweighs the bad. And has it?

Is the ability to search the internet using a proprietary algorithm and database almost instantly worth the steady erosion of our privacy and corresponding loss of civil liberty? Our founding fathers made the vote anonymous for a reason -- and in that day and age, the right to peacefully assemble was also the right to anonymously assemble. Nobody back then anticipated that every public moment of our lives would be stored in a giant machine, and be replayable at the touch of a button in perpetuity. The loss of anonymity means that people who might otherwise become politically active now don't. It means the vote itself is corrupted because people talk about it amongst each other less. It means the mass media gains more sway over popular opinion because what they watch on TV isn't going into a government database, unlike assembling for protest or discussion... which results in arrests and being placed on "no fly" lists. Google provides blogging services, and as a result of using them, many citizens have wound up on such lists. This is proven, documented fact, not "pseudo-socialist" ranting.

And the author is right: Technology can't fix social problems. And fundamentally, that's what we're discussing, and that's what you missed. Information Technology is fundamentally about improving reliability, efficiency, and speed of digital systems. It says nothing about the process we're making more efficient or reliable. What would you say to speed cameras everywhere? Or black boxes that record everything you do and then fine you? Be honest with yourself: How many weeks would it take before you were hopelessly in debt if every single moment you spent behind the wheel was audited by a police officer... forever?

Sudden advances in IT expose latent social problems. Our legal system doesn't move as quickly as our industry does, and so there's a gap between the time a problem (like privacy) is discovered, and a socially-acceptable solution is found and implimented. That gap is growing year over year because our legal system isn't getting any faster, but our technology is. So you can wave your hand and say "nothing to see here", if you want... but truthfully, you're young and naive and that's what's on display here, not some insightful social commentary. There are real problems here, and although the author may not have articulated it as clearly as I have, it's still clear what his underlying point is.

Self-regulation has failed in almost every industry -- sooner or later, dollar signs flash in someone's eyes, and it doesn't matter whether it's ethical or not, only whether it's legal or not. And increasingly, what's legal and what isn't comes down to the balance in your bank account. Is that the society we want to live in? If the answer is no, then we need to start thinking about how to find a socially-acceptable way to even the differences between our ever plodding along legal system with an industry that measures progress in milliseconds.

Originally Posted by GrimyHR

again r.etards writing stuff they dont know s.hit about, its linux as linux the kernel merging with android version of linux kernel, not linux operating system(GNU/linux) merging with android, so not important at the least

Originally Posted by Frappacino

[...]
Google is singled out not because it is more evil - but because they are a very competent evil.

[...]