NewsTrust - Google - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

8 questions that will help define the future of journalism

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Google News - By Richard Gingras - Apr. 19 (Speech) - These are extraordinary times. These are exciting times. There has been tremendous disruption, but let’s consider the huge positives that underly that disruption. There are no longer the same barriers to publishing: everyone has a printing press, and there are no gatekeepers. There are new ways for people to both consume and share news. There are powerful new technologies that can change what journalists do and how they do it. In my view, the future of journalism can and will be better than its past.

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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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Google+ launch: search giant closes 10 products

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Josh Halliday - Sep. 05 () - Internet firm focuses on new social network Google Plus by ridding company of 'inefficiencies' Google is to shut down 10 products, including the search company Aardvark, bought for $50m last year, as the internet giant focuses on new social network Google+ ahead of its public launch. The "fall spring clean" follows a pledge by Larry Page to rid the company of inefficiencies after he took over as chief executive in April. The products listed for closure include Aardvark , Desktop , Fast Flip , Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack , Google Web Security , Image Labeler , Notebook , Sidewiki and Subscribed Links . Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president for engineering, announced the closures on the company's official blog . "Technology improves, people's needs change, some bets pay off and others don't. So, as Larry previewed on our last earnings call, today we're having a fall spring clean at Google. Over the next few months we'll be shutting down a number of products ...

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Why Google had to have Motorola Mobility

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - The acquisition has provoked comment about defensive buying of patents, but Google surely has more ambition than that For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level by announcing a deal to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn . The implications of this deal depend entirely on how Google plans to use Motorola. If, as some claim, the deal is more about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio than anything else, we can expect escalating patent warfare between technology giants and limited innovation beyond that. If, however, Google intends to operate the business it is acquiring, we may see some broad and sweeping changes in the technology industry. If the deal is chiefly about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio, then Google would likely spin off the hardware end of the company and keep the software and patents. The patents would be vital weapons in its competition with ...

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Positive Disruption

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - Even in the men’s room at Google’s sprawling New York offices there’s no respite from the cascade of new ideas feeding the behemoth. Rather than gaze into space, I found before my eyes messages about “signal widgets” and the implication of hav

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Google can't be trusted with our books | Simon Barron

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:43:12 -0700

The Guardian - By Simon Barron - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - The threat to Google Videos shows businesses are not suitable cultural custodians – they can't be held accountable to the publicGoogle announced last week that it would be deleting the content of the Google Videos archive. After a public outcry, it said it would work on saving all the video content and making it available elsewhere. In this instance, the public managed to change Google's mind and stopped the mass deletion of a unique digital archive but the situation raises concerns about data under Google's control, including the unique archive of Google Books.The reason cited for Google Videos' closure is that the company would like to focus on its raison d'être, search, "[the] ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted". Shifting its priorities is its prerogative as a company: the issue is that on the basis of refocusing its business priorities, its first impulse was to delete the gigabytes of content given to it by users.This situation has disturbing implications for Google Videos' sister project, Google Books, and the approximately 15 million scanned documents in the archive. In partnership with some of the greatest research libraries in the world – the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Harvard University Library, the New York Public Library – Google Books has built up a huge digital library containing thousands of unique documents.Google Books has suffered problems in the past: practical problems – lawsuits from publishers and authors, criticism of its inconsistent metadata – and philosophical problems involving the theoretical concerns of allowing a private sector company to control shared cultural resources. These concerns have remained abstract but now, with the company's disregard towards videos, become more concrete.As a private sector company, the core aim of Google is to make money. The Google Videos situation shows that in order to lower expenditure and adjust its priorities, Google was willing to delete content entrusted to it by users. Libraries have trusted Google with millions of documents: many of the books scanned by Google are not digitised or OCR-processed anywhere else and, with budgets for university libraries shrinking year after year, may not be digitised again any time in the near future. Google acted admirably by listening to users and working to save the videos but entrusting such vast cultural archives to a body that has no explicit responsibilities to protection, archiving and public cultural welfare is inherently dangerous: as the situation made clear, private sector bodies have the ability to destroy archives at a whim.Enabling access to digital information should be one of the key responsibilities of our cultural institutions and our public sector. Keeping these resources in the public sector and ensuring that they are freely available to everyone is the key to bridging the UK's widening digital divide: the chasm between those who can access digital information via internet access at home and the 27% of households who cannot. Last week, Amazon announced that it was working with libraries in the US to allow users to borrow Kindle ebooks. This mutual co-operation between the private and the public sector should allow more people to access shared digital resources and hopefully help bridge the US digital divide.As Peter Singer and others have argued, we need to develop a digital library that can make resources available in the same way as Google Books but that will be accountable to the public. Google Books is one of the largest digital libraries in the world but, as Robert Darnton has argued, we cannot trust it to be the sole custodian of our digital archives forever. A national digital library would be subject to regulations to protect our cultural heritage and would take responsibility for the artefacts placed in its care. Publicly funded libraries and archives are important precisely because they are not committed to the "market fundamentalism" of pursuing profit above all other motives. Some libraries and archives need to modernise and make resources digitally available but this requires support and the protection of our public sector libraries.Google's motto is "don't be evil". Not doing the evil thing is not the same as doing the right thing. In this instance, it has done the right thing: next time, it may not.GoogleDigital videoLibrariesInternetUnited StatesSimon Barronguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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The Google Books settlement should teach the company humility. It won't

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Siva Vaidyanathan - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - Google has been humbled. For a company with the audacity to make "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible" its mission statement, it takes a lot to take Google down a peg. But yesterday federal Judge Denny Chin did just that. He ruled—after more than two years of study and debate—that the elaborate new used-book store that Google had designed in collaboration with the most elite authors and publishers could not stand. Or, at least, Chin ruled that the methods Google chose to build this massive digital bookstore, now called Google Books, was improper.

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2010 in Review: The Year the Internet Went to War

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By David Kravets - Dec. 28 (Editorial) - It was a year without parallel. Threat Level’s bread-and-butter themes of censorship, hacking, security, privacy, copyright and cyberwar were all represented in tug-of-war struggles with unprecedented outcomes. Google defeated China’s censors, but caved to corporate censorship in the United States. The largest computer-crime case ever prosecuted ended in the nation’s longest prison term. A small-time Xbox modder who advertised his services online beat the federal rap. And a mysterious computer virus called Stuxnet finally put proof to decades of warnings that malware will eventually be used to kinetic effect in the real world.

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In the Grip of the New Monopolists

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Tim Wu - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - Do away with Google? Break up Facebook? We can't imagine life without them—and that's the problem.

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Will Murdoch be tempted to buy Yahoo?

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - I saw that suggestion floated ages ago, not least because of Murdoch's antipathy to Google. But the Reporter is now claiming to have a source who claims that private equity firms have pitched the idea to News Corp. It would involve News Corp rolling

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Is Google Instant ad trying to annoy Steve Jobs?

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CNET News - By Chris Matyszczyk - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - If you were launching the first step into implanting your product permanently into someone's brain, would you employ Bob Dylan? Oh, I know he's a very fine musician, autobiographer and performer at corporate functions. But does he still symbolize the idea that the times are a-changin' and your brain needs re-arrangin'? This vexing question occupies the part of my mind normally reserved for baseball and scones because Google Instant, the search engine that tries to know what you want slightly before you do, seems to have done an ad featuring the original Robert Zimmerman. To the tune of his "Subterranean Homesick Blues," we see how instantly Google's new tool anticipates the fact that someone is making an ad featuring the lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

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Debunking the Internet apocalypse

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CNET News - By Marguerite Reardon - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - As I read the criticism of Google and Verizon's supposed evil plan to demolish the Internet, and as I hear about "protests" of several dozen people at Google's headquarters, I scratch my head and wonder: am I missing something?

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A Net Game for Google?

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert X Cringely - Aug. 07 (Opinion) - Google has always been firmly on the side of net neutrality. So the news of a deal between Google and Verizon — one of the country’s largest broadband service providers — has caused consternation throughout geekdom. Has Google turned on its principles? The company says no, but then Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, has been making murky statements differentiating between wireless and wired data, suggesting to some a repudiation of neutrality. The truth is probably that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon but without actually compromising net neutrality.

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The court was right to side with YouTube over Viacom.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Farhad Manjoo - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - In March, I criticized YouTube's founders for their apparent disregard for copyright law during the site's first few years of operation. Internal e-mail messages that were released as part of a billion-dollar lawsuit that Viacom filed against Google, which owns YouTube, suggested that the founders "were aware of a lot of infringing content on the site but decided to ignore much of it in order to keep YouTube growing," I wrote.[more ...] Google - YouTube - Viacom - Copyright - Lawsuit

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Gulf oil spill: To control message, BP buys search terms from Google

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Matthew Shaer - Jun. 10 () - BP has purchased several search terms from Google, including the phrase 'oil spill.' A BP spokesman says the PR initiative is an attempt to inform readers of BP's clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

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How to Save the News

Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - May. 11 (Opinion) - Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to. So some of the smartest minds at the company are thinking about this, and working with publishers, and peering ahead to see what the future of journalism looks like. Guess what? It’s bright.

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Will all those "like" buttons make Facebook bigger than Google?

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Farhad Manjoo - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Your favorite Web sites are now plugged in to the Facebook brain. On the streaming music service Pandora, you can now press "Like" on any song you hear; that preference will get shuttled back into the social network, alerting your friends to your newfound musical interest. You can do the same for a movie on IMDb, a restaurant on Yelp, a news story on CNN.com, cosmetics at Sephora.com, jeans at Levi's, and dozens of other products and services all over the Web, including everything published here on Slate. These tiny, new "like" buttons look quite friendly and unassuming. Don't be fooled. They're the vanguard of Facebook's brilliant, unstoppable plan to catalog the entire Web, and there's a good chance that over the next few years they'll help the social network remake everything online.

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Australia attacked over internet plans

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Charles Arthur - Mar. 30 - US is also 'concerned' at plans to block flow of information and experts say state-controlled check will slow browsersAustralia came under fire today from the United States for its proposed internet filtering system, which, if implemented, would be the strictest of any democracy.A US state department official said that it had raised concerns with Australia over the plans, which are to be voted on by its parliament."We remain committed to advancing the free flow of information, which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," Michael Tran, a state department spokesman told the Associated Press."We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials."Internet companies Google and Yahoo have already condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.Australia's communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be updated based on public complaints. But he declined to say what the US had told Australia.National censorship of overseas sites is becoming a trade issue. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, told the Guardian last week :"Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier."Many countries – including the UK – use filtering systems to limit access to outlawed material: in the UK the independent Internet Watch Foundation lists sites internet service providers (ISPs) are asked to block. The list is secret, and frequently updated. In Germany and Canada ISPs use similar blocking systems; in Italy gambling sites are blocked.But critics say that the Australian plan, which has been proposed repeatedly over the past five years, exceeds what is necessary and strays into matters of free speech."Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide," Google wrote in its submission to the Australian government, suggesting that the filter – which would be mandatory and state-controlled – would slow browsing speeds.The company said it already had its own filter to block child pornography."Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available and we agree," Google said. "But moving to a mandatory ISP-level filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information."Lucinda Barlow of Google Australia told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the proposal raised the possibility of banning politically and socially controversial material and went beyond filters used in Germany, Canada and Italy. Other critics say the filtering would put Australia in the same censorship league as China.Yahoo said the filter would block many sites with controversial content such as euthanasia discussion forums and gay and lesbian forums that discuss sexual experiences. Yet it would not block peer-to-peer file-sharing, nor prevent predators approaching children in chat programs or social networking sites.Conroy said his department would take the comments from Google and Yahoo into consideration before sending a proposal to parliament later this year.The US State Department sided with Google in its row with China over censorship when in January the search engine company complained that its systems had been hacked into in what it implied was an attack all but government-sanctioned by China. Last week Google moved its search systems to the Chinese island dependency of Hong Kong. The communist government responded by blocking searches from the mainland for forbidden topics such as the pro-democracy movement.David Vaile of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales said China and Australia had markedly different approaches to restricting the Internet."China's filter is explicitly about discouraging access to and discussion of certain clearly political topics," he said, while Australia's filter would focus on specifically restricted material.While some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China, Vaile pointed out that the freedom-of-speech argument used by American companies follows a legal tradition that other countries do not necessarily share.Yahoo and Google are accustomed to the protections of the First Amendment of the US constitution,which guarantees freedom of speech and elevates it to a very high legal status, Vaile said."In Australia there is no equivalent," he said. "There is no law that says you've got free speech. Having a lack of any legal protection for free speech for any effective restraint on [filters] is something that's worrying."AustraliaCensorshipInternetUnited StatesYahooGoogleUS economyTelecommunications industryPornographyCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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The Digital Dictatorship - The Myth of the Techno-Utopia

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Evgeny Morozov - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - It's fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom.

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With Buzz, Google takes another giant step towards turning into Microsoft

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By John Naughton - Feb. 14 (Opinion) - The search engine's answer to Facebook and Twitter is breathtakingly intrusive and takes astonishing liberties with your privacy

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Why Google can say no to China

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - By Scott Moskowitz - Jan. 30 (Opinion) - Google’s move may amount to a savvy business gambit, but of a different, perhaps more daring nature, than many Chinese imagine. The prospect of a completely open Chinese market, where Google could compete on an even playing field with Baidu, is potentially worth so much that Google may be willing to risk its existing market share. Even moderate success could incite other Western corporations that have previously backed down from challenging the Chinese government. If this occurs, the Communist Party could find itself on the ropes.

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Will Google stand up to France and Italy, too? | Rebecca MacKinnon

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Rebecca MacKinnon - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - The stand against China will rightly be lauded. But western states also imperil internet freedom Google?s stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance – triggered by suspicions that China had been trying to hack activists? accounts – will be rightly lauded by defenders of human rights. But when it comes to upholding Google?s vow not to "do evil" by its users, China is by no means the company?s only headache. Before those of us in western democracies get too high on our horses about Google and China, we should remember that the Chinese are not the only ones putting pressure on Google in ways that are arguably harmful to freedom of expression, even when intentions are honorable. A growing number of governments – many democratically ...

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The Google news: China enters its Bush-Cheney era

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - It is a significant development. Significant for Google; and while only marginally significant for developments inside China potentially very significant for China's relations with the rest of the world.

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Google Gets On the Right Side of History

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Rebecca Mackinnon - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - I do believe, however, that in my lifetime the Chinese people may learn more about some of the conversations that have taken place over the past decade between Internet company executives and Chinese authorities. When that happens, they will know who sold them out and who was most eager to help the Chinese Communist Party in building a blinkered cocoon of disinformation around their lives—and in some cases deaths.

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'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Der Spiegel - By Umberto Eco, Susanne Beyer, Lothar Gorris - Nov. 12 (Interview) - Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who is curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, talks to SPIEGEL about the place lists hold in the history of culture, the ways we try to avoid thinking about death and why Google is dangerous for young people

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