Should Google Tweak the News? asks the New York Times.

Count me Horrified. Can the Times retract, even, the question?

     ”Should Google play an editorial role in presenting readers with news?” Read the rest of this entry »

“Facebook seems to want to pull everything in to its playground,whereas Google seem rather more inclined to make their toys show up wherever you already are. Sometimes,anyway –although I sense their thinking about all this is probably as confused as mine is.” One of Michael O’Conner Clarke’s excellent Thoughts on Google+ this morning.

Which is certainly more human of Google. Being confused. Though it feels odd to say so. Read the rest of this entry »

Doc Searls: This has turned Google, a private company with no accountability to any constituency, into a negotiating partner of national governments whose laws or policies do not reflect or respect the ethical stance claimed in Google’s own slogan. Thus, Google now functions on a diplomatic level

Ghastly thought. Not sure I want two grad students with a big plane …

… with the ability and clout to forge country-by-country compromises affecting internet activity and the free flow of information and opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

I finally remembered what got my Evil Google dander up in the first place. Though I know why I put it out of mind, until I did post on the subject, in my usual roundabout manner. The unconscious slowly working its way from snark-rage (nothing personal, Seth) back to sorrow. The deep, genuine sorrow of loss. Loss being a hard and bitter truth about life. Life is, in our lived experience, not a series of gains but of losses. That river. It flows only one way.

Alright, depending on your point of view, but get that relativity out of your head, I am making a point here. Read the rest of this entry »

Seth Grodin talks about blogs: ” … the point is to start a conversation that spreads, to share ideas and to chronicle your thinking. That’s the work of an author, and I think rather than kissing author blogs goodbye, someone should just start a new list.”

When business discovered blogging, something of great value that existed just fine on its own was abruptly torn asunder … with the click-tracking aid of our Master Google. When Google’s wondrous graduate-student algorithms turned to links into currency, a world was lost forever.

Every island of life that exists without a profit motive is part of the precious, disappearing archipelago on which humans freely belong upon this earth. Read the rest of this entry »

” …blog results inundate Google search results.”

says Jeneane over at Allied, and I’ve been wondering when bloggers were going to start talking about this. Yes, you … you cloggers of the information pipeline. Is your last post funny, useful, human, new, or just plain terrific writing?

Or are you just this whiz-bang guy with the handcrafted WordPress layout, awash in widgets and gadgets, footers and sliders and Punsalen’s (wonderful) latest trick—without a single goddamn thing to say. Because when the only purpose of your post is to hand me off to another page, I could wring your scrawny little web developers neck.

Dear Reader, Are you Googling for a certain bit of information? Then prepare yourself for the Long Wade. And, dammit, if I wanted to know the thoughts of every web guy on this continent and several others … well, I just don’t. Y’all have a happy time trading Selector stories and faking out IE.

The real user, the person without time to waste, is better off at Clusty (formerly Vivismo—okay, these people need help with naming.) Clustered search results are magnificent. Blog results. Results by search engine. (Making it possible to ignore the mammoth worthlessness of MSN, who will link to a comma.)

That’s really all I got to say. (All?) Including blogs in the main search may result in a thrill from this end (Page Rank, Page Rank!) but when I am after information: Most blogs? Get the fork out of my way.

It’s April 6. How long they going to leave that thing up? Just plain cruel. Especially the second page, where the smiling Gmail Delivery Person hands you all your email, all printed out and neatly boxed up.

Plus I like their attitude:

“You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand … It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.”

And the customer testimonials. Especially the Web 2.0-looking guy who confesses,

“I’ve always felt uneasy about the whole internet thing …”

You know he ain’t alone.

Lastly, a satisfied Bill K. says,

“I sometimes find myself wondering: what will Google think of next? Cardboard?”

And in this strange place, so subjective, so dependent on our own Hegelian appeareance in the world, plausibility takes wing.

I wish. I dream of WebVan, and the way well-mannered hunks in shorts would bring my groceries to my kitchen, help unpack, flowers gratis at Easter … sigh. I could strangle that CEO for over-expanding. First rule of business: get it right (which he did—what an incredible setup, like a big clockworks) and let it run for a while in one fuckin city. Gimme his address. I got a few things to say to him.

postscript: Sorry, no links for WebVan cuz I hated them all. On grounds of stupid or made me weepy. Geez, those were some times. My old boyfriend was in Dot Com in San Francisco, and every Friday, along about three p.m., WebVan showed up with imported beers and trays of damn fine snacks. Then one day the BF came home and said, Dot Com is over. I said, No. And then I said, WTF?

And that’s the way it was, folks, ca. 2000.