[Foundation-l] In defence of Google

Fri Jan 19 23:51:48 UTC 2007

On 1/19/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/19/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >[...]
> > But I don't even remember what search engine I used before Google.  I
> > think it was Yahoo.  Do Wikipedia pages rank high in Yahoo?  Ah,
> > Yahoo, I remember when *that* used to be the corporation that everyone
> > loved and praised.  Now they're helping the Chinese put people in
> > jail.  I wonder how long before Google does that little bit of evil.
> > AFAIK they haven't actively helped the government put people in
> > jail...yet.
>
> If you fault Google for their policy, and Yahoo for theirs, that's
> fine... but for all of our sakes, don't just go around harshing on
> them on the Wikipedia foundation list.  If you are going to bring up
> the question, bring it up in the context of what's really wrong here
> (nobody understands the "right" thing to do about it) and how WP can
> participate in fixing that (figuring out the right thing).
>
Actually I wasn't faulting Google for their policy at all.  I was
faulting Yahoo for theirs, namely for divulging confidential
information knowing full well that information was going to put an
innocent person in jail.  As I said, I'm not aware of Google actually
doing that yet.

> This is not the place for merely bagging on the corporations.  It's
> one of many places where real serious discussions could start on what
> to do next.
>
Well, this isn't the place for praising corporations either, then.

Anthony