Anyone remember the "Don't be evil" campaigns?

I guess the giant corporations will always find loopholes and eventually they will have their ways. Monopolizing the market for profit is never a good thing, especially if it compromises the privacy of the users. These kinds of practices slowed innovation, it's all about how to market it better, how to target the market and how to rank higher.

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I feel that most people these days just don't care. I also think that we got to a point where it is almost impossible to reverse the damage, unless all people suddenly became aware of their privacy and started changing their ways.

It used to be "how to make things better at a lower price", now it's all about digital marketing and how to get more exposure or a higher rank to get more traffic. If we revert to the old days, competition will push the markets to become more unique and innovative. Ever though what will happen if user awareness of privacy suddenly became active? If you are/were interested in this kind of topics, please share your thoughts.

 

Darth Google made a mockery of the "Don't Be Evil" tagline many years ago and in many ways. And they continue to do so at an alarming pace. I keep waiting for the "Google killer" to come out of someone's garage but have been disappointed time and again. It could be that, much like what happened to Microsoft in the 1990's, needs to happen to Darth Google (monopoly break-up by the FTC) much as I hate government interference.

 

The government can't do anything because they are playing by the rules, or at least that's what they appear to be doing, they got caught many times by the EU and fined a lot of money. For now, I'll continue using the alternatives. ddg.gg is a high quality search engine with total respect to user privacy, it's only missing an image search.

 

Well, one of the rules is that you cannot be and act like a monopoly. That is what MS was broken up over (they had to split their browser and application divisions, e.g.) Google is clearly a monopoly right now and suspicions about their manipulation of organic results to promote their paid ad revenues are one example of what the government could get involved over. Darth Google also is now being accused of manipulating organic results for more than commercial reasons with attempts to influence political issues. That will get the attention of government, of course.

 

The (USA) government is quite happy to have Google as a data collection agent for the NSA. They aren't going to do anything.