Quote:
Originally Posted by
Corona688
Looked at in that light, they're as pure-as-snow as they were in 1998. They're still chugging along "for free", and if their search isn't what it's was, it's still on the "good" side of okay. We just finally understand the implications of what they've been selling, and to whom, all along.
Well, this is simply capitalism in action: a capitalist company has one (and only one) purpose and that is generating revenue for its owner(s). Everything else is just a means to that end. A supermarket doesn't want to get fresh vegetables for you, but selling them is their way of getting to your money. The same with Google. They are not a "search-engine", they are a company looking for profit and the search engine is just their means of making it. That means, as long as people use it in large enough quantities they couldn't care less about how successful these people are in finding what they search for.
Google is nothing like "pure-as-snow" at all. It is just that the profit rates in this specific kind of industry was big enough for them to feel no pressure to "optimize" (say: enlarge the amount of revenue per transaction) their business and still make a lot of money. Once that changed and competitors were there they did exactly that and did like any other company. Like the insurance company that advertises "we want you to feel safe" while minimising their expenditures and maximising your rates. After all, the difference between what you pay them and what they pay you back is what they make.
So, bottom line: if you don't like how football is played you cannot ask teams to use suboptimal strategies, you have to change the rules. These rules are responsible for some strategy being optimal and if you change them some other strategy will become optimal. If you don't like how capitalism works you cannot rely on companies discovering their "heart" but you have to change the rules of how production and consumption in our society works.
Be prepared, though, that this will not work peacefully at all. Our society is based on rules which guarantee that with much money also comes much power. To undertake to wrestle power from the hands of those who have it has always been a violent episode in history. The ones with power usually cling to it and don't want to give it to others.
bakunin