With Google's size and many offerings, do you think Google is being seen as the new Microsoft by more and more people? Does this worry you as an employee and a web user?
Matt Cutts points out that Google aims to allow people to leave their service. It tries to be a company that delivers value to the consumer, and makes it easy for the consumer to take their data and leave once they are no longer satisfied with Google's services.
Google's motto is "Don't be evil". It has defined "evil" as doing something that loses the trust of its customer. In that way, it is different from Facebook, for instance, that has acted in its own self-interest, often at the peril of its users. Constant privacy setting updates that unwittingly opt you in to sharing your information with others, including chats, purchases, status updates, profile information and more has lead to a backlash against the giant social networking organization.
Google instead tries to be user friendly, by respecting privacy and giving the consumer an option to leave without losing any of its data. That is not all that different from Microsoft's policies though, which in this approach does share the philosophy of Google, and sets itself apart from other giants such as Apple and Facebook, who pursue a philosophy of locking in the consumer.
So exactly why Matt Cutts explanation sets Google apart from Microsoft isn't entirely clear to me.
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It always becomes an issue when a group or idea gets too big. The bigger Google get, the more people will worry about how much info they hold etc. The internet underground, those that are the pioneers, the geeks and the hackers always distrust the giants on the net.
Google will have to work very hard to keep reassuring that group that they won't go the way of facebook..
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The larger they get, the bigger the board of directors get -- someone sells out, newcomers buy in ... and everything changes. It's the nature of big business.
I'm not sure I'd be that skeptical, stav. There really are good employers out there. I don't know if google is one of them are not, but without knowing or reading, I don't think I'd criticize them so boldly.
