Stephan's Blog

(Note: This does not in any way represent the opinion of my employer. This is a personal blog entry.)

There's been a lot of buzz lately about Google denying CNet News.com access to company representatives when writing about the search giant.

<http://news.com.com/Google+balances+privacy,+reach/2100-1032_3-5787483.html>

<http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2005/08/googlers_sure_a.html>

Jeremy Zawodny at Yahoo, one of their biggest competitors, has even told people to stop talking about the issue, as CNet revealed information that was public, but, according to him, "should not be publicized". Boo hoo.

<http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004970.html>

The journalist was trying to present real privacy issues with Google's services in a very honest way. The article did say how there issues related to other search engines and how this still was more of a threat with Google than with the other search engines. He didn't use any information the readers couldn't already find by using Google to search for it.

There's a new saying in the business. Don't mess with Google, or you'll be left out. I'll take my chances.

In my book, any company that has as central a role as Google does in the industry has to avoid behaving as much as a teenager as they have been in this case. Press freedom means the press might write things about you that you don't like, but denying them access? That's like saying "You either write good things about us or nothing at all!". And that's a serious threat to press freedom. It's not cool at all. Google has just proven they are completely uncool.

Luckily, we have alternatives. I've started phasing out my Gmail account, and started using other search engines. We'll see if Opera can provide some competition I do not believe in organizations that act like fascist or communist states, denying any wrong doing on their end and alienating those that say bad things about them, without even bothering proving them wrong.

Google, to me, *is* the Evil Empire. More so than Microsoft. Microsoft is actually rather open and welcoming these days. Still a monopolist, but they're behaving a lot better than Google. Cooperating with the WSP, even. <http://www.webstandards.org/>

As long as Google behaves like this, I'd prefer MSN Search over Google any day. And that's the truth.