Chris Salmon Technologies

FINALLY a tech leader SAYS IT - JOBS GOES OFF ON GOOGLE ... hallelujah and thank you Steve!! Jobs says Google's "Don't be evil" mantra is BULLSHIT!! YES!! It's about damn time more people recognized it ... ROCK ON STEVE !! I'll definitely buy an iPad now !!

For YEARS now, Google has hidden behind their formerly golden reputation as a worth opponent and possibly slayer of the evil Microsoft dragon.  Goodness knows, back in the late 90's when Microsoft was sticking me and my technicians with the costs of supporting their "free" crap internet browser and their "free" crap internet email client - which was forced on users by MS pressuring OEM's to include them on all computers shipped (see the anti-trust settlement if you don't believe me ... it's unbelievable!!) - back then I was a HUGE Google fanboy.  Plus I loved their story, two young computer scientists come up with a new and relatively simple way to index and search the giant database that is the WWW.  Awesome.  But then I've seen them morph over the years into just a mirror image of the very thing I thought they were opposing.  I credit much of this change to the influence of the Venture Capitalists who funded Google's pre-IPO growth and their hive mentality.  Hiring Eric to run the business end, and basically putting Serge and Larry in charge of "green initiatives" and all kinds of fun social goodness BS (so they would be out of the way, in my opinion) was a signal that the good company that Google started out to be had begun to morph into something evil.  Their monopolistic and octopus like behavior over the years has only proven that.

Well the media people (newspapers and book publishers especially) and the other leaders in the tech industry, are finally not only catching on, but willing to express the evil reality that is Google today.   Now it appears that someone that was there when I started into computers in the late 70's (I still have Apple and Apple II ads in my late 70's BYTE magazine collection!) is stepping up and finally saying out loud what everyone's been thinking for years - the "don't be evil" mantra is total and complete bullshit.  Here's the story from Wired:

Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs

And yes, I do have Google adsense on these pages, and I do use some Google tools.  I do that largely because my choices are very limited - thanks, in large part, to Google themselves.

And I don't think they're completely evil - as with Darth Vader "there is still good within them."  They are master technologists, that's without question.  But I, and many friends in the internet business, have reason to understand just how evil Google can be, upon their whim, and to whom they please.  They can literally make or break websites at their whim, they can raise and lower your traffic with absolutely no explanation of why, or how.  There is NO ONE AT GOOGLE YOU CAN TALK TO ABOUT ANYTHING.  If you don't believe me, just try to call them.  It's literally impossible.  Email them, you get a form letter spit back by a computer.  No one is home, and if you DO get to talk to someone, all they say is "it's the algorithm, it's the algorithm..." like some kind of zombies worshiping at a Santeria ceremony.

Sometime soon, I will write an entire article about my experiences with Google and those of my friends in the business.  But suffice it to say, there is a definitely a dark side to the GOOG and it's getting biggger.

I hope Steve and some of the other Silicon Valley leaders can actually do something about it.  Or maybe some new search technology will step forth.  I had big hopes for Wolfram Alpha, as I've always be a fan of his, but it's been a disappointment thus far.  At any rate, read and comment here at cst.net about this topic... it's really very important to all of us in tech as to who and what will slow the Google train down.

As it is, we might well be getting into an IBM of the 60's and 70's or MS of the 80's and 90's situation here with Google if something doesn't happen to break their hold on the web.