Once again, the game is about access to user data, not software or operating systems. But the EU and data protection authorities are missing in action by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian on Italian Tech – La Repubblica Continue reading “Forcing the sale of Chrome and Android does not solve Google’s monopoly problem”
What does Google’s abandonment of gTLDs mean for net neutrality?
The American giant’s decision to use only the .com domain reopens the debate on jurisdiction, governance and net neutrality. An analysis of the technical and geopolitical implications that foreshadow a future of digital borders, selective blocking and new spheres of influence by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian on Italian Tech – La Repubblica Continue reading “What does Google’s abandonment of gTLDs mean for net neutrality?”
Meta’s threat is the result of European hypocrisy and cultural subordination to North American models
Like a sovereign state, Meta-Facebook is announcing possible “sanctions” against another (non-)sovereign state, the European Union, because of its policy choices on personal data protection. After decades of guilty inertia, some national data protection authorities (the Austrian and German ones, in particular) have woken up from their torpor and discovered that Google’s ecosystem creates some problems for the rights of citizens of EU Member States. Better late than never? Comments on the news superficially focused on the tired narrative of ‘privacy protection’ and the risk that US authorities might access data imported by Google. However, these analyses fail to grasp some structural aspects of the affair. by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian on Strategikon – an Italian Tech blog. Continue reading “Meta’s threat is the result of European hypocrisy and cultural subordination to North American models”
Staying Under the (Mainstream) Radar
Staying under mainstream radar while releasing meaningful and original contents is a good way to attract people actually interested in your activity, thus making easier – as Seth Godin said – turning strangers into friends and friends into customers.
An empirical look at the way people and companies use profiling and stats suggest that to get more traffic (i.e. pay-for-click ads) contents are shaped just to attract people rather than to provide actual information.
Think of the usual effects of looking at your analytics: you take note of the queries made by users and you shape your content accordingly, to be sure to attract people who use these words. The price you pay for being that “smart” is that you’re not the one who controls the content of your website because you let the users (or, better, Google) do it on your behalf.The result is that all websites are made equal and turned into some sort of digital brochure. In other words, is the tail that is wagging the dog.
Personally, I’m more at ease with Henry Ford’s quote
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ?faster horses.?
If You Really Dislike Google, Just Do A Better One
The usual, questionable and acritical article raises “awareness” about the “danger” represented by the way Google handles the results of users’ queries, this time the “victims” being the “consumers”. The source of this article is a study supported by Yelp.
While I’m not a statistician, I wonder how is possible to give general credit to a study based on a “random sample” (no method to build the randomness is disclosed) of less than 3.000 people compared to the billions of users that daily query the web through Google, furthermore without taking into account the huge ethnic and cultural differences of the countries whose users come from.
And I wonder why the journalist wrote it ? without asking an independent expert opinion. She just released what ? seems just a summary of the study’s summary, without ? actual knowledge of the topics involved. In other words, this article is somehow in between disinformation and misinformation. And, to be clear, I’m not questioning the integrity of the journalist (for instance she duly exploited the Yelp’s involvement in the study);what I criticize is that she didn’t actually deliver informative contents. No matter if this comes from a poor grasping of the mathematics methods, or by way of a lack of knowledge of the digital business world. Fact is the her readers aren’t given sound information, and what they got, instead, is the usual “Is-Google-evil?” article that, from time to time, appears all around the net.
Moving to a general issue, at the end of the day, things are pretty straightforward: Google neither is perfect nor necessarily “friendly”, but if you dislike Google, just build a better one, instead of using spin, FUD and the law.
Of course, If you ????.
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Post Scriptum: I neither work for Google, nor have other kind of involvements with it.