Tag: google

Posted on
by

Again, the internet today isn’t what I hoped it would be 10 year ago. From the always on point Jessamyn West:

“Maybe it really wasn’t us, it was them. Most days it’s hard to remember what we saw in Google. Why did we think we’d make good partners?”

I used to believe that the web contained the response to a promise of access-for-all, but not longer. As Andy Baio noted over a year ago:

“As it turns out, organizing the world’s information isn’t always profitable. Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care.”

If you need me, I’ll be wandering the stacks of the Internet Archive.

Posted on
by

From Siva Vaidhyanathan, Universities Are Vast Copy Machines–and That’s a Good Thing:

“Google is not a library. It is not a university. It is not a public service. It is a business. Too often we forget those distinctions. The project of creating, maintaining, and offering vast collections of digital material should be something that universities and libraries control, not something we depend on one company to handle.”