Andy's Mind

The debate that occurred when I posted a few days ago about Google’s support for gay “marriages” was a surprise, especially because it largely concentrated on this particular issue, not on the point I was making. It has been, nevertheless, a good example of madness that is engulfing our supposedly rational civilization.

This madness boils down to belief that there is no objective truth, and therefore no laws governing human societies. Also, only truth accessible to man is the scientific “truth” – that is current theory backed by empiric verification. And since there is nothing besides what can be seen or measured then there is no purpose whatsoever to life other than pleasure and work to get means for more pleasure. Therefore there is no solid ground to base any moral or ethical reasoning on, so basically “anything goes”: all is good and should be respected if those involved in it like it and feel good about it.

This madness leads probably well-intentioned and passionate people to methodically dismantle our civilization’s foundations and cut off its roots.

Western civilization was built on the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome and was deeply rooted in Christianity. In fact it was Christianity that was shaping West’s values and morality for centuries, that was literally driving it. No surprise here – there was never in history a civilization that did not have a spiritual core and that was embracing absolutely everything. Also, there was no civilization in history that was not protecting family by ensuring its special social status and protecting marriage that creates it.

It looks, though, like we are finally getting one. Supposedly rational modern liberals want to built an utopian civilization with no dominant religion, no set of universally accepted moral values (and any reference to supernatural reduced to vague, easily dismissible “spirituality”) and no family as we know it. Reading some of the voices in this discussion it seems there is nothing they abhor more than Christianity and its values and they strive with great success to remove Christianity’s influence on Western societies.

Given the historical evidence it is very unlikely for this experiment to succeed, but it will have its consequences. The problem is those consequences are not immediately visible, but take decades to surface. Some we can see already, but those are the consequences of changes introduced long time ago. We’ll have to wait, maybe a few decades, for the results of what is being done now.

We see exactly same things happening with the economy, where current crisis is a consequence of a systemic error made decades ago in the US. Of course, few notice because only few are really interested in history. People don’t see real causes of today’s problems because for the most part they lie in the past when most of current population was not even living. Ideas tried before are not recognized as such, but rather welcomed as new – and re-applied perpetuating the problem (like the infamous $700bn bailout).

One commentator in the discussion here, Kevin, said that “the ground which humans have built on for thousands of years is eroding out from under our feet”. Cheer up, Kevin – it is eroding, but for the most part only under the Western Civilization. There are other civilizations – in fact if you look at the map of the world most people live in other civilizations. And all of those civilizations with no exception stick to their traditions and values, which incidentally all include protection of family as the basic unit of society. Of those the Muslim civilization is most visible in the West, because it is in fact slowly taking over Western Europe.

So, the brutal reality is that if our civilization wishes to commit a slow motion suicide the world will just shrug. There may be a crisis when it falls but others will fill the void. In fact many around the world can’t wait when it happens, because they hope it will be their civilization that will be more powerful and influential then. Christianity will survive West’s fall as well, just as it survived the fall of the Roman Empire, the passing of the Carolingian Empire and all the kings and emperors that threaded the Earth during those 2000 years since Our Lord has been here.

Nothing of this is news – I’m not discovering anything in this humble post. Wise men saw this coming long ago – like Pope Pius IX or Oswald Spengler to name just two writing decades ago – and many after them. So the problem now is not whether this is happening – the big question we should consider is: is this process inevitable? Can this be reversed? Can Western Civilization be resuscitated? And if yes – then how?

But even if it is not someone who thinks the biggest issue of our time is to push for mentally disturbed individuals to be allowed to “marry” each other and thus helps West’s “slow motion suicide” in his small way is well… a fool.

My recent little post has spawned a debate in the combox essentially about whether Mr. Brin is right supporting homosexual “marriage” or not. However, my main point is not whether this is good or bad – after all Mr. Brin is entitled to his opinion just like everyone else. But, he somehow felt that his own name is not enough, that he has to make it his company’s official position. My main point was that this action is bad and has serious implications.

For example all Google employees who are Muslim or christian or just believe differently than Mr. Brin find themselves in a strange position of working for a company that has an official position on a moral and political issue that is strongly against their own. One could say this is their problem, but I find this troubling.

Is it right for a company manager or even founder to impose his views on all of his workforce in this way? Isn’t this arrogance (as rightly pointed out by CMR)? After all he is not representing those people in any way when it comes to issues like this one. Would it be ok if Mr. Brin said that it is official Google position to support Obama or McCain for president? Would that mean he represents the votes of his employees?

Again, I believe private corporations should be allowed to hire whoever they want or do jobs/projects they want (so I find a recent case of prosecuting a photographer for not wanting to cover a homosexual “marriage” outrageous) or have their own criteria for benefits etc. But all this is quite different from publicly weighting on a piece of legislation pertaining to moral or social questions.

Next, someone called me paranoid for even suggesting that Google’s search results and not only results might be affected by their management’s views. A few words on this one too.

First, please notice that over-reliance on Google can affect your worldview anyway – which is something I wrote about long ago. Notice too, that Google is dealing with lots of content, they are not only delivering search – they also host web sites, they host videos, they host groups, they gather and process news (through news.google.com) etc. They have immense power over what is getting through to the majority of Internet users, especially in the English-speaking countries. This power goes unnoticed, people concentrate on press and TV – but truth is newspapers circulation is down, and TV is evolving towards Internet, not away from it.

Now, call me paranoid all you want, but I find this combination of power and strong political views troubling. I have no proof that Google is meddling with search results as such, but considering supportive evidence I don’t think one can rule this out and continue to trust them.

What supportive evidence? Well, there is even a page on Wikipedia devoted to Google’s censorship and you can easily find cases of troubling disappearances of content from Google’s sites:

• Censored by Google Alerts – Crossed Crocodiles on AFRICOM,
• Google Censors Media Outlet Supportive of UN Whistleblowers.

Then there is the case of Google’s refusal to run pro-life ads while at the same time running abortion clinics ads. This is clearly using the power they have over what contents get through according to their own beliefs and views.

Reasons why all those things happen might be different, but those are all examples of power Google has over content. As I wrote above – add strong opinions to power and trouble is likely.

To sum it all up: I think Mr. Brin has stepped over the line he shouldn’t have crossed. At least for me it means I can’t trust Google anymore to provide fair and equal treatment to all opinions in their handling of web content.

Following my last post a friend told me that switching to Microsoft’s Live Search was not the best idea and I should research other options. So I did, looking specifically for sites that are new and different (because, after all, it is quite possible that in the Google’s shadow a novel and better idea for retrieving information from the Web could be emerging yet unnoticed).

Of the sites I’ve found I reviewed the following: Cuil, Powerset, Clusty, Jux2 and Viewzi.

Of those I like Clusty and Viewzi most.

Powerset is merely an interface to Wikipedia, which is, I think, rather pointless as Wikipedia has a great interface already.

Jux2 simply combines results from Google, Yahoo and Live Search in one Google-ish list of results. It has one feature that can be handy for SEO types – it displays rank of each of the results in each of the original engines. But, I think, there are many SEO tools that do it much better than Jux2 and other than this it is unimpressive. Thumbs down on this one, too.

Cuil is interesting, however the results are ordered in a way I don’t get. How Cuil ranks the results (determines what is important and what is not) is clearly different from other engines, which is a big plus (shows some innovative thinking). I’m not sure, though, I like the effect, because what was ranked best was not what I’d describe as best. On the other hand on my test searches Cuil did return a few pages no other engine did, which is another advantage. This means I’ll keep Cuil in my Firefox search box for those extensive searches when I really want to unearth any piece of info on a given topic that I can lay my eyes on.

Clusty on the other hand tries to organize the results in groups it calls clusters. On some of my test searches they were helpful, on some they were meaningless, but I think they are a good idea overall. The tab with domains is a nice way to see at a glance where there are many sites about a given topic, which is also nice.

Clusty is merely organizing results from other search engines, but it offers different profiled searches – searches for jobs, blogs, images etc. – using different source engines, which makes results interesting. Good starting point, I’d say, when looking for something on the web – especially if you don’t want to see it through Google’s goggles (Google is not included as one of the source engines).

Last of the engines I reviewed today – Viewzi – is different only by its user interface. While it is largely Flash powered (which is a drawback) it is kind of cool. It offers different graphical views for presenting the results and really I like the Web Screenshot view. It allows you to see the pages found without opening them in other windows or tabs, which makes it much much easier to decide at a glance whether a given page is worth a visit or not. Nice for lazy evening searches. 🙂

Last but not least there is our own little experiment at searching – the Sprinters Search. While not as useful as the sites above – after all this is just a concept demonstrator – it shows what I’d like a search engine to do – recognize what I’m after and explain to me what it is, while at the same time return the traditional relevant page results.

In any case – it is good we are not stuck with Google. Let’s not allow our mental inertia and habit to use only them – let’s look around for search companies that just provide searches – not try to shape the society.

I already wrote about how much Google’s search monopoly worries me. Now there is one more reason to be wary of it – Google is officially, as a company, taking a position in the public debate on a social issue. This is more than unusual.

A few days ago a post appeared on Google’s official blog, signed by Sergey Brin saying that Google officially opposes proposition 8 that is to go under ballot in California.

No matter what we think of the issue at hand I think this is both unusual and very worrying if a corporation takes a stand on a social issue like this. It is even more dangerous if the company in question has a de-facto monopoly on search and strong position in other fields that influence what content gets through to the bulk of Internet users.

It is not to say that I’m sure Google is meddling with its search results or – say – YouTube content. But it is a possibility that is hard to dismiss. If Sergey Brin feels about an issue strongly enough to put the weight of his company behind his private opinion (as opposed to just his name) there will be a strong temptation to extend the “fight” with those holding a different position one step further. And if it happens it will be very hard to fight with. First, it would be very, very difficult to prove. And even if proven it would be fully legal, because being a private corporation Google is under no obligation to provide fair and balanced treatment to Internet content representing all opinions on issues of today.

I think in the long run this is a threat to freedom of opinion and expression on the Internet. For now, though, the only thing I can do is use Microsoft’s Live Search. And think of moving my e-mail off Google’s GMail.