Comparing Google to 9/11?
I read this today. A comparison between the Google Smackdown and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
On 9/11 -
I watched the second plane fly into the World Trade Center live on television on 9/11. My sister had called to tell me the first plane crashed. It was about 10:30 at night here and The Other Half and I sat down and watched the live footage on cable. I was horrified to see that plane fly into the tower right in front of my eyes. I was stunned. So was the rest of the world.
A New Fear Was Born -
A few days later I had volunteered to paint houses for a charity organisation that housed women trying to leave abusive situations. About an hour into the painting I heard a plane approaching and I looked up - not with happiness, not with joy, but in *fear*. The terrorists had achieved what they wanted right there - they wanted to create fear.
Change Can Be Forever
The actions of the terrorists changed things forever - from airport security to the laws of several countries, to creating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I would suggest some of these changes were not seen in the crystal ball of the terrorists. I’d suggest that the anti-Google feeling and the amount of anger their actions would create was not seen in the crystal ball of Google, either. For some, there will be no going back to how things were.
My reply to that post was as follows:
Did you seriously equate the Google Smackdown with what happened Sept. 11 and the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you honestly believe that Google removing pagerank is equal somehow to lost lives? Would you actually look a survivor of 9/11 or a surviving family member in the eye and compare losing pagerank to what happened to them? What about a war widow?
Wow.
Just wow.
Good on you for creating “controversy” and driving traffic, though. Shoot, if Giulani can campaign on the graves of the dead, why shouldn’t someone else compare their lost lives to lost pagerank?
You know, I would poke my own eyes out before I would support my own president in his ongoing “war”, but I have to say that I am deeply offended by your comparison.
Please remove the link to my site from your list. Thanks.
I am literally shaking with rage. I CANNOT even imagine that someone would actually print something like this up and then, for God’s sake, promote it for traffic.
I wrote this in the PPP forums where people seemed not to have read the post (I hope):
Am I the only one so deeply offended by that post that I am shaking with rage? Am I the only one that is disgusted by the comparison to a pagerank reduction to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on 9/11?
Wow.
I left my comment regarding it on the post.
I’m seriously done with this business. When people can honestly compare an insignificant pagerank reduction to the DEATHS of thousands of human beings then the obsession with Google has gone too far. What happened on 9/11 changed the lives of millions of people irrevocably. The flippin’ Google Smackdown pales in comparison. I’m pretty sure the people that were personally effected by the terrorist attacks and the events following would agree with that assessment.
I have seen some really ugly things in the marketing sector of the blogosphere. Almost as ugly as the political sector. I’ve rolled my eyes and mentally marked people off my “must read” list because of stupid reasons for not commenting and considering themselves above other people because of their precious pagerank. But this takes the cake. This is beyond pale. There are comments on that post where readers are congratulating the author and agreeing with her assessment.
Am I too easily offended? Possibly. But I’ve lost a friend because of the events following 9/11, I’ve got friends in mourning now, and I see my country (and others) torn apart because of the real terrorists. How many lives has Google taken with their pagerank reduction? How many lives have been ruined? When will this precious flippin’ pagerank debacle take center stage in my nightly news? Why isn’t my Senator all over this atrocity?
Because when compared to other things it doesn’t matter. Yeah, PPP bloggers are losing money in advertising. How many died? Sure, some people are losing search engine traffic. Did Google somehow maim them physically? Are people actually going to be damaged forever and ever because they no longer have a pagerank?
I may be too harsh here, I admit that. I’m actually take my time between paragraphs. My anger is overwhelming me. I experienced that pagerank drop and guess what? I haven’t been devastated, my family is still intact, and I’m going to wake up tomorrow in the same condition that I am in today (God willing). Col. Keith Nepsa is still going to be dead because he was in Iraq fighting the real terrorists. And, no, those terrorists don’t work at the Googleplex.
I suppose I’ll calm down eventually. Still, I’m done with that kind of thinking. I feel dirty just from reading it. It doesn’t matter if you support the “war” or not, the fact is people actually die because of terrorists. Google’s not killing anyone and they didn’t cause 9/11. They aren’t even in the same class as Al Qaeda, to which they were compared. Are you kidding me?
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
Everyone has their line and that was mine. Gah!
Update:
I just read this on another blog (contact me for linkage, but I have something else in mind for later and am keeping it simple right now):
They are justifying their actions, their evil, their fear tactics, with the rationalism that they will help the greater good (by harming a minority), whether or not they are rounding people up for slaughter, or killing people with jet airplanes, or taking food away from a poor family in the US or even the Philippines, they are still harming people. Hitler did not start immediately by sending people to concentration camps, he ramped into it.
Bin Laden did not start out by killing thousands of people right away, he influenced people, curbed them to his belief system and then kicked off a campaign to achieve his sinister goals. Google today is harming people by taking away their wealth and their earning potential and they are harming the people that trust Google to provide uncensored information. Who is to say what they will do tomorrow, when their software is running on everyone’s computer and Gphone and car.
If they can not avoid doing evil today, when they have a large amount of power, what will they do tomorrow when they gain even more power?
The answer, they will do even greater evil and possibly eclipse Osama Bin Laden and Hitler combined. [emphasis mine]
The person that wrote this received kudos from the person who wrote the post to which I was initially referring. And yet that same person said in the comments of this post (and in other places, including a private message) that I had “misinterpreted what she wrote”. Really? Someone obviously looking to cause some controversy (which fuels traffic, which would increase his “RealRank”) dug down deep in the muck*, covered himself with it, sucked it into his lungs and declared a search engine to be on par with Hitler which effectively equates the Google smack with the Holocaust for all of which he gets kudos and
Oh this is brilliant, much better than my article! Very well written, congratulations.
Cheers,
Snoskred
Is it really a misinterpretation?
I have plenty of other words befitting of this kind of dirty trickery, but I’ll leave that to your imagination as I promised myself I would remain civil and ladylike…heh.
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Comparing Google to 9/11?…
Today I read someone compare Google to the terrorists that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. This person blogged that when Google reduced pagerank for paid bloggers that they effectively acted like al Qaeda did when they sent their minions …
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I was actually trying to illustrate the point that fear changes how people look at things. There’s no going back now.
Me, I’ll never look at a plane in the same way again. Nor will I ever look at Google in the same way again. When people use fear to try and control others, it can truly have effects that were not foreseen at all.
I wasn’t comparing what they are *doing* to 9/11.
I thought the article made that fairly clear.
Cheers,
Snoskred
I read the words you posted and couldn’t get past that part for a while. I finally took a couple of deep breaths and tried to finish reading the article. It was very clear that you were comparing fear of actual terrorists to a Google PageRank reduction. The two aren’t even remotely similar. Google didn’t terrorize me and I had a fairly high ranking blog smacked down because of paid posts I did elsewhere. Did that take away lives? No. Did that cause me to have nightmares? No.
I stand by what I wrote.
ETA:
By the way, your comment on BloggingZoom:
You’re referring to the thread wherein I called reporting other bloggers to Google “dirty”. I explained that I was referring to the OP because he reported Tech Crunch to Google for paid links. So the above statement shows a misinterpretation on your part, not mine- at least regarding the PPP forum posting.
I agree with your sentiments. There’s really a lot of ‘terrorist’ hyperbole going on all over the place.
A fair comparison of what Google is up to is Standard Oil in the 1870’s through 1900’s, IBM and AT&T in the 50’s through 70’s or Microsoft in the 1990’s.
Frank C’s last blog post..Happy Thanksgiving
Hi, Frank, and thanks for taking the time to comment.
I’m beginning to think we need a Godwin’s Law for “terrorist talk”.
I disagree with even mentioning 9/11 or such human tragedies in the same breath as an issue of a wholly different nature and dimension such as this, but I can understand the mood in which that was posted though.
You know, I always place huge restraints on myself when posting online, especially when I’m hot-headed… and I’ve never regretted not posting something in the spur of the moment..
Hi, Hari, thanks for coming by.
I don’t regret my post, if that is to what you’re referring. I am a very passionate person and if that happened to come through, then so be it. I’ve done nothing to regret. Someone voiced their opinion that the “terror” Google is instilling in folks is the same as the terror that groups like al Qaeda have instilled upon the world. In turn, I voiced my opinion that the analogy was wrong. What is there to regret?
No actually I meant snoskred’s post.
Thanks for coming back and clarifying, Hari. I do appreciate that. And I apologize if you’ve had an database errors while trying to access this page. Seems my host is having some “issues”.
Thanks again for taking the time to come by and comment.
Lizzie you are so right.
Hi, Vic! Thanks for stopping by. And thanks for the support. I appreciate that.