Google: The Curse of Search

March 2, 2021

Remember when Eric Schmidt objected to information about his illustrious career being made available? I sure do. As I recall, the journalist used Google search to locate interesting information. MarketWatch quoted the brilliant Mr. Schmidt as saying:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

Nifty idea.

Forbes, the capitalist tool I believe, published “Google Issues Quality Warning For Millions Of Google Photos Users.” That write up pivots on using information retrieval to illustrate that Google overlooked its own “right to be forgotten” capability.

The capitalist tool states:

At its 2015 launch, Google Photos creator Anil Sabharwal promised that High Quality uploads offered “near-identical visual quality” when compared to your original photos. But now Google wants us to see a seemingly huge difference in quality between the two settings and to be willing to pay extra for it. It seems “Original Quality” is now suddenly something for which we should all be willing to pay extra.

So what?

Google, which is struggling to control its costs, wants to generate money. One way is to take away a free photo service and get “users” to pay for storage. And store what, you ask.

Google is saying that its 2015 high quality image format is no good. Time to use “original quality”; that is, larger file sizes and more storage requirements.

The only hitch in the git along is that in 2015 Google emitted hoo-hah about its brilliant image method. Now the Google is rewriting history.

The problem: Google’s search engine with some coaxing makes it easy to spot inconsistencies in the marketing spin. Nothing to hide. Words of wisdom.

Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2021

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, Marketing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.