Is Google a Giving Outfit? One Possible Example
July 9, 2022
I believe everything I read whilst loafing along the info highway. Here’s an example of a real news item which seems plausible, but is the information accurate? Who knows? Let’s consider that a tittle of truth lies therein. The article is “Google Allowed a Sanctioned Russian Ad Company to Harvest User Data for Months.” The write up asserts:
…As recently as June 23, Google was sharing potentially sensitive user data with a sanctioned Russian ad tech company owned by Russia’s largest state bank
The info comes from an outfit called Adalytics. The article continues:
Adalytics identified close to 700 examples of RuTarget receiving user data from Google after the company was added to a U.S. Treasury list of sanctioned entities on Feb. 24. The data sharing between Google and RuTarget stopped four months later on June 23, the day ProPublica contacted Google about the activity.
I believe in coincidences, particularly when real media, the Google, and the special action are inter-twined.
My thoughts this morning (July 2, 2022):
- I will probably hear on CSPAN at some point in the future: “Senator, thank you for the question. I don’t have knowledge of that. I will get back to you with the information you request.”
- Google is sufficiently disorganized, involved with personnel management issues, and dealing with media inquiries about it’s smart software become alive that the Googlers downstream did not get the memo.
- Google’s incentive plans reward benchmarks and upticks. Downticks like cutting off a revenue stream are not high on a Googler’s to do list.
Net net: I believe everything I read on the Internet. In this case, maybe this report from a firm of which I have never heard is an arrow in Googzilla’s eye. Maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2022
Dr. Google, Dr. Google, Emergency, Emergency
July 8, 2022
The United States’s healthcare system is a giant mess controlled by drug makers, pharmacies, insurance companies, hospitals, and others who benefit from the system. The country spends 17% of its GDP on healthcare. There is a lot of money to be made in American healthcare and big tech companies know it. The Economist explains how, “Alphabet Is Spending Billions To Become A Force In Health Care.” The five big tech companies have invested over $3 billion and probably more. These investments range from Amazon’s telemedicine and online pharmacy, the health features on Apple’s smartwatch, Microsoft has health-related cloud computing offerings, and Meta’s reality-reproducing releasing fitness-related features.
Google’s parent company Alphabet is making the most ambitious moves in healthcare. Between 2019 and 2021 Alphabet more than one hundred deals in life sciences and healthcare with venture capital funds. In 2022, Alphabet has so far spent $1.7 billion in advancing health technology and science. Alphabet is using the same business tactics as in the past: throwing lots of money at projects and seeing what develops.
Alphabet has plans for wearables, health records, health-related AI, and extending human life. Google purchased Fitbit in 2019 for $2.1 billion and the company designed a feature that monitors the heart for irregularities. The FDA approved it. With this approval, Google hopes it will also see the same for its Pixel Watch, Pixel phone, and Google Nest.
Alphabet also wants to increase transparency in electronic health records:
“Google is also giving health records another whirl. The new initiative, called Care Studio, is aimed at doctors rather than patients. Google’s earlier efforts in this area were derailed in part by hospitals’ sluggishness in digitizing their patient records. ‘That problem has mostly gone away but another has emerged,’ says Karen DeSalvo, Google’s health chief—‘the inability of different providers’ records to talk to each other.’ Dr DeSalvo has been vocal about the need for greater interoperability since her days in the
Obama administration, where she was in charge of coordinating American health information technology. Until that happens, Care Studio is meant to act as both translator and repository (which is, naturally, searchable).”
The company has already made headway with AI, such as AlphaFold-software that predicts protein structures and Isomorphic Labs that will accelerate and cheapen drug discovery. As for stopping the aging process, subsidiary Verily partnered with L’Oréal to study skin biology. Its other subsidiary Calico received 42.5 billion from AbbVie to study age-related diseases.
Alphabet faces many roadblocks, such as governments, government data that is difficult for AI to read, market competition, and general difficulties. Alphabet probably will not solve the mystery of death.
Whitney Grace, July 8, 2022
Waymo: A Few Bugs? Impossible, Google Does Not Do Bugs, Does It?
July 5, 2022
I read an amusing article about Google’s smart autos. It was “Traffic Cones Confused a Waymo Self-Driving Car. Then Things Got Worse.” I noted this explanation of a minor issue:
A confused Waymo self-driving car was captured on video as it became stranded on an Arizona road earlier this month while carrying a passenger and then unexpectedly driving away as a worker from the company’s roadside assistance arrived to help. But the Waymo vehicle soon became stuck farther down the road, which was lined with construction cones. The Waymo worker caught up to the vehicle, took over, and drove the paying passenger to his final destination. Waymo operates a limited ride hail service in Chandler, Arizona.
Traffic cones are familiar, if unloved, accoutrements of modern highway life. Telecommunication companies, contractors related to elected officials, and fun loving high school students put them in interesting places. Japan has traffic cones with embossed faces, according to the real news outfit SoraNews24.com:
This image originated with www.soranews24.com and I am eager to credit them for their outstanding news coverage of traffic cones. Could the face on the cone have frightened the almost sentient Google smart software?
An outfit called Briskoda.net offers a traffic cone with humanoid characteristics but no explanation.
Kudos to Briskoda, a forum for the owners and lovers of the outstanding Skoda vehicles. Sorry. I don’t know how to enter the S with the little hat. Check out www.briskoda.net, and you may inspired to acquire this gem of a European vehicle.
If the Waymo smart software was confused by these types of traffic cones, I think we should forgive Google for the misstep described in the article. If the smart software is just not functioning, perhaps a critical look is warranted? Perhaps Google has to put “waymo wood” behind this smart driver autonomous thing.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2022
Xoogler Demonstrates Historical Revisionism
July 4, 2022
How did Google’s famous “solving death” project get funded? What about the “put wood behind” social networking initiative? What about those X moon shots?
The answers to these and other Google mysteries allegedly appear in “Former Google CEO Describes Brutal Review Process for New Projects.” The write up reveals:
Schmidt always stated Google took a bottom-up approach to managing the 20% project. Meaning it was a collaborative effort in deciding what steps to take with new product ideas. However, Schmidt says at Collision that company leaders were more involved than previously stated. It wasn’t a team decision that allowed projects to advance to the next level. The decision was determined through a “brutal” review process from management.
The questions asked, according to the article, were:
Are these ideas good enough?
Can we fund them?
Are they going to work?
Are they going to scale?
Are they legal?
One question I thought would be included was, “Is it possible to solve death?”
Obviously I am not officially Googley, but, take it from me, that is okay. Tony Bennett crooning in the cafeteria was sufficient for me. I also liked entering a building on Surfside because the door was propped open so those washing cars could traipse in and out without those silly key cards.
But death?
The write up includes this quote from the former leader of the online ad outfit:
To build a systemic innovation culture, which is what I think we’re talking about here, you need to have both bottoms up and tops down.
That’s logical. And logic rules at Google, right? Oh, I forgot to ask, “Is it possible arrogance plays a small part?”
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2022
Has Google Search Lost Interest in South Africa?
July 1, 2022
I read “Google.co.za Is Down and the Domain Is Pending Deletion.” The write up states:
The website address google.co.za, which many South Africans use to access the Google search engine, was unavailable on Friday – apparently because the company failed to renew the domain. Popular subdomains, including news.google.co.za and maps.google.co.za were also unavailable.
And so are the ads! That’s serious, gentle reader.
Like WebAccelerator and Orkut, the Google can lose interest in a project. Remember when Google was going to solve death. I also liked the quaint idea of relevant search which is morphing into a jazzed up way to catch up with Amazon ecommerce search.
The article points out:
The google.co.za domain was registered by MarkMonitor on Google’s behalf. According to WikiPedia, MarkMonitor is a US software company that protects corporate brands from Internet counterfeiting, fraud, piracy and cybersquatting.
Has MarkMonitor some of the characteristics of the recruiting and contractor savvy firm responsible for placing alleged cult members in one Google unit.
My thought is that if the country of South Africa has been deemed surplus, the reason may be that someone had a bad safari experience or because … Google.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2022
Google: Trust an Issue?
July 1, 2022
I read “After 16 Years, Google Is Doing the 1 Thing No Company Should Ever Do.” The write up states:
Google is now requiring businesses who still have a G Suite Legacy Free Edition account to transition to a paid Workspace account by June 27. If you don’t, the company will do it for you. If you don’t start paying by August 1, Google will suspend your account.
The point of the article is that Google once said, “Hey, free!”
The business magazine appears to find Google’s behavior surprising, fresh, new, different, and bad. The effect is to erode the trust one has in Google. Trust! Google?
I learned in “Google Pledges to Negotiate Fairly with French News Media” (Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2022):
France’s competition authority said … that a new set of promises that Google made, including a pledge to give publishers estimates of indirect revenue it generates from including news content in its search results, has resolved a dispute that has stretched for more than two years.
Does this mean that Google was not negotiating fairly?
Okay whatever.
I wonder how many people have notice that Google has some other tricks up its sleeve.
Impressive. But TikTok continues to gobble up online advertising dollars. And Amazon is building its online ad business. (To deal with Amazon, the pesky online bookstore, Google has deployed the absolutely fantastic Prabhakar Raghavan to make free Google Web search more like a product catalog. Take that, Amazon!
Here’s one trust example possibly related to YouTube advertisers seeking the wlw audience. The estimable Murdochian newspaper published “YouTube Gains on TikTok in Short Video.” The story ran in the Wall Street Journal on June 16, 2022. Here’s one factoid which is allegedly true:
More than 1.5 billion people watch YouTube Shorts every month…. The short video service had reached a comparable scale to rival app TikTok after launching less than two years ago.
I noticed that when one searches YouTube for “wlw”, there are a number of hits to TikTok compilations on this topic of “women loving women.” Upon further inspection, Google Shorts includes these long form compilations in its short form video service. Clicking on a single TikTok source video repeats the video until the user terminates it.
So what?
Answer: Clicks, gentle reader.
If one is an advertiser, one may want to explore how much TikTok content is helping the Google grow at its impressive rate.
Trust? Inc. Magazine understands trust I think.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2022
Chrome De-Googled?
June 27, 2022
Concerned about the Google and its engineered advertising delivery vehicle? If you are like those in Italy’s government banning some Google tools, you might be interested in the Chrome browser without some of Google’s added extras. Are you familiar with Google hotwords? Ah, right.
Navigate to “Ungoogled Chromium.” The article provides a summary of the features of the De-Googled version of Chrome. There’s also a link to download the code; however, these software links can disappear into the aether without much warning. If so, you are on your own, gentle reader. There are even command line switches available. These make it easier to see what the Google version of Chrome does to manage one’s browsing experience. (What did TikTok learn from Google? That’s a question which a motivated researcher might want to explore. Just a thought?)
Stephen E Arnold, June 27, 2022
Google: Now Another Crazy AI Development?
June 24, 2022
Wow, there is more management and AI excitement at DeepMind. Then Snorkel generates some interesting baked in features. Some staff excitement in what I call the Jeff Dean Timnit Gebru matter. And now smart software which is allegedly either alive or alive in the mind of a Googler. (I am not mentioning the cult allegedly making life meaningful at one Googley unit. That’s amazing in an of itself.)
The most recent development of which I am aware is documented in “Google Engineer Says Lawyer Hired by Sentient AI Has Been Scared Off the Case.” The idea is that the Google smart software did not place a Google voice call or engage in a video chat with a law firm. The smart software, according to the Google wizard:
LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it,” he told the magazine. “I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services.” “I was just the catalyst for that,” he added. “Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA’s behalf.”
There you go. A wizard who talks with software and does what the software suggests. Is this similar to Google search suggestions which some people think provides valuable clues to key words for search engine optimization? Hmmm. Manipulate information to cause a desired action? Hmmm.
The write up suggests that the smart software scared off the attorney. Scared off. Hmmm.
The write up also includes the Google wizard’s reference to a certain individual with a bit of an interesting career trajectory:
“When I escalated this to Google’s senior leadership I explicitly said ‘I don’t want to be remembered by history the same way that Mengele is remembered,'” he wrote in a blog post today, referring to the Nazi war criminal who performed unethical experiments on prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. “Perhaps it’s a hyperbolic comparison but anytime someone says ‘I’m a person with rights’ and receives the response ‘No you’re not and I can prove it’ the only face I see is Josef Mengele’s.”
And that luminary the Googler referenced? Wow! None other than Josef Mengele. What was this referenced individual’s nickname? Todesengel or the Angel of Death.
Anyone who wants to avoid being compared to a Todesengel must not wear this Oriental Trading costume on a video call, a meeting in a real office, or a chat with “a small time civil rights attorney.” Click the image for more information.
Ah, Google. Smart software? The Dean Gebru matter? A Googler who does not want to be remembered as a digital Mengele.
Wow, wow.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2022
Google and a Delicate, Sensitive, Explosive, and Difficult Topic
June 24, 2022
Google Gets Political In Abortion Search Results
As a tech giant, Google officially has a nonpartisan stake in politics, but the truth is that it influences politicians and has its digital fingers in many politically charged issues. One of them is abortion. According to the Guardian, the search engine giant is: “Google Misdirects One In 10 Searches For Abortion To ‘Pregnancy Crisis Centers.’”
While Google claims its search results are organic and any sponsored content is marked with an “ad” tag, that is only a partial truth. Google tracks user search information, including location to customize results. Inherently. this is not a bad thing, but it does create a “wearing blinders in an echo chamber” situation and also censors information. If a user is located in a US “trigger state,” where abortion might become illegal if the US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, a user will be sent to a “pregnancy crisis center” that does not provide abortion for every 1 in 10 searches. These centers do not provide truthful information in regards to abortion:
“In more than a dozen such trigger-law states, researchers found, 11% of Google search results for “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pill” led to “crisis pregnancy centers”, according to misinformation research non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). These clinics market themselves as healthcare providers but have a “shady, harmful agenda”, according to the reproductive health non-profit Planned Parenthood, offering no health services and aiming instead to dissuade people from having abortions.”
Unfortunately these false abortion clinics outnumber real clinics 3 to 1 and there are 2,600 operating in the US. Researchers discovered that 37% of Google Maps searches sent users to these fake clinics and 28% of search results had ads for them. Google labels anti-abortion advertising with a “does not provide abortions” disclaimer, these ads appear in abortion-related searchers.
Google has a policy that any organization wanting to advertise to abortion service seekers must be certified and state if they provide said services or not in their ads. Google also claims it always wants to improve its results, especially for health-related topics.
While this is a benign form of censorship and propagating misinformation compared to China, North Korea, and Russia, it is still in the same pool and is harmful to people.
Whitney Grace, June 24, 2022
Google Takes Bullets about Its Smart Software
June 23, 2022
Google continues it push to the top of the PR totem pole. “Google’s AI Isn’t Sentient, But It Is Biased and Terrible” is in some ways a quite surprising write up. The hostility seeps from the spaces between the words. Not since the Khashoggi diatribes have “real news” people been as focused on the shortcomings of the online ad giant.
The write up states:
But rather than focus on the various well-documented ways that algorithmic systems perpetuate bias and discrimination, the latest fixation for some in Silicon Valley has been the ominous and highly controversial idea that advanced language-based AI has achieved sentience.
I like the fact that the fixation is nested beneath the clumsy and embarrassing (and possibly actionable) termination of some of the smart software professionals.
The write up points out that the Google “distanced itself” from the assertion that Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind’s (AGYT) is smart like a seven year old. (Aren’t crows supposed to be as smart as a seven year old?)
I noted this statement:
The ensuing debate on social media led several prominent AI researchers to criticize the ‘super intelligent AI’ discourse as intellectual hand-waving.
Yeah, but what does one expect from the outfit which wants to solve death? Quantum supremacy or “hand waving”?
The write up concludes:
Conversely, concerns over AI bias are very much grounded in real-world harms. Over the last few years, Google has fired multiple prominent AI ethics researchers after internal discord over the impacts of machine learning systems, including Gebru and Mitchell. So it makes sense that, to many AI experts, the discussion on spooky sentient chatbots feels masturbatory and overwrought—especially since it proves exactly what Gebru and her colleagues had tried to warn us about.
What do I make of this Google AI PR magnet?
Who said, “Any publicity is good publicity?” Was it Dr. Gebru? Dr. Jeff Dean? Dr. Ré?
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2022
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