(72nd) Open Source Search Engine vs. Search Engine Conspiracy

Microsoft has launched Bing and then we have Google, Yahoo and about dozen other relevant or not so relevant search engines. Which is actually great, when you want to find something. Now, my tiny little paranoid brain twists and turns (after seeing the Bing-marketing video, actually) around one question.

How much these search engines can manipulate the information we will find on the web? Is it as much or even more than we get out from the news companies? I'm a 'bit' skeptic with them at the moment. Since their funding is anyhow based on the money they make on getting the search results to hit the correct marketing, how independent can the search results ever be?

But furthermore, while I keep being mistrustful towards these nowadays corporate giants, I wonder if there is an alternative solution for this? Meaning that is there an open source search engine which could actually be as accurrate as the others but without anything commercial in it, just pure information? Like wikipedia, but with the information on the whole web. Could it for example use cloud computing or similar system to hold on indexing and to index itself. Thinking about SETI@Home -type of system, which could then become like WEB@Home -search engine. And that it would be completely independent on any power structures and funding and made by volunteers with open source ethics. Edit: Something found from here http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools-opensource.html

Now, I don't have any prove about the results manipulation with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, or any of the others, but it would certainly make sense to THEM (They talk a lot, don't they -Pulp Fiction) to manipulate the results in a transparent and unnoticeable way. The companies I talk about in here are at the moment the most powerful global organizations in the whole world and they hold the most of the information the people in the world can access.

Well in the other hand, how much this information we can find actually has anything to do with the real life then?

(59th)Chrome on Linux

I read something promising from the Lifehacker Feed today. I've been waiting for quite awhile for this brilliant lightweight browser to appear on other operating systems than on windows. It would be really nice to e.g. write this post in Chrome instead of Firefox. Which is a great browser, but lacks one thing, the simplicity, like I've mentioned previously.
The reason for this post is just the thing, that Google has some sort of Open Source-ish reputation and still the work that they do in the first place is with Windows. Is that because they'd like to dig a hole beneath the slow feet of Internet Explorer and by that get a bigger piece of cake? Or is this the fact (like it seems to me) that most of he Google application development is done above windows anyway. What is Googles open source strategy? Do they even have one?
I have my doubts and opinions, of course. As far as I can understand, Google is a company, which main purpose is to make profit by creating solutions and innovations, I suppose that is the reason for the lack of Linux -support in their product catalogue. At least I sincerely hope so, since the other possibility is that they haven't even thought about it, and if so, it's not that magic and innovative company to play with. Might be that it still isn't, since the lack of openness.

(33rd) Usability

One more thing about the usability. Google. They seem to know how to tide up a bunch of good services behind one account. But then. The services are really good, but how to get them interacting together without adding the google toolbar (check the previous blog -entry), or other firefox-plugin. Not so sure how it works with Internet Explorer, I've tried to avoid it as much as I can.

For example, if I find anything interesting in my e-mail, google reader-feed or from the search -page, I should be able to select the item, or to click it, let's say that we'll do this with secondary mouse button, again, and send it to my google notebook's tagged collections. Or to my e-mail inbox.

Actually the Gmail could be so much more than just a collection of ever-deleted mails.But then again, would it have too much stuff inside, like the native non-web appllications tend to get. I suppose so.

But anyway, the google -stuff is great, but there's no good connection between them, without using the darn plug-ins. And why would I have to download something extra if this sort of behaviour could be inside the applications themselves? The API:s are available and they are working anyway. At least so it seems :D

nineteenth

How much will we leave marks on the world from ourselves? To the nature we'll leave a bunch of constant human-trademarks in the form of plastic bags, nuclear waste etc. In the web, then, we can easily leave even more traces of ourselves. It seems that, in case you are not careful, you can really loose (or gain) your reputation out there. Or here, by the way :D.
Has anybody been tracking down the environmental cost of our everyday internet-usage? How much do the invisible servers consume energy? I bet that the amount of consumed energy in these machines of lousy software is increasing second by second.
And the other thing in web is the visual traces we leave from ourselves. How can we be sure that the data left behind is not misused? By who, you might ask. By anybody who gets the profit out of it I say.
The marketing profiler companies, the merchandise marketers, at least. For example; this Blog is written on a platform owned by Google, which is by far the best internet -based company ever. It also has, as a company, really powerful ways of exploring the user statistics and (as I suspect) the user data inside all the millions/billions user accounts across the world. It's not saying this too loud, but it has tailored the search engine for China, in a way to restrict non-chinese-way of searching the web. The other word for this is definitely a censorship. which is never a good thing. So my question is, will Google serve other countries in other ways as well. It could, quite easily, provide use statistics and search cpabilities for U.S.A, which is not (and has not been) the number one in human rights following what comes to national security guarding. I'm not saying that Google does it, not that government of U.S.A (or whatever the country is) would do it, but that there's a possibility for google to provide such service to it's customers. I don't think they do act that way, if I got it right, they have been declining on such actions. But what about Microsoft, AOL and yahoo, then? Or the not-so-friendly criminal organisations, or terrorists?
My point in here might be (not quite sure about it ;) that people should think of what they provide of themselves in the web and with who they share that info. But it is like in normal world, I'm not telling my personal history to a bunch of unkown co-travellers in the subway. Like they say: Just because you're paranoid, don't mean nobodys watching.

And for a relief (is it?) to me and anybody who happens to be reading this. Who cares about me in the web anyway? Some people tend to think that they and their thoughts or actions are so important that their personal data can be used, as it is, against them by some big governmental player. From my point of view, the most of the data in the web can and will be, in the future - if not now, used as a merchandise targeting material for companies who want to make profit. Because that is the way for companies to keep on growing. At any cost, if you check the global players in any market sector.