In Christian mythology, the apostle Paul converts from being an oppressor to being a Christian dissident. In Google's story, they convert in the opposite way: from "Don't Be Evil," to, well, "Evil." A core concept in western civilization is that, because nature is, by default, "Survival of the Fittest," the dominant tend to dominate. Dominant groups have "strength in numbers" and tend to dominate individuals in a "tyranny of the majority." There are no limits, by default, on dominion, and it extends from bullying, to rights-violations, to mass-incarceration, to complete destruction of individuals ("disappearances") and groups(often on the basis of dissent as "democide" or on the basis of race as "genocide") on a grand scale. Only "due process" and other hard limits on government power have prevented mass incarceration and mass murder by government (the very worst of "tyranny of the majority"). As some of you may know, the USA now incarcerates more people, per capita, than any other nation in the world. The combined federal and local police powers of the USA, instead of protecting private property, now steal more than all non-government criminals combined (1, 2, 3).
Like recently-fired Google software engineer James Damore, I used to like Google. I even appreciated their lip-service to resisting evil as a good sign. ("Don't Be Evil" was a nice corporate slogan that implied they understood their capacity for evil, as a search giant on a global scale.) But my like of Google really didn't last, because Google's commitment to good didn't last. ...For the purposes of this conversation, I'm assuming that serving customers useful tools on a voluntary basis is "good." However, on the road to Damascus, I've been converted into someone who sees Google's true face: the uncaring(evil-by-default) face of government compliance. ...This is true as much as Google has had its own (inverse) "Damascene conversion" to uncaring for my needs, desires, and individual freedom.
Google Has Profiled Us All As Idiots With Similar Desires & Now Serves Us All Status-Quo Shit
In yet another perfect example of Richard Stallman's warning about "our software using us" instead of "us using our software," Google Maps fails to provide an obvious and useful feature to humans: It won't measure the distance directly between two points on a map, over the curvature of the Earth. I wanted to know how far away Damascus, Syria was from Cyprus, Cyprus "as the crow flies" without having to hold a fucking tape measure up to my screen. It seems like this should be an obvious feature of a map function that allows you to choose between traveling on foot, or by bike, car, or plane. ...But google maps doesn't have a symbol(a bird?) for "As The Crow Flies." ...Nor does it have a little symbol for "drone flight." Nor does it have a little symbol for "god flight" or "direct distance for purposes other than travel." ...You get the point. No direct measurement between two points.
Engineers, journalists, and other truth-seekers often seek measurements that the general public does not seek. The same was true of the original information scientists, as Richard Stallman has often pointed out. This is why he wanted access to every piece of software's code: He wanted software to serve *his* goals, not *the goals that some idiot who was trying to guess his goals* came up with. Stallman realized, very early in the development of computers, that government-school-educated people were very bad at guessing what smart people wanted from their software. For this reason, and several others, Stallman suggested that smart people should always demand that their sofware was "free." (Not "gratis" or "without charge," but "able to be accessed and re-written, in whole or in part.")
Google's (Search Results For) "Damascene Conversion"...Ironically, They Moved Toward Persecution of Christians and Dissidents, Not Away From It
Stallman's critique is particularly relevant today, now that software is extremely powerful, and typically serves the nakedly power-grasping sociopaths who dominate both big business and government. Andrzej (And-Jee) Łobaczewski (Yo-Bah-Shev-Ski), a Polish psychologist and dissident, called this concept #Pathocracy, the governing outcome of dominant political evil (AKA "malevolent totalitarianism"; or "government by sociopaths" designed primarily to use government power for theft by those sociopaths). He called "the study of political evil" by his book of the same name, "Political Ponerology," from the Greek "poneros," which WIKIpedia notes is "from the branch of theology dealing with the study of evil."
I recently looked at Google's compliance with government requests for user data. Apparently, they try to break this data down to make it seem like they aren't spying on every single account. ...But they are, as the following screenshots from their "government user data request" webpage shows. The numbers on the left are "requests for user data" *per* "number of users" on the right. As you can see, the government accesses every single user's data, whenever they want, all the time, simply by claiming it's for "national security." So, essentially, if they want to spy on you at any time for any reason, they simply have to say the magic words, "it's for national security." There's literally nothing that isn't "covered" by this claim.
Google(especially G+), Facebook(especially the "Groups" platform), Twitter, Instagram, etc. are all willingly and gleefully "government-aligned." (Just as IBM was gleefully willing to work with the Nazis both prior to, and during, WWII. ...as documented by Charles Higham's book "Trading With The Enemy.") Google now unquestioningly accepts the premise that "the status quo, incumbent government is legitimate," complying with virtually all demands. (Compare this to the initial iteration of Google occasionally pushing back against the totalitarian goals, urges, and edicts of the status quo government.)
Of course, this stems from the idea that "Google knows best" when the reality is "Google doesn't know or care what's best." The idea of "what is best" is also designed to please "the lowest-common-denominator"(imagine the kind of people who voted for Trump or Hillary). Let's think through how this unphilosophical "style of thought" applies to data other than map directions. Google, by default, wants to acquire money. Unless a powerful entity consciously limits itself to acquiring money through voluntary trade, those who intend to use that powerful entity as a weapon can easily purchase its compliance with stolen money. It takes willpower to avoid the very definition of "corruption." But who would "those" corrupters be? (1) Any client (2) Governments, in particular.
Google's current partnership with the U. S. Government, after their reorganization under "Alphabet" seemingly allowed them to directly diversify their operations into the evil domain of "coercion". Google's initial slogan was "Don't Be Evil," but it's amazing how quickly this claim was side-lined after Google's founders stopped running the corporation. The highest-hierarchical-level goal structure of the corporation that handles most of the world's "search" needs is "make money using any corrupted-government-approved means, regardless of whose rights it directly violates." For years, Google has helped law enforcement track down people who have not violated anyone else's rights, helped foreign governments track down pro-liberty dissidents, and, more recently, fired an employee for telling the truth.
Of course, Google claims (above) that they obey the law, and tries to imply that they don't give up data on every user. But this is a lie that's easily seen through by anyone who isn't severely mentally handicapped. After all, the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights (and Article 1, Sec. 9 requirement for a "corpus delicti" in all criminal prosecutions) is the law, and the U. S. Government openly and flagrantly violates every single Amendment in the Bill of Rights on a daily basis, as the International Society for Individual Liberty, Reason Magazine, and many others have pointed out for decades. Here's Google's language: "Google's general approach to government requests for information is the same: Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it follows the law and Google's policies. And if we believe a request is overly broad, we seek to narrow it."
Allow me to translate: "We do whatever we want, and we comply with every government request, no matter how unreasonable anyone thinks it is, because we want to succeed, and being aligned with power allows us to succeed with less effort than being aligned with what is morally proper, except in those rare cases where compliance would be so obvious it would risk exposing our complete lack of willingness to protect privacy, free speech, or any other individual right."
When Google first came on the scene, they provided a better service than anyone else could provide. But they stopped giving a fuck about the people who used their "service." Now, just as Stallman predicted, instead of us using our software, our software uses us.
In a bit of extreme irony, Google provided the following auto-prompts for the search "uncaring," which I was googling to find out how best to describe their lack of catering to diverse goals. Every single result contained the word "selfish" as a synonym for "uncaring." ...And that's really the problem: Google sees only power when it looks at the world. This is, after all, the default behavior: beware of (and serve!) power first, so power doesn't kill you.
...So, Google doesn't care about individual customers, each with an individual "self." Nope. It's slouching toward the mindless coercive collectivism that Ayn Rand decried in her novels and philosophical works as the primary destructive force in the Universe: unenlightened, coercive collectivism. ...A collectivism that doesn't make any distinction between "group desires served by voluntary interaction" and "group desires served by coercion." ...It's all the same to Google, given their total lack of dedication to Western Civilization and Enlightenment-era individualist philosophy.
NOTES: Yes, I realize that Stallman's personal philosophy isn't 100% internally-consistent, nor is it consistent with Randian objectivism or Thoreau's libertarianism, nor is Randian objectivism internally-consistent or coherent, especially as implemented. No human philosophies are, and then the problems of universal cowardice and stupidity are added to the problem, it's all a primate shit-show, and there are no heroes. This is why I linked to Free Software Foundation (the part of Stallman's philosophy that he worked the hardest on) instead of his personal website. Some of you may also notice that this post isn't incredibly well-formatted or properly-footnoted. That's for two reasons: (1) it was taking too long for me to write, and I have better things I need to do with my time, especially since the rewards of using this platform are very sporadic, unreliable, and seemingly not correlated with effort. (2) The preview function wasn't working while I was creating this post (there was no preview below the post, allowing for fast "feedback-and-correction."
