From the News&Observer, in Raleigh, NC, a piece that claims Google was heavy handed in its negotiations with local officials over a data center. It may be a case of over sensitive officials playing to the local press, but it does remind me of behavior I covered back in the 90s, from Microsoft.
Google muscled N.C. officials
Records show company was forceful about tax breaks and secrecy
Google tried to silence lawmakers and pushed — at times with a heavy hand — to influence legislation designed to bring the company to Caldwell County.
The company demanded that legislators never speak its name, and had them scolded when word of its interest in North Carolina leaked out, according to records made public this week.
Take a look at Google’s “Ten Things” corporate philosophy. In particular, #7 stands out:
There’s always more information out there. Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search billions of images and a way to view pages that were originally created as PDF files. [snip] The list is not likely to end there as Google’s researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world’s information to users seeking answers.
Do not worry; Google is not trying to keep anything secret. This is all just a matter of Google’s rapid growth not being able to catch up to public demand. Once Google gets big enough, we will be able to find out about all these North Carolina meetings; they will be available on Google.
Google’s engineers just have not gotten around to indexing public legislation records and meeting minutes yet. Just click on a few more Google ads, and they will have the money to make this world’s information completely, uncensoredly searchable!
🙂
Google will become the Microsoft of the new millenium.