[lit-ideas] Procrustean Google
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:35:42 -0400
for Andreas, who is a Google adept:
Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index
August 31, 2005 | Issue 41•35
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Executives at Google, the rapidly growing
online-search company that promises to "organize the world's
information," announced Monday the latest step in their expansion
effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is
unable to index.
"Our users want the world to be as simple, clean, and accessible as
the Google home page itself," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a
press conference held in their corporate offices. "Soon, it will be."
The new project, dubbed Google Purge, will join such popular
services as Google Images, Google News, and Google Maps, which
catalogs the entire surface of the Earth using high-resolution
satellites.
As a part of Purge's first phase, executives will destroy all
copyrighted materials that cannot be searched by Google.
"A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its
Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest,"
John Battelle wrote in his widely read "Searchblog." "Thanks to
Google Purge, you'll never have to worry that your search has missed
some obscure book, because that book will no longer exist. And the
same goes for movies, art, and music."
"Book burning is just the beginning," said Google co-founder Larry
Page. "This fall, we'll unveil Google Sound, which will record and
index all the noise on Earth. Is your baby sleeping soundly? Does
your high-school sweetheart still talk about you? Google will have
the answers."
Page added: "And thanks to Google Purge, anything our global
microphone network can't pick up will be silenced by
noise-cancellation machines in low-Earth orbit."
As a part of Phase One operations, Google executives will
permanently erase the hard drive of any computer that is not already
indexed by the Google Desktop Search.
"We believe that Google Desktop Search is the best way to unlock the
information hidden on your hard drive," Schmidt said. "If you
haven't given it a try, now's the time. In one week, the deleting
begins."
Although Google executives are keeping many details about Google
Purge under wraps, some analysts speculate that the categories of
information Google will eventually index or destroy include
handwritten correspondence, buried fossils, and private thoughts and
feelings.
The company's new directive may explain its recent acquisition of
Celera Genomics, the company that mapped the human genome, and its
buildup of a vast army of laser-equipped robots.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076
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