Okay, now I see. Thanks. :-)

Politics aside, if the Internet was being compared with pneumatic tubes in the pre-email era, then it actually seems like a fairly sound analogy to me. Could someone please explain what I'm missing here?

They have done evil. Here just one example.

Actually, it's not a good or service that the EMH refers to, but rather the market price of publicly-traded equities, bonds and commodities in an environment in which there are relatively low transaction fees. You should read more here before posting about it, although since you got a rating of "5" maybe only cursory knowledge is required?

...here's my assesment:

First of all, you need to skip to minute 9 before you start getting any info. And if you read the book Super Freakonomics, you already know everything in the 20-minute video:

- Monkeys steal money from each other, as do humans.
- Monkeys are terrible savers, as are humans.
- Monkeys are poor calculators of risk/reward, as are humans. (She goes on for about 8 minutes belaboring this point.)

And the goal for us as humans is to use our logic to overcome our emotions. There, I have now saved you 20 minutes of your life!

Google already has broken its commitment to privacy: Personalized Search for Everyone. As of last December, every computer that uses Google is opted in by default to being tracked, whether you're logged in or not.

...you should see this blog post from Google: Personalized Search For Everyone.

Whether a computer is signed in or not, the Gorg is tracking everything the computer does, in order to "personalize" the search results for it.

It seems the concept of "opt in" is now gone forever, since tracking is the default. I wonder if privacy advocates even understand the implications, given how often Google is the Internet for so many people.

(By the way, for Google fanboys, a non-evil company would have a toggle on the search page saying, "Personalized Results: ON - OFF"... But I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.)

I find it interesting that doing evil but at least reflecting on it a bit beforehand has now become what passes as a "good thing."

After reading that article, I hope some people are a little more hesitant about the evil Gorg. This part here I found particularly interesting:

At this point I need to put in a plug for the Start Page Search Engine, which does not store your IP address.

...thanks to Adblock

A smart business realizes that free advertising is worth its weight in gold and tells its legal department to STFU.

Lots of armchair quarterbacks give you ideas. You say to one of them, "Great idea! Why don't you go ahead and do it." Then their excuses begin.

...just ask any small business that has been banned from advertising on Google's Adwords network. I'm not going to plug my own business here, but I run a software company and was forced to lay off three people because Google decided my site violated their vague "Terms & Conditions." (They did not tell me what my supposed violations were.)

However, I will give you two examples of two other small businesses that were banned from Adwords. The first is this one, a small local pest-control company Reno. If anyone can find anything objectionable about that site, definitely let me know! Read their story here. (Scroll down to the 6th reply.)

Here's another company banned from Adwords, in this case a company in LA that has helped non-profits obtain grants for the past 35 years. You can read their story here.

What about algae? What about plants?

Eric Schmidt, is that you? (The CEO of Google said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.")