I don't think that's enough.

It was fine in the past because it simply wasn't feasible for government to surveil everyone all of the time. It was too costly. As technology reduces the cost, we may get to a point where it is perfectly feasible for everyone to be watched all of the time except when they're in their homes with blinds drawn -- and given enough data collected on your movements and actions in public, they can probably deduce most of what you do at home as well.

I think we're eventually going to have to either start imposing limits on data collected in public, or else just give up on the idea of privacy. I know which approach I prefer.

What paid products has Google shut down?

I think Google takes this concept a bit further, than those companies did, though, investing a far larger percentage of revenues into R&D, and even encouraging engineers whose day job isn't R&D to spend part of their time building new things.

Google makes very heavy use of Google Docs. It's the format for internal documentation, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. I've been at Google for over two years and never seen anything done in LibreOffice, much less MS Office.

Actually, I think the driverless cars are just really cool, world-changing tech that Sergey really wanted to work on. Google is a company of geeks, and while fitting everything into an overarching business strategy is a good idea, sometimes stuff is done just because it's awesome and no one else is doing it.

Google does not sell user data, except in the form of aggregated, anonymized statistics. Google's major profits are made by using user data internally to target ads, but without giving user data to advertisers. It all stays in-house -- and Google is very careful about keeping it secure against intrusions, leaks and even access by employees.

This is why the government request stories are so damaging to Google.

Google's "deal" with its users is that Google collects and uses information from searches, e-mails, etc., in order to figure out what ads to show the users. The users get high-quality free services, including "better" ads -- hardly anyone likes ads, but most everyone would prefer that if they have to see ads that the ads be for products which interest them. Advertisers get cost-effective advertising, since they only pay when someone actually clicks their ad, which means they only pay for good leads. Google, of course, gets money from the advertisers. The more information Google has about users, the better it can target the ads, which means the more ads are clicked.

As long as Google does a good job of ensuring that user data is only used in that way, most people consider it to be a reasonable trade. That trade depends on Google doing a good job of keeping user data tightly controlled, and I think most people have the perception that Google can and does do a good job of keeping their private data private. But if some external entity has carte blanche to rummage through the data at will, then the balance of value changes, because the risk to users is greater.

We grant government permission to do that sort of rummaging for good reasons, but generally don't give carte blanche. Government should only be able to request specific information about specific individuals when it has proven to a skeptical magistrate that it has good reason. That's the theory. But the telcos have, apparently, been giving free rein to federal agencies, and now we have this allegation that Google does, too. Or that government has been legally compelling Google to provide open access, which amounts to the same thing.

Google wants to be able to prove that it has not been providing open access, but government gag orders prevent that. This means that those government gag orders are materially damaging Google's business, because it doesn't matter how good Google is at safeguarding the user data it possesses, if everyone figures that government agencies have wide-open backdoors.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google. I don't, however, speak for Google and they don't speak for me.)

Must be nice to live in a fantasy world where completely innocent people never get prosecuted. Not having done anything wrong definitely helps, but it's no guarantee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

If you're in a position to be a witness, great! Be a good one. But first get your attorney involved. Your attorney will help you decide if it's safe to have a conversation with the police (unlikely), or whether you should just provide a signed statement, or whether you should negotiate a qualified immunity before talking. Yes, this means that doing you part for society will cost you more time and money than just talking... but it could also cost you far, far less than if you talked and got yourself in trouble.

Generally, they'll try really hard not to actually answer that question. You can also just ask "Am I free to go?" and if the answer is "no", or anything but "yes", you should assume that you are under suspicion and are being detained. That's a big clue that it's time to Shut Up.

Thanks for the deeper reading. I looked through it quickly, just for the numbers, did my calculation and said "In other words, not much", and left it there. But clearly the article was far more deceptive than I had realized.

You forgot to mention another component: The internship is a 3 month-long job interview. If they do well, and enjoy their time with you, not only are they more likely to come back, you'll know that you want them to come back. If they don't do so well, you know you don't want to hire them full time, which is good because getting rid of mediocre people is damned hard.

I should mention that I thought it rather... sneaky... of the journalist to present annual values for all of the other elements, but a multi-year aggregate number for the industry donations. It seems like he was trying to make the industry donations look far larger than they are.

Notice that the $38.9M figure is a total for the years 2005-2011. I assumed those donations were spread evenly over the six years, giving an annual figure of $6.48M. 6.48/228 = 2.8%, which I rounded to 3%.

The gun industry provides approximately 3% of the NRA's annual revenues.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/whom-does-the-nra-really-speak-for/266373/

Er, I meant edges and vertices, of course.

Do you actually need general stimulus input? I don't think so. I think what you describe can also be achieved by providing the system with a general knowledge map so that it understands all of those things and the relationships between them. Even better if you can then personalize the knowledge map, strengthening and weakening nodes and vertices based on what the human knows and doesn't know.