If the colored border is so pointless, then why are you afraid to show the whole picture, the way people would normally see it?

Two reasons:

1) The distinction is clearer when you see the entire peach colored rectangle standing out from all the white around it.

2) The words give meaning to the color, so it stands out more.

You intentionally cropped out the top because you knew your argument would fail if you included the whole thing.

You deliberately clipped out the part of the add that said, "Ads related to BLAH BLAH BLAH".

Is your argument so weak that you need to resort to deception?

Techno-hipster cries "wolf". Yawn.

Well, Google was third on the list in one of the diagrams, not first. And Google doesn't collaborate with the NSA other than manually responding to national security letters, which they are required to do by law.

I've been inside the Google datacenters, for weeks at a time, including the CCNRs (network hardware center). There is no way that NSA has direct access to Google, unless there was a conspiracy involving thousands of people, including me.

The only information that Google cares about is what you in the market for.

But, I work for Google. So, maybe I'm lying. On the other hand, you are an anonymous coward with no real information. All you have it a tinfoil hat.

Google hired me, with a 2.2 GPA and 20+ years of real-world experience.

If Google doesn't ask brainteasers. They do ask lots of abstract algorithm questions. The idea is not to see how good you are at basic CS techniques. The idea is to see how well you think abstractly.

And the algorithms have many real world applications at Google. We work on problems involving million of pieces of data. The difference between N^2 and NlogN can be huge.

"Excel power user" == Someone who can't write code or use SQL.

You are wielding a blunt club. I can use your same argument to claim that no one ever invented anything, since all inventions rest on some other invention.

It is easy to look at Google and say that anything they do bears some resemblance to something else. This is especially true if you think Google is a search company, or an ad company. It's not.

Google is a huge AI research lab. Search is one application of AI, and displaying ads pays the bills. Most of the work that goes on at Google involves pattern matching of some sort. Google is innovating all of the time (data center efficiency, green energy use, more efficient web information transfer, AI algorithms that form knowledge graphs, control systems that treat the entire datacenter as a single computer, and on and on). And those innovation are presented to the public in the form of research papers.

Those innovations are not immediately obvious to people who think Google is just a search engine and/or advertising company.

Our legal system is adversarial. It is your lawyer's job to make sure that you get to make every argument that the law will hear.

So, stop for a minute and imagine the world as you would prefer it, a world where lawyers pick a side instead of a client. So, when you wind up in some sort of legal entanglement, in which you are in the right but the facts are cloudy, your lawyer might be arguing for the other side. Or maybe you won't be able to find a lawyer to take your case.

The point of a trial is to bring all evidence to light, so that an objective decision can be made. Your lawyers job is to make sure that all that evidence is presented. That's the way the system work.

The vast majority of lawyers are good ethical people. They get a bad rep because:
1) There are a handful of bad lawyers out there.
2) People see bad lawyers in dramatic films.
3) People with little knowledge of the law read sensational headlines without understanding the details of a case.
4) You lost a legal case because you or your lawyer sucked.

All the Feds admitted was that they obtained information from those companies, which everyone already knew. And the Feds admitted that the program was called Prism. Nothing was said about "direct access" to servers at those companies.

Military contractors are probably the least honest people on Earth. It sounds like someone was putting a bullshit sales pitch together, when our "hero" took it for the truth and released it to the general public.

Because, as we all know, it is impossible to use powerpoint to create a presentation that is not the complete truth. It is not possible that someone was describing a system that they would like to have. Since it is powerpoint, it must be the truth.

Anyone who is dedicated enough to want to firebomb a house is also dedicated to drive by it themselves.

It's not like there is anyone out there going, "Gosh I want to firebomb Steve but I don't have a picture of his front yard, and I can't be bothered to drive by his place myself."

The data that was collected consisted of only the beginnings of packets, by an antenna that randomly switched between many different frequencies.

If Google was really trying to collect personal data, why didn't they collect entire packets on all the frequencies? They certainly have the resources to do it right.

Let me get this straight. You make a move for third-base, but a rebuffed, then try to head back to second, but find that there is another guy already there?

You do have an interesting love life.

Google is laying tons and tons of fiber.

Google does buy up dark fiber capacity, for backbones, but that has nothing to do with the Google Fiber project in KC, Austin, and Provo.

Tons of fiber has been installed in KC. I'm not sure about the situation in Austin. In Provo, Google is taking over the unfinished government fiber project and finishing/upgrading it.

Google had to make a choice with Shopping.

1) Allow absolutely everyone to register for free. Then put up with all the spammers who place fake products and prices in order to get people to their sites.
2) Charge a tiny fee that prevents spammers from overrunning the place.

This was similar to the idea that charging a penny per email would run spammers out of business. Only, there is no way to charge for email, given the way the Internet works. But, there was the opportunity to do it with Shopping.

It's not like product providers pay more to appear more often. It is a single, small fee that is the same for everyone. It won't keep out anyone legitimate. Just the spammers.

Must the same way that you must pay a tiny fee to put a listing in the classified section of the newspaper. Otherwise, if it were free, it would quickly be overrun by crap and spam.