Google Spanks CNet for Being Naughty

And John says they found all their info on GOOGLE

haha..

wow, Eric Schmidt makes us Threadwatchers look mature by comparison.

Apparently, Google was angered by an article published earlier by Cnet where all sorts of personal information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt was included.

Anonymous /. contributors are a pain and their suppositions can be foolish. If you spend a minute and a half and track down the original sources of all this "personal information" you find that it comes from articles in Forbes, CNN, the New York Times, The Almanac (the Atherton newspaper); an official bio for a speaking engagement and required public financial filings.

There's something else afoot, possibly the Google Desktop Search error in the original cnet article. Whatever it is I doubt -- hope -- it isn't just for regurgitating already reported information.

Techdirt has a little inside info

That kind of attitude has been known to turn around and snap your head off at some point...

What I gathered from it is simple. Write a fluff piece about us or don't speak to us.

That is all fine and dandy till people want to hear a little bit more than how Google employees get free grilled cheese sandwichs at work or can have their laundry done for free. Without access to these guys, reporters will get creative, and stories will be very interesting. Anyday now that ball is going to drop on the PR fairy tale.

Good reporters are going to ask the tough questions, hence the refusal to be interviewed.

Most US Corporations have the same kind of policy about talking to the press. The theory is that if you don't say anything you can't hurt anything or give anything away.

But, this 'policy' of punishing a few in the press, cuz they did not like what was written about them seems to me to go against the googlites stand of 'doing no evil'. My Momma taught me it is evil to punish someone for asking honest questions or reporting the truth.

...Threadwatch, and its full of pussy cats here.

Aren't we talking about CNet? Since when did CNet ask tough questions?

>reporters will get creative

Only the inept reporters.

for Google to suffer from actions like this. Seriously, I'm dying to see thier comeuppance. I'll wallow in laughter and joy when the stock price drops to $15/share and the company starts hemorraging employees and innovation like crazy. I think they're the next AOL in many respects.

schadenfreude then. ;)

I don't see Google collapsing like an AOL, they are just too big right now. Perhaps 5-6 years from now, but not anytime in the near future.

To be honest, Google just isn't that impressive to me anymore. Most of the other search engines have caught up, and what else does Google really offer?

Gmail? Come on, a cute little e-mail service for Internet nerds but nothing mainstream yet.
Froogle? Not even close to being a real shopping engine.
Local? Being taken to school by Yahoo!

Where is this innovation from such an innovative company. They were the first to really figure out search and turn it mainstream, but that's it. Just a bunch of half ass projects and some fluff pieces don't exactly have me throwing down my life savings in their stock.

I'm more impressed with Yahoo! who has an enormous user base and properties to go with search. If search ceased to exist, Yahoo! would survive. They also own a large chunk of Google as well.

Starting to become quite the story

I like Google for far more things than I can dislike Google for.

I guess a big problem is that Google has become a fixation for many people's personal expectations, on so many levels, which it can never fulfill.

2c.

I'm confused. When did AOL collapse?

Try this book;

Stealing Time : Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner

I will look it up.

The NYT actually got some comments out of Google

You what??

well, it's *a* comment heh..

I wonder if google really thinks that acting like this will stop the flow of stories that do not put them in a good light.

Acting like they have been will only make people want to find more stories that show the dark side of google. The more google tries to 'punish' people for writing things they don't like, the more things they don't like will get written...

google may understand search, but they are seriously lacking when it comes to understanding people.

>>Aren't we talking about CNet? Since when did CNet ask tough questions?

I was being ?Rhetorical. :-)

The game becomes hilarious.

That ZDNet piece is amazing!

LMFAO!

in that NPR interview Brad pointed out.

"Google is a very young company and they are acting their age."

The guy over at SEO Black Hat has picked up on a UK apology by ZDNet for the earlier CNet/Google handbags.

Yeah, that was posted here. It's a joke :)