Code Design Has To Be Slick

From a press site I found a link to a quite bizarre paper (actually a collection of papers – you can also check the publication list of those people) about the “dangers and opportunities” of Google. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing – there’s a lot of real dangers to Google’s data-collection mania.

But instead of a scientifically sound study, we get something of a weird conspiracy theory, involving Google, Wikipedia and, eventually, world domination.

Let me say that I didn’t actually read the whole 187-page pamphlet, so I might miss some important point… but let me just quote the introduction:

• Plagiarism and IPR violation are serious concerns in academia and in the commercial world
• Current techniques to fight both are rudimentary, yet could be improved by a concentrated initiative
• One reason why the fight is difficult is the dominance of Google as THE major search engine and that Google is unwilling to cooperate
• The monopolistic behaviour of Google is also threatening how we see the world, how we as individuals are seen (complete loss of privacy) and is threatening even world economy (!)