The Demise Of Scotsman.com?

It appears the Scotsman online has been brought to its knees by flowers.

No matter how incredulous it seems to an IT ignoramus such as myself, it appears the Johnston Press broke Google's search engine rules.  

Google don't financially penalise such misbehaviour, but do it electronically.  A full explanation of why the Scotsman (and other Johnson Press papers) will no longer be highly rated is here.

I wouldn't be sad to see the Scotsman bite the dust.  Since the Johnson Press took over the quality of journalism has slowly slipped into mediocrity.  That is not a reflection upon the few excellent journalists who do contribute, but a comment about the lack of aspiration from management.

If this was the death knell for the Scotsman would there be room for another Scottish paper here?  I think not.  The days of newspapers are coming to an end and people read news online.  A couple of quality online Scottish papers, such as the Caledonian Mercury, have struggled against the rise of English papers which offer Scottish editions, or perhaps they were ahead of the time.  Nevertheless, they continue and that can only be to our benefit.

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Google's Most Chilling Big Brother Scenario Yet

Plenty of people have worried that because of the amount of information Google knows about people, it could become an Orwellian Big Brother. Google CEO Eric Schmidt (pictured) recently took a look at Google's future and it even surpasses that of an Orwellian nature.

Mr Schmidt was interviewed recently by the Wall Street Journal and the interview was a wide ranging one, from the success of Android, to Google's controversial stand on net neutrality and beyond.

The most interesting and most frightening was Schmidt's vision of the future of Google's search capabilities. It appears the day is coming when the Google search box will no longer be at the centre of our online lives. Then what? This is what Mr Schmidt has to say about it:

"We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Mr. Schmidt acknowledges. "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type."

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." (My emphasis)

His last sentence is the most chilling. Do read the whole article. One of my technically minded readers sent this to me this morning. No use for Mac users but perhaps is helpful to use of you who use PCs.

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Google and China

Google have taken the unusual step of publicising information about a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on their corporate infrastructure originating from China.

They state it resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.

However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident -albeit a significant one - was something quite different.

Read the story on Google's blog.

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