The behemoth grows: In just 10 years, it has spawned a verb, revolutionised the media and made billionaires of its founders. Now Google has broken into the definitive list of the 10 most valuable global brands. What would the Chinese think, suffering under Google-assited web filtering?
Showing all posts tagged Google
How much power should Google have over the web?
Influential enough to ban certain kinds of advertising?
Beating the western drum
My following essay appears in the Guardian today: During the recent war between Georgia and Russia, bloggers on both sides of the conflict provided searing accounts of atrocities and manoeuvres unseen by western journalists. In a country such as Russia the space for alternative and critical views are rare. The war showed an authoritarian regime’s…
What really is terrorism?
On the face of it, Google’s attempts to purge “terrorist” material from YouTube sounds reasonable, but ultimately who makes the decisions which videos are problematic? The popular video-sharing site YouTube has moved to purge terrorists training films and other videos that extremist groups might use to attract new members, an imperfect process that will rely…
Multinational still beware
Web commentator Nicholas Carr argues, a little too cleverly, that Google’s aims are rather like benevolent dictators: Google differs from Microsoft in at least one very important way. The ends that Microsoft has pursued are commercial ends. It’s been in it for the money. Google, by contrast, has a strong messianic bent. The Omnigoogle is…
More than just a search engine
At what point will Google’s power be seriously challenged? Google Inc has stepped up efforts to digitize dozens of historical newspapers and make scanned images of the original papers available online, the Internet search leader said on Monday. In a blog post on the Silicon Valley-based company’s website, Google said it is looking to make…
Sunday Night Safran on blogging
Sunday Night Safran is a great weekly show on ABC youth radio Triple J. I was interviewed last night about The Blogging Revolution, the role of Western multinationals in repressive regimes and how the American relationship to the internet should be viewed in the non-Western world.
The Fourth Estate on blogging
The Fourth Estate is a great weekly radio program on one of Sydney’s finest independent radio stations, 2ser. In a wide-ranging interview, host Daz Chandler and I talked about the role of Western multinationals in authoritarian regimes, the seeming lack of understanding of online privacy in the West and the issues in The Blogging Revolution.
Blogging their way to freedom
My latest column for New Matilda is about the ways in which the web can challenge dictatorships around the globe and the complicity of Western firms in assisting repression: Antony Loewenstein takes a look at the work of bloggers monitoring and resisting their authoritarian governments With the Beijing Olympics now a distant memory — and…
The Media Report on blogging
I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Media Report today on The Blogging Revolution and the ways in which the internet is far more complex than simply being a supposedly democratising force: Antony Funnell: What do Iran, Cuba and Egypt all have in common? Well, they all have governments which suppress dissent and they all…