liadnan

Intrigued enough by the adverts for http://www.information-revolution.org/ on the tube over the last couple of days that I finally found time to look at the site. It's all a little vague and gnomic but it seems reasonably clear the Bee in their Bonnet is Google.

Which is why it's interesting to note, as several people in the comments here did, that the site is owned by Profero Ltd (as a quick whois confirms), a "digital marketing" outfit whose clients include Yahoo! and Ask. Can't trust anything these days. The revolution will be televised, and probably sponsored.

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From:

babysimon

Viral marketers are cunts. (Tell everyone you know.)

I always want to just avoid talking about this stuff, 'cos I feel that talking about it is what they want.

Hmm, guess that isn't working.

From:

liadnan

Thought it was interesting how quickly it got caught myself. Their mistake, I suspect, was that the pitch was aimed at the technologically literate - who are capable of checking them out - and the ads obviously cost too much.

From:

susumu.livejournal.com

I know a few people who work there, I'll see what they think of it.

From:

knell.livejournal.com

I noticed these on the tube a few days ago, and for obvious reasons I was kinda intrigued. I couldn't help but notice that the Ask ellipses appear in the background of those pages quite a bit, it's the default search engine on their search page, and...

From:

liadnan

I have to confess I had missed that but, after posting, was on the tube again and say the ellipse. I have some vague idea Ask and Yahoo are aspects of the same thing these days.

Saving your presence, there does seem a bit of an argument that google are just a tad too ubiquitous. Having been burnt by MS does the world really need to get locked in to something again? But the answer seems to me to be that there is no technological lockin and, at least for the moment, as soon as google ceases to be the best search engine out there they will lose their dominance. All the other bits and pieces they have, gmail & co, useful as many of us find much of it, is just an add-on. From the outside it seems that much of the "other stuff" is aimed at breaking an MS/Yahoo/whatever monopoly (or preventing one from coming into existence) rather than creating a googlopoly.