Death of Google predicted, film at 11

[waider]

Google has forgotten that it once had a search engine too, way back when. Perhaps the executives would like to attend to it now.

Andrew Orlowski proclaims that Google's search engine is dead. Again. And here was I using it quite happily just five seconds ago. Would someone a bit closer to the man than me please slap him upside the head and tell him to cop on?

Comments

[wisn.livejournal.com]

He also believes there's a conspiracy of Californian insiders bent on perpetuating... something, not sure what, but I think he's upset that it doesn't involve him. Also, bloggers are conspiring to annoy him.

I think he started taking whatever drugs Thomas C. Greene was before that guy's head exploded in a messy spatter of Microsoftian calculations against Linux and his serial marriages.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Karlin Lillington wrote an interesting piece more-or-less in response to Danny's, but centering largely on the weblog bits rather than the Conspiracy Of Geeks notion.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Lillington reiterates "There is TOO a cabal! there is! there IS!" because of the self-selecting nature of groups. O'Brien addresses the issue tangentially in arguing the nature of public/private/secret on the internet.

The crux of the cabal-or-not issue is that there are just too many people who want in, and those who are already in have a vested interest in delegating their finite attention only on what they find interesting, which tends to be what a select few other bloggers write or link to. The popular ones are popular because, for whatever reason (they're witty, they dredge up great links, they're interesting writers, they raise provocative points, they're not all that good but the discussion threads are), they generate a lot of traffic, and they tend to read each other for the same reason those who aren't popular bloggers do. They're under no obligation to redirect a portion of their traffic to the hoi polloi except when they find something interesting. These last two points are what annoys Lillington, who witnessed the same conduct at work in acadame, where it can be career-endangering to /not/ play the popularity game, because it influences appointments and tenure.

If anything, the blogging community is more open than interest groups have ever been - again, see O'Brien's argument - but this also means that their rosters are tantalizingly visible, but not penetrable, by vastly larger numbers of people. And that gets all the wannabe-famous upset and provokes Orlowski to piss rope. For a moment, considering all the social groups I'm a part of (a small sample: Livejournal subgroups - my friends list and a few LJ groups, my local professional network, my several local social networks), and at that how little I get out, it seems to me that anybody who's complaining about their apparent ostracism ought to take a look at the social networks they're already active in.

Which is not to say cliquishness is good either. It leads to self-feeding frenzies of the sort that fueled the minor 802.11b speculative bust. On the other hand, one good thing about cliques of this sort its it makes the members easier to recognize, and therefore shun, if one chooses.

[bitpuddle.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Seems to be doing rather well for a corpse.

[candice.livejournal.com]

Hm. I had a pint with him once, does that count?

[waider.livejournal.com]

Was he wearing a tinfoil hat?

[candice.livejournal.com]

Nope. He looked normal enough that I can't recall what he looks like, even. He just happened to be at the table where a couple of my /. friends said "hey, come sit with us".