Google Video deal with The National Archives

[yesthattom]

http://video.google.com/nara.html

Me? I'm going to spend this weekend watching hours of NASA footage! :-)

Comments

[qnetter]

Dude, you know this is smelling heavily of unackknowedged advertising to some of us long-time netters, right?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows that I work at Google. I'm simply picking things from the Google Blog that I think my readers will find intereseting.

[qnetter]

I know. But I've gone out of my way over the years to not mention anything that any company I worked for was doing on non-commerical forums, and so have many others. I'm not sure it's inappropriate -- I just find it jarring.

[dariens-haircut.livejournal.com]

And you must have had your reasons for being that way. Clearly, not everybody does. Fact of life.

And I can totally see your point.

But it was neither Tom, nor I who directed you to engage in such withholding.

[qnetter]

No, it was the shared culture of Usenet and the free Internet which established a presumption af firewalling between commerical and non-commerical behavior. Tom was a part of that. I would certainly not have epxected to see him flogging Googisms in soc.motss.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yes, on Usenet and mailing lists. But this is MY LJ!!! :-)

Ok, ok. I'll try to include a disclaimer. I just don't want people to think that I'm saying that I work on any of these projects.

[qnetter]

Yeah, I know... I'm just that I'm used to the idea that an LJ is, well, a journal. I don't expect many people write, "Dear Diary -- my employer released a neat web page today"...

Maybe a Google-promoting friends group I can opt out of? :)

(Or, of course, you could also start listing things you find cool at Yahoo, MySpace, and a hundred other places. Nah.)

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

People don't usually write in their diaries that they found a neat Democratic website, or a neat picture that they feel others would want to see.

Tom has a habit of pointing out things that he finds of interest which he also believes that people who read his journal would also find of interest. And that's okay. Some things he finds of interest just happen to be done by the place where he works. This is not surprising, he works for a place with a lot of different projects going on, all of which happen to generally appeal to people with similar tastes to Tom.

LiveJournal isn't actually a diary. It's more of a soapbox with a potential audience. I know of no LiveJournal accounts where the owners don't actually write for an audience. But virtually every LiveJournal account that I've read has included items of potential interest to others.

[qnetter]

Hm, that's interesting. My general impression about Google is that they're This Decade's Flavor, overhyped, overfunded and underinteresting. (This isn't helped by the fact that someone tried to sell me $25,000 woth of "AdWords consulting" today...)

But that's irrelevant. The real point for me is that, up until, say, ten minutes ago, most people who have had personal presences on the net have kept a boundary between flogging wares and expressing their interests. Now, we run the risk of everyone's personal journal being stealth advertising.

To me, it feels a lot like being invited to a party and not being told it's a Tupperware party till you get there.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

LiveJournal isn't actually a diary. It's more of a soapbox with a potential audience.

What sie said. I use LJ to talk to my friends, not to journal -- I do that offline.

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Hm. "Hi, I'm Tom. Here's a Free thing that I happen to know about. Yeah I work at the company, but at best you get an insider's view, at worst you might get some Google text ads."

Personally, from my standpoint, it's your LiveJournal... Frankly I wish you'd post more "nekkid pics" and sex stories, but I'll settle for Google mentions too.

Kidding about the nekkid pics of course... but it's kind of the classic thing where if someone doesn't like what you have to say in your own LiveJournal---ah yes here it is "Paid Account"---then they don't have to read it and can go elsewhere. .

Not to sound rude or anything, but if someone doesn't like your sex views, your work views, your politics, your relationship views, and instead of going elsewhere chooses instead to attack you in your own space---then in my opinion they sadly need a life. :)

From where I sit... Good post! ...this time. ;)

Not to throw gasoline on any sort of flames, but I don't see these random references as "Hi I work at Google! See what I do!" but rather "Hey, ya'll might find this cool too."

[qnetter]

"A free thing"? Dude, nothing is free. It's a commercial service. you just don't happen to be the one who's writing a check to Google for it. Please don't make the mistake of buying into the myth that advertising-supported services are free.

The fact that the *only* technical goodies that Tom's mentioned happen to contribute to paying his salary moves it well beyond "you might find this cool" to me.

It's spilled over to my work cycle as well: after seeing how close I am to lots of USENIX and whatever-that-unpronounceable-SAGE-replacement-acronym-is folks at LISA this year, our CTO suggested that I start finding them online and soliciting them to test our software. I refused, because it's never been appropriate to mix net connections and avertising to me.

I'm not hideously offended or anything -- I'm just really surprised. As I said, my last twenty-one years on the net have been predicated on a fairly well accepted notion that there are places you're commercial and places you aren't, and finding someone else who comes out of that who is now mixing them freely surprises me.

[qnetter]

And that's pretty much what I have to say about it.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

What dieppe said. And more specifically, he's not freely mixing them. He's mixing them only in his confined space.

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Look, I remember Usenet back in the day. You know, before spam, back when someone would post something not appropriate for a particular group, someone else would say "Hey, don't do that!" and then the original poster would apologize. Those were must different times then.

I understand where you're coming from though, it would be like finding out that Tom's a pr0n spammer or something. Or that he was using his personal LJ to advance his own career. Though he has mentioned the book that he did, and that he works at Google.

Thing is I believe in the sanctity of "blogs" in that if someone wants to post dribble, garbage, pr0n, even crap about their work, or boring stuff like what they did at school then in their own personal LiveJournal (or MySpace, or what have you) then they are free to do so.

He doesn't have a captive audience, they are free to read or not read as they choose, and this isn't a public community. I might raise an eyebrow if he'd posted Google things in the bisexual community. But here, it's free game. Of course I fully expect the same rights to posting whatever (legal?) crap I want to post in my LJ, and if people don't like it they can leave. :)

And neah, it's nothing like "remember the 1st amendment dude!" because people forget that the First Amendment and the concept of "Freedom of Speech" only applies to a government level. Not that I'm in favor of censorship or anything like that, but posting what you want in your LJ as self-expression... is freedom. Choosing to read, or not to read it is the true power.

So.. sorry that your notions have been shattered. I still don't see it as a violation of his work or net ethic though since I think I saw the same thing posted on Slashdot. :)

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

We'll miss you at the Choclate Party.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

wow, that's great, thank you! and I too will be watching a bunch of that footage!

Long time netizen not offended. Google Video at 11.

[grendelgongon.livejournal.com]

Totally digging the 40's and NASA stuff. And if you establish a "Tom's cool Google stuff" filter for your LJ, which you control subject to the requirements of the commercial entity that runs it, and in which you can post anything you darn well wanna, please let me on :)

(In all seriousness, I love the Google and other cool stuff links. You're an excellent filter for neat net and political stuff much of which I haven't run into. Keep it coming!)

[kathdem.livejournal.com]

*sigh* people on the 'net are so sensitive. It's your damn journal...if I don't want to read it I don't have to. Post whatever you want. Thanks for the video links.