My ex-employer —I retired nearly twenty years ago – IBM used to be widely regarded as an “evil empire” but that label seems to have worn off over the last few decades, even being called “almost cuddly these days” in an InformationWeek story IT’s Evil Empires:
Evil Empires can acquire their reputation through no fault of their own. But all too often, they earn the characterization through a distasteful combination of success-fueled arrogance and a thinly disguised disdain for customers, competitors, and regulators.
Microsoft more recently usurped the “evil empire” throne in the years following the release of Windows 95 (during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who seems to have popularized the term).
Now it’s Google’s turn, and since its ascendance to obvious dominance in Web search by the early years of the new millennium, Google is being nominated as the “new evil empire.”
Along comes the recent launch by Afaq Tariq of his “Hidden from Google” website.
This causes me to suggest, more in jest than anger, that if Google kowtows to the “right to be forgotten” ruling of the EU then Google should be called The Evil Umpire (laughter all around)!
Or perhaps I’ve gotten it wrong, and by enforcing a new form of censorship on otherwise-free Web information is it the EU Council that/who are the evil ones in this case?
I think Google is tracking this
ReplyDeleteRonald Reagan left office in 1989 and even his replacement George Bush the Elder was out by 1993.
ReplyDeleteYeah, badly phrased on my part, Kevin.
ReplyDeleteI should have said that the term [evil empire] "was popularized by Ronald Reagan during his presidency" and not imply that this was contemporaneous with the release of Windows 95.