I’ve been trying to write a post about this, the discovery of images of women who discuss politics, photoshopped into bikinis, above their Google search results, but I can’t. There’s something that pisses me off about Google showing off all these sexually charged pictures of normally professional women (especially fake pictures) that I can’t articulate in a calm, rational fashion.
I feel like Google needs to dump the entire practice of showing image thumnails above search results until it can filter out any pictures that show women in a demeaning light, but it won’t and it can’t. The ranking algorithm is based on link popularity, and these images tend to be popular with the degenerates that make up so much of the internet population. I don’t distinguish myself from those degenerates, but I’m sickened at the idea that if I have a daughter someday, a disgusting photo of her could appear on her search results.
I don’t like it, and I can’t calmly express why. I’m sure some of you get what I mean. If you have an opinion on this, please give it in the comments, because I’d like to see how others feel.
Google clearly has decided to give up the whole search engine thing, moving into the world of high fashion. The picture was taken by Neil of iGadget Life in Turkey, another store in a growing trend of weird foreign stores with names based on popular websites (like the Engadget store). Anything’s gotta be an improvement over the fashions in the Google Store, I guess.
Google has finally unveiled a system under which you can pay them for more storage in Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and eventually, a bunch of other Google services. For now, if your 2.82 gigabytes of Gmail space and 1 gigabyte of Picasa space aren’t enough, you can pay $20 a year to get an additional 6 gigabytes of space. Previously, $25 a year got you six gigs of Picasa space, so this is not just a discount, but space that can be used accross both Picasa and Gmail accounts.
If you need more space, pay for it. $75 a year gets you 25 gigabytes, $250 a year for 100 gigabytes, and $500 a year for 250 gigabytes. While paying for stuff is never fun, it’s better than running out of space and having to delete emails or photos. When Google expands this to Google Docs and other services, it’ll be even more valuable.
To compare with the competition, Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail offers 2 five gigs for free, 4 10 gigs for $20 a year. They also have SkyDrive for storage in the cloud, with 500 megabytes of free storage for sharing files or private file storage, something Google doesn’t offer anywhere. Yahoo has unlimited email inboxes, which is probably the way things should be by now everywhere, and 100 megabytes per month for Flickr, unlimited if you pay $25 a year. Flickr has one of the most unique free/premium feature differences, hiding all but your most recent 200 photos, not letting you create a bunch of sets, and a few other things unless you pay up, but at least not limiting your storage space, ever.
Not sure what’s going to happen if you pay for Google’s expanded storage this year, but not next year. I’d hate to use up all that space over a few years, then stop using Google for the next big thing, and have all my old emails and photos ransomed for more money. If I stop paying, what happens to my stuff?
(via jkOnTheRun and Loose Wire)
UPDATE: Microsoft increased their storage space to 5 free/10 paid gigabytes. Read more here.
The Republican edition of the CNN/YouTube presidential debates is back on, rescheduled two months later but featuring most of the major candidates. Front-runner and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani agreed to participate in the debates, which will now be held on November 28 in St. Petersburg, Florida, ten weeks after the original mid-September scheduling. Only Mitt Romney, the biggest YouTube user in the campaign, is holding out, following strong statements criticizing the format and choice of questions.
I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.
The “controversial” video, which CNN bureau chief David Bohrman defends, came from Billiam, who had this to say to Romney after the blame was laid at his snowy feet:
Meanwhile, Yahoo is looking to steal some of YouTube’s thunder, holding an online-only Democrat debate on September 12. The debate will not be broadcast on television, will feature taped and live-submitted user videos questions, will be available for mashups, and will be hosted by Charlie Rose. Good to see Yahoo trying hard, but I’m not sure the similar format, even with the changes, but lacking the power of YouTube, will work out for the company.
