back to article Google UK on mission to brainwash news media

Google UK has a certain knack for borging members of the mainstream news media. And when it's not swallowing these poor souls whole, it's at least working to control their minds. For the past two years, Google's British PR team has been run by Peter Barron, the former editor of BBC Newsnight, and according to The Guardian, …

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  1. Graham Marsden
    Big Brother

    "mitigating any negative media coverage"

    Ah, so Google is now the Ministry of Truth...

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Control the Word, Controls Worlds and Powers Civilisations, just as easily as IT can Destroy them

      ""mitigating any negative media coverage" ... Ah, so Google is now the Ministry of Truth..." ..... Graham Marsden Posted Friday 8th October 2010 02:20 GMT

      Well, Pet Search Engines/Novel Phished Content Providers are just one of their Super SMART and Stealthy Specialist Tools, Graham Marsden.

      Do Google have such High Minded Ministry of Truth Pretensions? That must really Spook the Establishment for they have Prepared and Invested in so much that will Collapse and Disappear with the Light of Truth revealing the Subversive and Perverse Purveyors BroadBandCasting Shadows of Spin Screening ........... what was Imagined and Touted as a Perfect Vice Grip on Self Indulgent Sins.

      Saving those Sorry Ignorant Fools and Sad Arrogant Tools from that which Fate can Deliver to Remove them from the Future Big Picture, is an Irregular and Unconventional Art Phorm which Fools Dismiss and Tools Avoid at Considerable and Significant Certain Peril to their Nearest and Dearest Pleasures.

      And if a Cool Search Engine doesn't Provide the Latest and Hottest Current News and HyperRadioProActive Methodology is it a Blunt Tool for Lost the Plot Souls Thinking they are as Governments and Agents of the Status Quo rather than Radical Pioneers of Renegade Change with Renaissant Energy [ Is that White House Obama thing just a Cynical Impotent Plant, or is it the Real Thing and a Mighty Powerful Sticky Sweet Weed Killer for Perfumed Gardens.

      What next? ......... Search Engine Ping Wars for the Prime Hosting of Future Intelligence Streams from Core Lode Ore Sources ......, which could just as easily be Bing Bling as Google Gold or a Yahoo Gem of a Principal Amazon Secret?

      MeThinks you Handle the Levers in Cloud More Astutely and Deftly than those which Dictate and Distribute Power and Control in Binary Systems, to Exercise and Embed the Virulent and Rabid, Virtual Reality Meme in Moribund Systems Windows and Browser Pages.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re: as easily as IT can Destroy them

        Do you have a sed script you run before posting? Just curious.

        1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

          One just cannot get the staff, nowadays

          "Do you have a sed script you run before posting? Just curious." .... Anonymous Coward

          Posted Friday 8th October 2010 08:47 GMT

          Probably several of them, AC.

      2. MinionZero
        Joke

        @AmAnfrOmMaRs, WArniNg bRaIn sTatIC elEctRicITy diStrAcTiOn oVeRloAd?!

        AmAnfrOmMaRs, I taKe iT from your suBveRsiVe PErvErSe sPliT sCreEn sTrEaM Of sEaRcH eNgiNe StEAm tHat yOU hAvE hAd tOoOOo mUch WeEd foR bReakfAst tHiS moRnInG!? :)

      3. Graham Marsden
        Alien

        Hey, amanfromMars 1 is back again...

        ... with his inimitable brand of incomprehensible commentary!

        1. Luther Blissett

          You missed the sarcasm then

          IMO, I wasn't fully convinced by the [

      4. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Not enough tinfoil.

        amfM, G, buddy, pal...

        ...it has nothing at all to do with search engines. That's a distraction. Hand waving for hte masses looking for a conspiracy theory. It's the misdirection to keep folks away from the wheels within the wheels. The real secret here is that of the nascent Google Internet. When you look at it; these folks have constructed an entirely parallel infrastructure that while (currently) bonded to the public internet is wholly separate. This isn’t about controlling the media with search results or whatnot. At least not yet. The goal is to make everyone look away from the construction of this massive information network of thiers.

        Once they have it perfected…once it’s large enough that you can’t avoid it – can’t live or work without it – then they have you. Then they /can/ tweak the results. They can change the truth. Then they can do whatever they want because it is a “private” network as opposed to the “public” one. Decades of “Well, you can just go somewhere else” needs to be ground into us first. The concept that Google Is Not And Never Will Be A Monopoly is the critical factor.

        Get the peasants uppity about privacy. Make them worry about search results on the main engine or a dozen other minor items that distract and confuse. In the background get everyone addicted to your information cocaine and ensure that the only “pure” supply is locked up behind the chocolate factory doors. IF they do it right, then their control over information and media will be so absolute that with the flick of a switch governments will fall.

        If they screw it up (which is infinitely more likely, as people are fallible) then they will make an enormous faux pas too early on and get dismantled. Google are playing the long game here. The stakes aren’t merely control over a few tidbits of media or a small altering of some aspects of information. The stakes are nothing short of the complete and utter control of /all/ information everywhere. That requires not only the ability to change the truth to suit your needs, but it requires getting the entire world addicted to – and then dependant on – that information to function in the first place.

        Once we reach the point where you could no more break up Google than declare that automobiles were illegal in the USA…the game is truly on.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Controlling the media

    If Google really wants to control what every UK journalist thinks and writes, they merely need to take over Wikipedia, as that's where *all* UK journalists source their material these days. Nobble that, nobble the entire UK media. Simples.

    Google can upload the gTruth, then watch them all fall one by one from its grassy Knol™.

    Wait until you see them sponsor maternity units in hospitals. That's the cue for them finally chipping, weighing and DNA profiling us all at birth. And if they have the statistics to show you're probably going to become a criminal when you grow up, they'll ban you from drinking Sunny Delight and send you to Kinderborstal as soon as you can walk.

    The only consolation is that Apple didn't get there first, patent DNA and then sue anything that uses it, before being sued itself by Motorola who claim to have patented suing, only for Apple to throw in a last minute twist (like a good old fashioned John iMcEnroe vs The Björg match) when it reveals it actually patented patenting in 1996 - And was granted it by the US patent office!

    The lawyers *literally* came in their pants. True.

    1. kennsmi
      Thumb Up

      @AC 05:54 GMT

      I like this post.

    2. Minty

      re: Maternity unit sponsorship

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/01/google_people_view/

      just saying :)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Name me one site

    That does not cherry-pick what to report to suit their own agendas. You will be hard pushed.

    Even El-Reg is at it, with cherry picked stories from TS and AO pretty much every week.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    "mitigating any negative media coverage"

    Looks like El Reg will be on the target list, then.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    I Have My Fingers In My Ears

    No Google bashing, I don't want to hear it. Google can do no evil. They say so, therefore it must be true.

    I thought just about everyone had swallowed Google's sweet little fluffy cloud front already. I have.

    I feel safe using Google search in my Chrome browser. It's not as though they're a global corporation who's only ethos is profit, like Microsoft, now is it?

    They're just a bunch of nice geeks hanging out and doing their best to help us all.

    The last thing they would do is to brainwash anybody.

    Oh.............

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    I demand my right to use Google on my terms

    Er no. You use it on their terms.

    If you don't like that, don't use it.

    Most of the comments here are so snide about Google's intentions. If they want to make money, so what? If they want to provide a free service, so what? Users have no contract with them, unlike with the convicted monopolists Microsoft, yet which company has (voluntarily) chosen to do more good for society? That would be Google.

    Demanding your "rights" is no different than the public servants (sic) demanding they have a "right" to a final salary pension. You might not like it, but it certainly isn't a right.

    If you never use Google or the internet ever again (and millions of people don't, even in the UK), they sky won't fall in.

  7. Gannon (J.) Dick
    FAIL

    Location Location, Location

    Had several "you used to know your way around the Scientific Method" moments a while back. Particles and waves, that sort of thing. Anyway, there is something that the Google's of the world really don't want you to know about how stuff works. If someone does something sublimely stupid in say London, then it's only officially stupid 24 hours + 1 second later when the time of day has passed everywhere on the globe when people are bored enough, or sober enough, or awake enough to find out what sublimely stupid Londoners did. You can be bombarded with the News and the news, but nobody, even Google, can change the period of the stupidity wave as it makes it's way across the globe. However sublime the stupidity, wake me up at 3am to tell me about it and I am not going to thank you. The 24 hours is fixed, the 1 second is the time it takes the world to say "yup, really stupid".

    To make a too long (sorry) story short the stupidity wave vanishes after 1 day + one second. Nobody remembers it was there unless you do imaging for a living or are an early 20th Century Physicist. But once you have the idea in your head, it easy to calculate the order in which news of the stupidity seemed to reach you, and you already know how long it takes to get to everybody. This is a location - and that's what Google does not want you to know.

    There is no bonus for being first in line at the voting booth, as much as advertisers want you to think so.

  8. william henderson 1

    why

    should one profit/power hungry corporation be different from another.

    this makes google sound like murdoch with wires.

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