At least according to this article in the Times of London (which presumably is read by the Werewolves of London).

I don’t even know where to start, so let’s take this story paragraph by paragraph.

Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network…

I was thinking just the other day that I wanted another internet. If one is good, two or three would be better. I was going to call my old jogging buddy Al Gore and ask him to invent another one. Now I don’t have to, because Google already did it.

Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for “Strategic Negotiator candidates…

Strategic Negotiator must be a negotiator who uses more strategy. I bet the frugal ones drive Pre-Owned Cars. I don’t know what dark fibre is (the re must mean that it’s not a thread), but this all sounds too James Bond to be real. I think Google is messing with us.

Dark fibre is the remnants of late 1990s internet boom where American web companies laid down fibre optic cables in preparation for high speed internet delivery…

OK, now I get it. Sort of like what 360Networks was going to do back in the nineties when I bought all that stock that later became worthless. Maybe Google can get into alchemy too while they’re trying all these old get rich quick schemes.

Late last year, Google purchased a 270,000 sq ft telecom interconnection facilities in New York. It is believed that from here, Google plans to link up and power the dark fibre system and turn it into a working internet network of its own.

This paragraph pretty much speaks for itself. Shoot, everyone should have their own internet. Maybe Google can mass produce internets at some of the abandoned automobile plants that Michael Moore likes to talk about. I think I see a movie possibility here.

It was also reported in November that Google was buying shipping containers and building data centres within them, possibly with the aim of using them at significant nodes within the worldwide cable network…

I actually know a guy who wants to buy cargo containers and turn them into housing for retirees. When he told us about it the other day on the way to Galveston, I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the car. I hope he doesn’t care that I’m talking about it on this internet, or that Google is going to corner the market on cargo containers the way the Hunt brothers did with silver back in the day.

Google has long been rumoured to be planning to launch a PC to retail for less than $100…

Well, that was sort of a left turn, but someone has to use all these new internets and what better way to ensure that happens than to give a bunch of really crappy computers to poor people and make them watch Google Ads over one of the Google Internets while using a Google Computer. I predict a line of cars will be the next step in Google world dominance. After they abandon the mass production of internets, they’ll have to find something to do with all those automobile/internet factories.

[[[I'm going to skip a few paragraphs because they aren't ludicrous enough to warrant comment.]]]

However, industry insiders fear that the development of a network of Google Cubes powered over a Google-owned internet network will greatly increase the power that Google wields over online publishers and internet users.

Really? Ya think?

Should Google successfully launch an alternative network, it is theoretically possible for them to block out competitor websites and only allow users to access websites that have paid Google to be shown to their users.

Nobody will be upset about that, particularly after all the hell raising Google and others have done about the telecos trying to toll the pipes on the existing internet. Assuming this isn’t a joke (and I believe it is either a joke or a tragically funny misunderstanding), this is just Google thumbing its nose at the telecos. PR by satire.

However, the moves towards providing equipment for as little as £60 will prove popular with home users and even governments, who will welcome the spread of the internet to homes that could not previously afford the intital costs of purchasing PCs.

Well isn’t that heart warming. We’re going to build a bunch of internets and give you some near-computers so you can stare at our ads and use our internet(s) all day long. I’m surprised the Red Cross hasn’t already done this.

Contacted by Times Online today, a spokesperson for Google denied that it had any such plans…

Let’s hope not, because if it’s true, we’re all living in a Monty Python movie.

Technorati Tags:
google, humor

So Google has agreed to censor its web search results in China. No Tiananmen Square, no independent Taiwan. No Gmail, no blogs.

It sucks that Google has to do this, but I think, all things considered, this falls on the right side of the OK line. Here’s why.

There’s definitely an OK line when it comes to ignoring basic rights in the name of global expansion. For example, I would be outraged if Google agreed to censor out stories about successful business women or members of a particular religion just to get some deal working in some far away country that doesn’t share our views about equality and religious freedom.

On the other hand, I don’t know that the Chinese people have voiced any desire to avoid reading about Tiananmen Square or Taiwan. To the contrary, they are being denied that right by the government. The top down origin of this restriction is, at least for me, the difference maker. While Google can’t allow its Chinese users to read about these things, it can give them something- a Chinese Google- they don’t already have. Maybe by becoming a player in the Chinese internet, Google can, over time, be a force for positive change.

Most of the efforts leading to this positive change will ultimately have to come from within China, not without. So I’m not bothered by Google’s decision to give the Chinese people something as opposed to nothing.

Plus, as Mathew Ingram points out, Google is not the first major U.S. internet player to make concessions in the name of Chinese expansion.

To get carried away and claim that this somehow represents Google’s transformation into Darth Vader is simply naive. Americans sometimes seem to believe that everyone has to start acting like us immediately and that anyone who doesn’t is, well, evil. That’s just not the way the world works. The important thing is to seek positive change and avoid going backwards. Google’s China game is certainly not a giant step forward, but being realistic and trying to work within the system is not going backwards either.

We can draw lots of lines in family discussions at the dinner table and in newspapers and blogs, but positive change sometimes requires compromise. Once you draw the wrong line, the conversation is over and the battle lost. At least this way Google lives, in China, to hopefully fight another day.

Henry Blodget has a post about Google’s stock price that brings back some bad memories from the late nineties and early oughts.

Back in the nineties, I became a great investor like everyone else who bought tech stocks. I made some nutty (paper) returns for a few years, got quoted in a few investing articles, was selected for SmartMoney Magazine’s Investor Panel and got on the cover of Money Magazine. Then I lost all of the paper profit when the tech bubble burst. I also lost the deal to sell ACCBoards.Com for seven figures and a bunch of stock, but that’s another sad story.

I think Google rocks. I really do. But it’s about more than rocking; it’s about making money. And Google trades at a PE Ratio in the hundreds. Back in the day, I would have thought about taking a small position just to join the fun and see what happens. Not today. I learned my lesson.

Some of the stocks I can think of off the top of my head that I rode all the way to (or near) zero are Exodus, Enron, MCI, 360 Networks and JDS Uniphase. Yes, I made a lot of money on Cisco, Applied Materials and eBay (I still own those at a very low split-adjusted price), but it wasn’t all that long ago that my losses on the bad buys were greater than my profit on the good ones. Buying stocks is like playing golf: one bad pick won’t kill you, but three bad holes will. If you make a handful of triple bogies, it doesn’t really matter how you do on the rest of the holes.

I think Google rocks, but I’m sitting this one out.