Inside the company’s daring plan to control the news

The greatest trick that Google Corporation ever pulled, was to convince the world it didn’t exist. Although its shareholders know it as a profitable advertising brokerage, the majority of Internet users believe it to be nothing more than a benevolent purveyor of web search, email, and other free online services.

Google is a fierce and formidable competitor. Its network of websites is the Internet’s single most popular destination; it processes more search queries than all its competitors combined, including stalwarts Microsoft and Yahoo; its annual revenues and profits are measured in billions. Through all its successful expansions, Google has worked to maintain an image of simplicity and altruism.

Google’s bungled launch of their Buzz platform illustrated the pervasiveness, and the deceptive nature of this public image. [Read more →]

Lao Tzu is perhaps the world’s most popular author. In the 2600 years since its initial publishing, Lao Tzu’s masterpiece, Tao Te Ching, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and reprinted more often than nearly any book in human history.

Lao Tzu was a great teacher, and a master of brevity. Though the Tao Te Ching is merely five thousand characters (less than fifty pages of English text), it conveys profound wisdom. His writing was potent, concise, and meaningful: all qualities which would prevent Lao Tzu from succeeding as an AdSense publisher.

No, Lao Tzu could never support himself on income from AdSense, or other contextual advertising systems. He probably couldn’t even earn enough to feed his water buffalo. Why? [Read more →]