

Google map of the protests in Libya - IgorPartola
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=215454646984933465708.00049c59184ae1136341a

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th0ma5
Wow, not much shows the intersection of money, politics, religion, and
technology than something like this. Is Google's motivation for information
freedom, and then implicitly more ad sales? Or have we really put our foot in
the door for a corporation designed around information-as-profit, and does
that imply support for the business models of say Wikileaks?

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SoftwarePatent
I often wonder why Google is giving stuff away for free. Can a publicly-held
corporation do something just because it's cool, interesting, or The Right
Thing To Do?

Here's something they give away that I use every day: a reliable DNS server.
(Much more reliable than my ISP, and yes, I cache DNS locally).

<http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/>

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IgorPartola
Imagine a small company, that is profitable. Now imagine that that company can
also provide a service for free that in the opinion of the people of this
company would make the world a better place _and_ this service does cost much
(relative to the profits). Why would this small company _not_ provide this
service? As the company grows and goes public, there is more scrutiny over how
the company spends its money. However, why not spend that
<made_up_number>0.000001%</made_up_number> of the profits on something like
this?

