On the Trail of Dirt :

[Brett_Tabke]

So who knows what Google ever did to San Fran Based register.co.uk writer and top google critic Andrew Orlowski?

Andy was at it again this last week with a classic spin diatribe on "Ad broker Google - best known for its search engine".

lol - only on the internet.

[satanclaus]

Yes his article on their rumored email service. I like his writing. But what would they have done with him? lol

[bakedjake]

What's interesting about the guy is he was one of the first media people to vocalize the "Google is evil" mentality, in a time when most webmasters and geeks thought Google was so nice and fluffy and happy and smiley and smelled really good.

[ronin]

It's The Register's self-appointed role to "bite the hand that feeds IT" not to be an external public relations arm of prominent internet based companies. Even if it goes over the top sometimes on paranoia, I'd rather that than have everyone sitting around and cooing at the baby which grows into a beast worse than Redmond.

Not least for the baby's sake.

[buckworks]

Even if it goes over the top sometimes on paranoia

Paranoid or not, writers have a responsibility to get their facts straight if they're going to call themselves journalists.

[ronin]

Yes, journalists have a responsibility to get their facts straight. And Editors have a responsibility to throw their stories right back at them if they don't. And everyone has a responsibility to make sure that news gets filed under News and opinion gets filed under Editorial. But I'd rather see the Register doing the job it does than no-one.

And anyway, we can always start up a new publication called "The Principal" with the tagline: "Ticking off the Register".

[div01]

I hope Andy makes a special request to remove the Google sponsored ads from his articles...

[ronin]

I'm sure Orlowski has no connection with the ads around his articles. But seriously, let's get away from this mindset where we adore the reigning monarch because he's the king.

Hopefully we support the king because he runs the country well and when he doesn't then we criticise him to make sure that he stops veering off in the wrong direction.

And yes it is possible to criticise the king and still think he's a better alternative than any of the other warring pretenders. Because everything isn't black and white, is it?

[div01]

Ronin,

Its just that contextual advertising has the interesting ability to display some pretty ironic ads for such articles. I recall reading a standard Register rant on outsourcing, only to laugh at the ads they were showing.

[Fiver]

disgruntled former seo who never learned what a class c is?

</idunno>

[ThatAdamGuy]

I definitely think that it's important for folks (common peeps 'n' journalists and all) to strongly voice concerns about technologies, companies, people behind those technologies and companies, etc.

However, Andrew strikes me as someone who:
- often doesn't let facts get in the way of his ranting
- rants just for the sake of ranting
- fails to actually balance his rants with ANYTHING positive to say
- gets boring pretty fast

If I wanted to read one-note-wonders, I'd read "policy papers" from far-right or far-left political pundits.

[nakulgoyal]

The crux is Andy is a GR8 Journalist. A true Journalist I would say. :-) what do ya all say /?

[buckworks]

Hack, cough, sputter, choke ....

[martinibuster]

Hack, cough, sputter, choke ....

Feel the same way...

I admire his aggressive attitude but am disapointed with his fact checker.

[swerve]

He may not even dislike Google at all.

Orlowski is trying to be the Howard Stern of Journalism. It's no so much that Google is bad or evil, rather that many people think that Google is good and God. It's controversy for controversy's sake - for the sake of getting attention. He is well known only because he takes a minority viewpoint. Like Stern, it could very well be that the people that dislike him are more loyal readers than those that agree with his viewpoints.

If he wrote articles about how good Google is, would anyone care?

[buckworks]

controversy for controversy's sake

Controversy can be a fine and noble thing ... IF it's based on truth!