I think Google's a brilliant company, filled with brilliant people who have done brilliant things.
People have this idea that if you're not brilliant like Einstein, you can't be a scientist. And that's just a myth. He was the one out of a million scientists, but there were 999,999 other scientists who were not as brilliant but who just do great science, as well.
The word smart is not applied to all professions, even if you are smart in that profession. No one talks about smart lawyers. They may say a brilliant lawyer. They'll talk about a creative artist. Smart is saved for scientists. It just is. It's not even really applied to medical doctors. It applies to scientists in the lab figuring out what hadn't been figured out before.
There are over 50 brilliant scientists working at my lab, and being sensitive to their needs is among the top skill sets that scientists like me have to learn.
In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
I don't think any administration, when they come in, thinks that their job is to tell the scientists what the science looks like or to be quiet about the science. Scientists need to remain true and not allow science to be politicized. Scientists are not politicians, and no politician should consider themselves to be a scientist.
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
Most scientists I know don't care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists.
From the point of view of many scientists, gods represent an explanation for the unknown. Scientists are focused on trying to understand the unknown, so there is a fundamental conflict. That said, some scientists find religion useful and perhaps even fulfilling.
To be honest, I don't even exactly know how to set up a Google alert. My brother has me on Google alert. So do my parents. But I'm not even sure how it works.
Even the most brilliant accomplishments on the Internet are essentially cold. Google has changed the world, but you don't snuggle up to it. YouTube is a giant carnival, filled with freaks and mountebanks, a place to gawk and laugh and get bored. Certainly not a place to feel anything.
Google+ will never have a user base to rival Facebook's. It just won't. Not even if you include the 'users' who create accounts so that they can use other Google services.
I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. The debate has been often held about Google's role in acceding to the Chinese government's demands to censor search results. Google says that it is better to have a hampered internet than no internet at all. I believe that if the Chinese people were threatened with no Google, they might even rise up and demand free speech - free search and links - from their regime. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.
If you Google some sites about the link between vaccines and autism, you can very quickly find that Google is repeating back to you your view about whether that link exists and not what scientists know, which is that there isn't a link between vaccines and autism. It's a feedback loop that's invisible.
People ask me all the time: 'What is it like to be a woman at Google?' I'm not a woman at Google, I'm a geek at Google. And being a geek is just great. I'm a geek, I like to code, I even like to use spreadsheets when I cook.