Author says Google lacks 'emotional intelligence'

Guess what? Google has too many Spocks and not enough Captain Kirks.

That was one of the many interesting insights BoomTown gleaned from a video interview Wednesday night with well-known New Yorker scribe Ken Auletta, who has just written a new book, "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It."

This "lack of emotional intelligence" at the search giant, said Auletta, reminded him a lot of the subject of one of his previous books: Microsoft.

Oh, the delicious irony!

Auletta was feted at a lovely party on Wednesday night for at the San Francisco house of Common Sense Media's Jim Steyer, where a range of Google execs, Internet folks, and fans gathered to talk about the book.

It's all about Google, its history and, most importantly, its impact on the world. And, how you look at the powerful search giant depends entirely on whether you are the changer or the changed, as Auletta stresses in multiple anecdotes in the book.

Traditional media, for example, has certainly been mucho irked of late about the impact of digital technologies on their businesses and has not been shy about casting blame most heapingly on Google's Silicon Valley plate.

And the government regulators are also giving the company the hairy eyeball, much as they had previously done to Microsoft.

Auletta and I talked about all that and more in the video interview here, in which he noted that he told Googlers at a talk at their adorkable Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., on Wednesday that they needed to focus less on being engineering brainiacs and more on trying to understand how to deal with fears of their growing power. (You can see interviews I did with guests here too).

Below that is one of the disturbing number of mash-up music videos about "Star Trek" buddies, the highly illogical Kirk and the Vulcanish Spock, the geek bromance of all time:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Story Copyright (c) 2010 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

[Super2online]

Why are the mashups so disturbing? The Star Trek trilogy has been going successfully for decades because fans the world over found these two characters played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy to be one of the most endearing friendships ever. Disturbing? Maybe you could use a little "emotional intelligence" yourself!

[sittingincomputerclass]

Is he speaking of Google as a company or as a group? If it is the former, surely he realizes that a corporate body as a single unit (not as a group of individual people) is not actually a person, but a collection of data and stocks and the money needed to keep progress going, and that it does not actually have emotions to be emotionally intelligent? In the case of the latter, is it the employees' and marketing execs' research team's and board of directors' job to be emotional? Not if they want their company (and therein their paychecks) to succeed, it isn't. It is their job, however, to keep their company running efficently, and to further the progress of that company. Google is getting more powerful, it's true. But, really, Mr. Auletta... does he think that Google will become so overwhelmingly dominent that it will shed its humanities and take over the world with a mind-controlling search engine box?

I'd like to know exactly what he thinks is going to happen. A monopoly? Does the government not have regulations for that? (Or has he never heard of Microsoft?) Zombies? Mr. Auletta, if you are worried about Google as a company shedding its fleshy workers and turning the human race into zombies, then you must have a good reason for it. I will have my machete waiting under my bed, and you may borrow my rifle if you like. But if your apocolypse fails to take place, don't come crying to me.

On one last note, is it not the main goal of Google to help the human race? Isn't that what technology is about? They do what they do because it helps people. Technology helps people, for the most part. I know I am correct in saying that Technology has the capacity to hurt, but at the same time I see nothing that would lead me to believe that the expansion of a company whose main purpose is to help people could harm anything, except perhaps competing companies. And I'm sure that the ever-growing Google would use whatever "emotional intelligence" it can muster--as a company and as a collection of working individuals--to take whatever techies may lose their jobs at any company that goes out of business due to Google's power in the market and put them to work for its own betterment.

Ahem, AH-men. :D

[grey-devil]

You've entirely missed the point of the article. The author is specifically talking about fears of monopoly from our politicians and other businesses, hence why he makes the comparison of Google to Microsoft. And what he says Google should do is to not ignore these fears like Microsoft did because it will eventually lead to headaches for them, so they should immediately start addressing people's concerns and tailoring their future plans to reflect a different image beyond Google being the overlord of the internet.

[renGek]

Doesn't matter. He's just trying to sell a book.

[sittingincomputerclass]

Empires rise and they fall. If Google rises, then we should bloody well let them! This isn't Napolean Bonaparte we're talking about, it's a company whose entire basis revolves around creating new technology and new ways to use our technologies. What does a company such as this need? People. People to help and people to provide help. Don't you tink that if there were any complaints they would be addressing them now, before they have more to lose? All I'm saying is that this is one big hurrah over nothing.

[eltoro2827]

Google must die!!

[JessicaInPink]

This is so true. Google must die.


Google owns it. Google is going to control every damn thing. Have you ever heard the term "power corrupts and absolute power..."

Google controls our privacy, email, Internet, etc. Do you see what is happening?

Just like we do not have a REAL say about what Google does with our private information in Google's search results, we will also not have a say in whatever else Google decides to screw us over with.

Do not be blinded by Google's "free services" approach to taking over. Once they get in deep, there is no going back!

[WhistlingPig]

Google must live so that idiots can lose their privacy.

You control your privacy, your email, your Internet. Do you see what I did there?

No one's asking you to use Google's services. Google doesn't materialize correlation out of thin air. Block browser cookies, use a different search engine, avoid federated online services that involve Google.

Take away Google and something else takes its place. Your information is your responsibility.

[umbrae]

"No one's asking you to use Google's services. Google doesn't materialize correlation out of thin air. Block browser cookies, use a different search engine, avoid federated online services that involve Google.

Take away Google and something else takes its place. Your information is your responsibility."

I do all this, but 3 angles of my house still appeared on Street View. Not to mention took 6 months to get removed. Sure, people make bad choices about privacy, but Google holds a lot more blame. They broke their own motto years ago, and many of their products can be considered acts of evil.

[JessicaInPink]

@umbrae

Thank you for sharing just one example of how Google is messing up our lives!

[mrobmsu]

Microsoft is a monopoly because users are forced into using their products, which come installed on PC boxes and are mandated by big business and industry.

If you don't like Google, don't use it--its free, works well and does what its designed to do.

Much ado about not much.

[computeasugo]

Talking about intelligence, certainly greater emotional intelligence on the part of Google would help the company navigate through concerns and sense of alarm that seems to be voiced by rivals and others.
However, what about human intelligence? It maybe irreversibly changing as well. If intelligence is knowledge, Google is making itself invaluable by breaking down access barriers of all sorts. But does not intelligence have a lot to do with 'deep thought' and considered wisdom? (See Nicholas Carr's insightful article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google )?

Google is poised to have a much greater impact than Microsoft. While Microsoft has helped define computing environments and helped standardize and facilitate computing and communication by the masses, Google is poised to (and to some extent already has) change how we think and acquire knowledge. Its primary goal is to develop the perfect search engine and make it much more accessible to us. Co-founder Sergey Brin said in 2004 "Certainly if you had all the world?s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you?d be better off.? Better off? Really?

[karpenterskids]

The link to your disclosure about you and Google isn't working.
Just fyi.

[xuanvu]

That's hilarious. Google is the end of the world? That's stupid. I do believe Google has a lot more emotional intelligence than Apple.

I'm not a crazy fan of Google, but, in fact, I'm using a lot of Google's services and they haven't ever made me disappointed even just one second.

I can't believe some stupid "writer" can make some "bunch of biased ideas" books to publish and earn money. That should be "the end of the world as we know".