One of the first reaction to March ’s annihilative quake - and - tsunami combo wasGoogle ’s Person Finder — a database of missing individual . But even for the search king , it was n’t leisurely . And the fact that Google ’s still unknown to many did n’t avail .
The NYT describesthe company ’s industrious efforts to overlook everything and divert its Japanese staff to catastrophe aid ( in its own Google - y agency ) . Google expect users to upload missing persons photos to Picasa to help flesh out the list , and presently they were completely deluge . Thousands of photos teem in , exceeding Google ’s ability to transliterate them — though the database finally exceeded an astounding 600,000 mass , helping connect friends and family in the backwash of the tragedy .
But the effort reveal the extent to which Google is a remote second shoes behind Yahoo in Japan . Many Japanese are loth to the society out of privateness worry , and many just did n’t know what Google was . Which seems insufferable , and yet the Times quotes one employee who had to spell it all out from loot when trying to contact local authorities : “ I am from an net troupe call Google . We would care your cooperation . ”
The extent to which Google built their database out of humanitarian empathy or out of marketplace share thirstiness is an strange . Likely a mixture of the two . [ NYT ]
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