Omega Presents The 2. Seamaster Planet Ocean Watch Collection. A medium- sized speed boat motors us away from Naples and it is hot. The ancient city I am moving away from is colorful — but that describes most of Italy. Italy is vibrantly alive, dirty, and passionate.

It is also serious watch lover territory. I am pretty sure this is where large watches got their start. Omega has invited me out here for the official debut of their 2.

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Seamaster Planet Ocean watch collection. A few months ago, I saw the watches in a trade show setting at Baselworld in Switzerland. Already an outspoken fan of the new pieces, Omega wants me to experience Planet Ocean in a more comfortable setting where I, and other international journalists, can get the full story from Omega’s top people. In choppy water it takes almost an hour to get to the island of Capri. I later learn that large rock has been a favorite getaway for over a thousand years in addition to being a great inspiration to artists, writers, and political minds. The Romans inhabited Capri long ago, themselves using it as a powerful resort spot for powerful people.

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Some of their ruins remain. Made of limestone, tricks with the light in the clear water serve to explain many of the names associated with places on the Island such as the famous Blue and Green Grottoes. Omega, a Swiss brand with a Greek name now chooses an Italian spot for their next adventure. Among the people attending the event are Omega’s CEO, head of product development, and head of marketing - a trio of men that a legion of Omega fans would love to get a chance to chat with. Omega chose a curiously small venue to host an event for one of the world’s largest watch brands. Our intimate group makes it easy to forget that in addition to making a very healthy volume of high- end watches each year (with excellent quality to boot), Omega is that popular “moon watch” brand and official timekeeper of the Olympics. It is more than just a watch brand, it is the face of “professional timekeeping equipment” for many people.

Here I am wondering if their brand ambassador George Clooney will be joining us. Clooney doesn’t make it, but Buzz Aldrin does. At 8. 0 years old, Buzz still talks a good game and later talks to us about his other passion — the oceans. A popular Omega personality, Buzz was one of the people wearing an Omega Speedmaster Professional watch in 1.

Talking about the “Planet Ocean” name, Omega’s head of marketing quips to me on how difficult it is these days to find names for watches. Everything is taken!” Omega got lucky with the name, but it is hard to offer novel nomenclature to timepieces these days. I can relate to the frustration of trying to name something new and then discovering the name is already taken. This is especially true for a dive watch — a segment ripe with derivatives.

Stories such as this are one of the reasons I am so happy to be here. Omega isn’t a faux- smile brand with spokespeople who sit there and restate the official company line. I enjoy the straightforward enthusiasm of their executive team. Based in Bienne, Omega is truly a home- grown group of Swiss- watch- culture raised members. The brand also serves as a gateway to the world of pricier watches. In America, Omega is a term synonymous with “good Swiss watch.” That reputation didn’t come from marketing, it came from decades of making good Swiss watches and the people currently running Omega know and maintain that.

Listening to Omega’s head of product development speak sheds light on some of the mysteries of watch- making and design. Good thing I recorded it. The best stuff I have for you in this article doesn’t come from me at all.

The two videos included are interviews with Jean- Claude Monachon (Omega's head of Product Development) and Omega’s CEO Stephen Urquhart. I think you’ll enjoy the two of them.

Omega’s desire to beat its competition means that I always have something fun to see with them. This year, both what is inside the watches and what was outside gave me cause for excitement. And by excitement I mean frustration that I didn’t have the leverage to ask them for one of each watch. The quality of these timepieces is better than ever. Crisp dials and ceramic bezels make me wonder why anyone cares as much as they do about vintage timepieces. As for movements, I am still wowed by the Caliber 8.

Planet Ocean models. Even at current prices, they are solid values for high- quality dive watches with outstanding in- house made, and designed, movements. I first wrote about the new Seamaster Planet Ocean watches for 2.

Omega Calibre 9. 30. In- house movements are a tricky thing when it comes to answering “why?” Why make your own movement when a solid ETA does the job really well? To be honest, a lot of the time the only reason is the perception of value. For my money, I’d rather buy an ETA much of the time. ETA and Omega are linked, of course, as both are under the Swatch Group. For 2. 01. 1, the Caliber 9.

So again, why? The story goes that before Nicolas Hayek Sr. Omega that they make the best and most beautiful chronograph movement in the world. That is, one that fulfilled those requirements and could also be industrialized.

That little last caveat is the tough part. A fact that will have Omega improving the 9. ETA continually improves movements it originally released decades ago. The 9. 30. 0 is certainly one of the most beautiful chronograph’s in its class.

The array for decoration is inspiring and the reason for the large sapphire caseback. Even with the caseback the watch is water- resistant to 6. The features that could impress you in the Caliber 9. I covered them here. For the money, there is no other mechanical chronograph movement I would want. A few desirable features include it having about 6. COSC Chronometer certified, as well.

The only competitor for my attention is the Seiko Spring Drive Chronograph but that is technically something a bit different given its status as not being a purely mechanical movement. I noticed some owners of previous generation Seamaster Planet Ocean watches feeling left out of the excitement. In their shoes, I would probably feel the same way.

Omega’s blue and titanium Planet Ocean finally gets an unlimited ceramic and Liquidmetal bezel. I want to save a longer discussion about Liquidmetal for another article. However, if all goes well, Liquidmetal dials will show up on all Planet Ocean watches in due course. What is really important to say is that all but the orange bezel versions (orange is taking a bit longer but they are working on it) of the Planet Ocean watches now come in ceramic though not all with Liquidmetal. Those without Liquidmetal have numerals and markers which are offset printed using a complex form of PVD metallization. The ceramic dials for the Planet Ocean now come in black, blue, and white.

Ladies get their kicks, too, as the Planet Ocean three- hand model comes in 3. Still loving the 4. I think that the 4. Omega was clever enough to show us the new Planet Ocean watches in a more natural environment. It made me realize that most of the sport watches I see are indoors, especially at the watch shows.

Sitting on some rocks near the beautiful blue ocean, we play with watches by the water and in the daylight. One of the things I noticed about the dials of the Planet Ocean is that despite having a little glossy bling to them, the hand and hour markers stay legible and visible in all forms of light.

Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance. Vampire Diaries Season 2 Episode 14 Full Episode Megavideo here.

The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record- breaking $2. That post was briefly taken down, then republished.

Soon afterward, Anne- Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the “facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.” Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then- new social network, Plus.

The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers. This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news give it tremendous power over publishers. By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social network. I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes.

After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team as a reporter, told them I’d been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google.

With that, I published a story headlined, “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,” that included bits of conversation from the meeting. The Google guys explained how the new recommendation system will be a factor in search. Universally, or just among Google Plus friends?” I asked. Universal’ was the answer. So if Forbes doesn’t put +1 buttons on its pages, it will suffer in search rankings?” I asked. Google guy says he wouldn’t phrase it that way, but basically yes.(An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can still be found here.)Google promptly flipped out.

This was in 2. 01. Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non- disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.) It escalated quickly from there.

I was told by my higher- ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News. I thought it was an important story, but I didn’t want to cause problems for my employer. And if the other participants in the meeting had in fact been covered by an NDA, I could understand why Google would object to the story. Given that I’d gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately, though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down—a decision I will always regret. Forbes declined comment about this.

But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all. As I recall it—and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory—a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results.

That was unusual; websites captured by Google’s crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly. And unpublished stories still tend to show up in search results as a headline. Scraped versions could still be found, but the traces of my original story vanished.

It’s possible that Forbes, and not Google, was responsible for scrubbing the cache, but I frankly doubt that anyone at Forbes had the technical know- how to do it, as other articles deleted from the site tend to remain available through Google. Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet. I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that that’s what Google did in this instance, but it’s part of why this episode has haunted me for years: The story Google didn’t want people to read swiftly became impossible to find through Google. Google wouldn’t address whether it deliberately deep- sixed search results related to the story. Asked to comment, a Google spokesperson sent a statement saying that Forbes removed the story because it was “not reported responsibly,” an apparent reference to the claim that the meeting was covered by a non- disclosure agreement. Again, I identified myself as a journalist and signed no such agreement before attending. People who paid close attention to the search industry noticed the piece’s disappearance and wroteaboutit, wondering why it disappeared.

Those pieces, at least, are still findable today. As for how effective the strategy was, Google’s dominance in other industries didn’t really pan out for Plus. Six years later, the social network is a ghost town and Google has basically given up on it.

But back when Google still thought it could compete with Facebook on social, it was willing to play hardball to promote the network. Google started out as a company dedicated to ensuring the best access to information possible, but as it’s grown into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, its priorities have changed.

Even as it fights against ordinary people who want their personal histories removed from the web, the company has an incentive to suppress information about itself. Google said it never urged New America to fire Lynn and his team.

But an entity as powerful as Google doesn’t have to issue ultimatums. It can just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants, given the influence it wields.