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I don't see why you think you have a right to disable it. It is a separate piece of software that runs inside the browser and it doesn't inject any code into your site.

I don't see why Google think they have a right to attach comments to, and then display the comments alongside my content. If it's going to display to the public when they visit my site, I want control of it; My content -- my rules. If Google want to let Daniel Brandt or Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer loose on their own services, they can go right ahead and embrace these exciting PR opportunies.

Syndicating feeds and hosting comments on a google run site that doesn't automatically display alongside mine is fine. As is, the service should be opt-in. Failing that, they need to provide a way for site operators to monitor comments without installing a plug-in.

There's liable and widespread differences of opinion over what constitutes (in)acceptable content to consider. And if anyone thinks Google would not be liable for harm resulting from personal information they enabled to be published right alongside a contentious site -- think again!

While remaining even more secretive and becoming even more of a monopoly than Microsoft on things that actually matter, like their search and advertising business, to say nothing of their total disregard for privacy.

Google Watch Watch

Congratulations to Mr. Brandt for his continuing effort to prove he is not a public figure by hitching himself to this controversy and getting quoted by the New York Times yet again. In his attacks on Wikipedia for creating an article about him, he claimed he was in fact not a public figure, despite his half dozen plus appearances in the Times and more in other publications. It's obvious from his use of this controversy to promote himself and from his hit list of Wikipedia editors that he has no real interest in privacy issues, he's just pissed that the Wikipedia article about him had links to two sites critical of him, an article in Salon (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/29/goog le_watch/) and http://www.google-watch-watch.org/.

Yeah, interesting fellow... more nuggets here and here and here...

The google-watch-watch one has a good quote from a Salon article:

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense.

This also adds a little interesting twist to his disdain for wikipedia...

Wow. So you're Danial Brandt? Mr Google-watch? I've always found you to be a rather facinating character.

Honestly - if you didn't have an axe to grind with Google, and then Wikipedia... would you have even bothered to do this?

Google Maps uses information which has been semi-publically available for a long time, there is nothing special about it other than the UI.

This article sounds like something this guy would write... (and, the anti-that-guy :D )

"And it's not like Google's first result is always the best. Recent studies show wide disparity between various engines for the top results."

You were pissed off, and decided to have your revenge. Daniel is your name, Slander and lies against Google is your game.

You basically have no credibility what so ever when you talk about Google.

"Moreover, all the several-year-old Google bombs still work."

That's a thing of beauty. Well, not really, it's a damn shame to waste a domain name on a nearly plain-text page, but it's still pretty funny. Does anyone really love google enough to host a page like that on their own? Wow, if so. I mean, I've always liked google, but would I rent out a domain to host a anti-anti-google website? I doubt it. Thanks for that, though. Definitely a +1 interesting from an AC.

But who watchers the watchers?
http://www.google-watch-watch.org/

As is Google Watch Watch.

If you're going to post crazed rants, post the counter, too: Google-Watch Watch.

I trust google-watch even less than google.

Here's why.

Check out Google Watch Watch instead.

I would prefer to watch google like a chickenhawk

See that innocent looking computer housing facility?

Look again, it's a weapons lab.

"oh they can't be bad they play hockey and are 'nice' guys".

Wrong again buddy, hockey comes from canada, besides - that's a terrorist training camp in there.

we have much evidence to this fact here and here

don't believe these guys, they are just dripping in liberal "we-need-evidence-and-a-backbone-transplant" bias.

Those bleeding purple heart liberals just don't want to go into google and sort those bastards out. They are all like "we don't love our country enough" and they read subversive sites on the net. Luckily with a little help from the NSA encryption breakers (why you think we stopped banning crypto exports? hahahahaah) we have tagged them all into various MATRIX databases. Man do these guys buy some wishy-washy new-age crap from amazon along with their stalinist polemics.

"Zen and the art of coding simple command line LISP interfaces to your home enema machine" WTF?!?!?

We had to shut down one of the matrix databases the other day though, because it was comming up with all the ahem "younger" porn searches from our nations outstanding religious leaders who have really rallied behind the national cause to spread fear and crush dissent.

anyway, google is being invaded, the economy is too down and I owe the saudis too many favours to let Saddam Bin Laden, Hussien... whatever, from getting away with threatening us from the google compound. Just last week I typed "saddam" into their search engine to find sattelite pictures of him to blow his ass up.... and what do I find? THIS a freaking tribute page to saddam from the google guys. I was like OMG you guys are *SO* getting your asses invaded. And then I was like "where are they?" and I looked it up and they WERE IN AMERICA.

This is no cuba-on-our-door-step type senario this is a national emergency. So I waved my anthrax wand at those UN guys we pay to look fair and they agreed that out intel was TIP TOP.

and I rang up google and I was like (in my best john wayne voice)"ITS THE END OF THE LINE YOU COMMIE TERRORISTS, YOU AND YOUR WEAPONS WILL BE DESTROYED"

And the operator was like "Let the American infidels bask in their illusion"

It was then that I knew that we are right, and that god is on our side. I just held the mission acomplished party of a big beefy boat and we are set to invade tommorow!

Check out Google Watch Watch before believing anything Google Watch has to say. GW was started because the owner of the site disagreed with his site's pagerank. His obscure page about Donald Rumsfeld got a low PR, and he made a big deal out of it. Obviously, since it didn't give him the #1 spot, it's Google which is at fault, right?

Daniel Brandt (GW owner) has no credibility what so ever when it comes to Google. His site contanins several blatant lies about Google which I have pointed out in earlier Slashdot discussions. The purpose of the site is a personal vendetta against Google for not giving his useless and paranoid page a higher PR.

Watching big and powerful companies is a good thing. Spreading lies about them because you disagree with them is pathetic at best.

So no, I don't think Google Watch should be mentioned, as it is not a serious site. It is a pure joke, and the man who created it is a pathetic liar with a personal agenda.

Check out Google Watch Watch before believing anything Google Watch has to say. GW was started because the owner of the site disagreed with his site's pagerank. His obscure page about Donald Rumsfeld got a low PR, and he made a big deal out of it. Obviously, since it didn't give him the #1 spot, it's Google which is at fault, right?

Daniel Brandt (GW owner) has no credibility what so ever when it comes to Google. His site contanins several blatant lies about Google which I have pointed out in earlier Slashdot discussions. The purpose of the site is a personal vendetta against Google for not giving his useless and paranoid page a higher PR.

Watching big and powerful companies is a good thing. Spreading lies about them because you disagree with them is pathetic at best.

So no, I don't think Google Watch should be mentioned, as it is not a serious site. It is a pure joke, and the man who created it is a pathetic liar with a personal agenda.

And you might want to check out this one.

See Google-Watch Watch for details on the creepy paranoid dude and then go back and read his rantings with a large-ass grain of salt.

For those who still think email is secure I got news for you: Your email is already exposed in plain text on just about any server it is sent to. If your email is ever relayed through a third party server (and a lot of mail is) then chances are an unscrupulous admin has already read your messages or at least stored a copy.

What GMail does by comparison is relatively tame. The adds are inserted at display time. All email is parsed to more effectively block spam. No human will ever read your email.

Don't take my word or the word of some kook with issues.

Read the Gmail privacy policy

EXCERPT BELOW:

Email contents and usage. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links), preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your email, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account. Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public.

I have a link for you too.

Bah, see also http://google-watch-watch.org/

*waits for someone to register google-watch-watch-watch.org*

Maybe...

I wish a could beat the creator of google-watch.org and every person who ever linked to it with a gigantic clue stick.

First of all, the creator of google-watch.org has a really big axe to grind with Google.

Second, HTTP is a stateless protocol. If you want a user's preferences to to persist within a session you need to use cookies or attach a lot of state information to each GET/POST request. If you want the preferences to persist after you close and re-open your browser you have to have the user log in every time and store the prefs on the server or store the prefs on the client side in a cookie like Google does. This simple fact seems to fly right over the head of google-watch.org and their ridiculous cookie conspiracy theories.

But hey, we've been over this in every Google story since the anti-Google FUD crowd started coming out of the woodwork. Here's a thought: if you really need a tinfoil hat then disable cookies, don't use Orkut and sleep better at night. But please stop subjecting people to google-watch.org FUD.

Take what you read on googlewatch lightly.

google watch watch

Keep in mind that google-watch is ran by an individual with an axe to grind. Which doesn't mean that serious issues can't be raised by someone so motivated. But it does cast some doubt on his assertions when there seems to be a fair amount of reaching to get them.

Also see Google watch watch .

Basically the google watch guy is just pissed off that google didn't give him the page rank he thought he deserved. I've read google-watch and most of it is FUD

Obligatory: Make sure you read Google Watch Watch as well...

Yeah, but don't forget to read Google-Watch-Watch - that Daniel Brandt is, to put it politely, completely bananas. A fruit-loop. One badger short of a sett. A total lampshade.

If Google are tracking everyone for targeting advertising, etc, why does everyone get near-identical search results for the same search queries? And why are the adverts quite obviously keyword-based? (Search for 'digital camera drivers linux', for instance, and get adverts for digital cameras).

Meet Daniel Brandt. He is a self-proclaimed public interest activist and the owner of Google-Watch.org Mr. Brandt founded Google-Watch.org after his own site, Namebase.org, did not get a good Google PageRank.

The leftist Brandt was so angry that he started his site, Google Watch, on which he writes several direct lies and misleading statements about Google. It is his personal vendetta against Google because Google actually works and gives his obscure page a low rank.

I have pointed out his lies several times on Slashdot, so I will not repeat them here.

Before reading Brandt's lies, please visit Google Watch Watch, which also clarifies the situation, and far more eloquently than I am able to.

The leftist Brandt was so angry that he started his site, Google Watch, on which he writes several direct lies and misleading statements about Google. It is his personal vendetta against Google because Google actually works and gives his obscure page a low rank.

I have pointed out his lies several times on Slashdot, so I will not repeat them here.

Before reading Brandt's lies, please visit Google Watch Watch, which also clarifies the situation, and far more eloquently than I am able to.

The leftist Brandt was so angry that he started his site, Google Watch, on which he writes several direct lies and misleading statements about Google. It is his personal vendetta against Google because Google actually works and gives his obscure page a low rank.

I have pointed out his lies several times on Slashdot, so I will not repeat them here.

Before reading Brandt's lies, please visit Google Watch Watch, which also clarifies the situation, and far more eloquently than I am able to.

• AdWords
• Does
• Not
• Affect
• Normal
• Search
• Results

AdWords does not affect normal search results! This is about the sponsored links, and they are very obvious, and also separated from the actual search results.

Can we please quit it with the FUD and misinformation now? What is this, Google Watch?

Google Watch Watch

Google Watch is an extremely unbalanced site, and there are several direct lies. As has been pointed out, it is put up because Mr. Brandt didn't like his pagerank and thought that his obscure site about Rumsfeld should have ranked higher. But Google didn't rank it higher, so he set out on a personal vendetta. I have written about this before, so I am not going to repeat everything here.

But again, this is my plea to the mods that they consider the facts at hand and spend their mod points wisely. It is well and good to keep an eye on large corporations, but spreading lies about them is unacceptable. Especially when Google is actually a very useful tool and does not seem to be "evil" just yet ;)

(I know I may burn some karma on this, but it is worth it if I can contribute to putting an end to Everyman's lies about Google.)

Warning: Before modding the parent post, you should know that "Everyman" is the Slashdot alias of Mr. Daniel Brandt, who owns google-watch.org.

I have pointed out many times that google-watch.org is a site full of lies and deception. The reason the site was set up in the first place was that Mr. Brandt didn't think that he got a high enough PageRank, and that his obscure pages about various subjects should rank above other, more informative and popular sources of information on the same subjects. When his obscure site with a page about Donald Rumsfeld did not get a high rank on Google for obvious reasons, he set out on a personal vendetta against the search engine.

In other words, he is not making that site for the good of us all, but to spread FUD about Google. It is a good thing to keep an eye on powerful companies, but this is over the top - it is ridiculous.

Before falling for Brandt's lies and deceptions, please visit Google-watch-watch.org, which exposes his misleading site for what it is.

This latest post on Slashdot is just the latest post in the series of strawman arguments Mr. Brandt is using to try to destroy Google. Also, he still hasn't answered my last reply to him, where I pointed out his hypocrisy, when he complains about how Salon writes a misleading article about him (yeah, right...).

Maybe you should check google-watch-watch as well?
Just a thought..

Adware can be spyware, but then I wouldn't call it adware either, because these terms should be kept separate. There is no reason why people who rely on ads served without compromising your security or privacy should suffer because of overly broad definitions.

But just like "racism" to many is no longer about race, but also about culture, and can therefore be used effectively to shut someone up in a debate, it can be easy to label something "spyware" because one does not understand what it really does, or perhaps because one benefits from paranoia (such as running an "anti-spyware" site which one makes money from).

One example is Spywareinfo.com, which is a site run by a guy who claims that a program can be spyware even though it doesn't actually spy on the user (follow the comment thread, and also parent and grandparent). This is ridiculous, and only contributes to confusing the issue and making it harder to spot the real spyware.

Another example is Google Watch, which is a site set up to spread lies about Google because another site belonging to the Google Watch owner was too obscure and unpopular to get a good PageRank.

Since I have already talked about the lies and deception of Google Watch in another lengthy post, I shall not repeat myself too much here, but the deceptive site lies about the Google bar and calls it spyware, which is an outright lie, since it is impossible to miss the text saying that for the PageRank indicator to work, it must send URLs back to Google.

So as you can see, it is not only important that we watch for software vendors that want to compromise our privacy. We must also watch the watchers to make sure that they cannot cash in on other people's fear by exaggerating, lying and deceiving. Therefore, the definitions must be strict, and we cannot allow people like Mike at spywareinfo.com or David at google-watch.com to fill our heads with lies until we believe them and let them cash in on our problems.

(For the record, Mike does a lot of good things, but he clearly needs to be corrected, as his overly broad definitions do nothing but making the fight against spyware more difficult, simply because we are not just fighting real spyware anymore apparently, but also lots of other programs that do not fit the real definition at all.)

And finally, it is my firm belief that Gator is indeed spyware, in case my stance on this issue was unclear. The way Gator tries to sneak its way into our systems, it cannot be defined as anything but spyware.

From Google Watch Watch:

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of .mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)

Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, but in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies."

In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."

And for those of you visiting Google Watch, I also suggest a trip to Google Watch Watch.

Google Watch was set up by a guy who felt slighted that he couldn't unfairly manipulate his PageRank. Full story here.

And some more alarming privacy issues are listed on http://www.google-watch.org/.
For anyone who might be about to take Google-Watch seriously, please have a look at Google-Watch-Watch before you make up your mind.

Meet Daniel Brandt. He is a self-proclaimed public interest activist and the owner of Google-Watch.org Mr. Brandt founded Google-Watch.org after his own site, Namebase.org, did not get a good Google PageRank. Promoting his site or putting more work into it apparently never entered Mr. Brandt's mind, instead he decided that the fault wasn't with his site, but rather with Google. Thus he has started a campaign that badmouths the search engine and complains that its ranking algorithms are unfair. Unfair to whom? Well to Mr. Brandt's site that's who.

Unfortunately for Google, Mr. Brandt has found an audience. Increasingly journalists that are looking for a sensational story are using him as a source. They rarely bother to check the validity of his claims, and in a few cases they don't even mention the selfish motives that started this whole campaign, instead they paint him as some kind of benevolent consumer activist who isn't out there to make a buck. Google is just a shining star, and it's fun for some people to try to tarnish them. It gets readers anyways, just like tabloids.

Taken from http://www.google-watch-watch.org/

google-watch-watch