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Don't forget to mention that you have to use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

http://www.google-watch.org/newsday.html

I saw this flash video last week and wrote the following on my own website in responce to it. I figured it'd be relevent here so here's a version edited to be posted on slashdot.

For the past year now I've been predicting that within the next ten Google will 'take over the world'. Most people I tell this two think I'm crazy and this will never happen saying that Google is the best company ever and they will never turn evil. I tend to disagree.

Let me take just a few minutes to explain why I think this.

Facts - Google owns:
- Google is the most used search engine
- Gmail, while maybe not the most used email provider (maybe it is now?) it is definitely the most highly desired
- Orkut, while mostly blown over now is still a thriving social network site
- Google News is viewed as a #1 news site for many people
- Blogger is one of the leading blog sites and blogs are all over the news these days
- Keyhole offers a satalite imageing service
- Google Desktop Search
- Google Adsense - probably the most widly used advertising on the web these days (used even on this website although I haven't seen any return yet)
- And much much more, plus all the things normal people like myself have come up with such as the random google image in the right sidebar.

My point to all of this is the following:
Through GMail Google stores and never deletes your email. They catalog it and can do a LOT with that data. With time google can write robots to parse the data to find out every bit of data about you, who you know, what you talk about, etc. Gmail bundled with Orkut Google really has a solid grip on your social network with more detail and structure then email alone. Google knows who joebob62@aol.com really is, where he lives, what his pass times are, etc and can link it up with your email conversations. Now to get even further into your life they have the Google Desktop Search which has already been called on being invasive bypassing security on people's PC's and cataloging files that it shouldn't.

Step back for a second, Google now knows who you know, what you talk about, details about every person, everything you say on your computer, what files you have, what is in each file, basically all of your Digital Data. Oh, also if you use the google search bar (IE plug-in) in advanced mode (default.. plus ohh! I want advanced features....) they track every webpage you go, although the desktop search tool does that as well. 0wned.

Next we start to see Google's current revenue. Blogs, Keyhole, Adsense. Wow, if the inflated stock doesn't make them enough $$$ then this sure helps. Although I don't believe Google charges for blogger right now they are setting their selves up for it in the future if blogging ever takes off as a legitimate news source... News.. Google news is one of the most used news services to gather news from many sources, sorted automatically for relevance...

Now, just think if Google DID want to turn evil (assuming they aren't already) how much of the market they already own. In the 90's people switched search engines all the time, but moving email providers, etc is a lot harder to do. In a few more years they'll have people so dependant on them and their products just like Microsoft people will be stuck with Google for better or.. worse.

More info on Google being evil is at google-watch.

I personally haven't come up with a scenario myself, and I am uncertain if this one is how its going to happen, but I was happy to see that others feel the same way as I do, that within the next ten years Google will takeover the world, or in this movie, the media forcing the New York Times offline.

Please take the time to watch this movie, and ignore the somewhat cheesiness of it. I really think they are being insightful and this COULD happen.

Been using it for 3 months now, but yesterday I deleted all of my messages (after forwarding them to my personal address) and I'm not planning on using it anymore. Though I really like it's interface, and some really nice features (1GB for example ;-), I didn't like what I've read on google-watch.org.

Not saying anyone else shouldn't use it, but at the least know what your doing when you're using Gmail!

I will no doubt be modded down by the Google fanbase, but don't say I didn't warn you

;)

XoloX / Peter Odding

The instructions for cookie-less preferences at Google-Watch have been updated. By editing your bookmark and adding four characters, the Google sabotage is defeated.

Until today you could save your google settings without loosing your privacy. You can still save those settings but google refuses to use them when you block their cookie. In my case I get 10 search results although I like to receive 100. Seems that they are making many dollars on a user's cookie, and now they are a public company my privacy is less important than "stock holders' interests".

Until today you could save your google settings without loosing your privacy. You can still save those settings but google refuses to use them when you block their cookie. In my case I get 10 search results although I like to receive 100. Seems that they are making many dollars on a user's cookie, and now they are a public company my privacy is less important than "stock holders' interests".

Last month Google acquired Keyhole, which got money from In-Q-Tel, which is a venture firm funded by the CIA. One of the most prominent engineers at Google used to work for the National Security Agency. The U.S. Army is listed by Google as one of the customers of their Google intranet search appliance. Google runs help-wanted ads for engineers with a top-secret security clearance. It's not hard to believe that Google would pull these photos as a way of positioning themselves for juicy contracts with the intelligence community.

this this might explain a lot.
Especially the Floyd/Mark Kvamme and Bush relationship could explain why those images were removed.

I think we're barking up the wrong issue. As Google Watch says, "We have no position on Google and China. Since the Patriot Act, we also don't know what to think about Google's dealings with the U.S. government. If we ever get full disclosure from Google, we will form an opinion. That's the prior problem and the fundamental issue. No one can believe what Google says about anything important. It's none of our business!"

... says Google's motto. But what exactly does the company mean by that? To quote Sergey Page in an interview he and Larry Brin did for Playboy.

As for "Don't be evil," we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good--always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, "Don't be evil" seems the easiest way to summarize it.

After all, is this the right, ethical thing to do as far as Google is concerned? ... If it truly is, then I believe we ought to be somewhat more cautious about the company than we actually are and stop considering it as one which can only do good to the extent of sacrificing business opportunities in the name of ethics. Otherwise, perhaps we should just content ourselves of reconsidering the said motto.

There is definitely a kernel of truth to what you say. Check out Google Watch for further information on some of their less than angelic ways.

...will it be caching search queries exactly as google does? (see Google-Watch for details)
If so, IMHO, the ones, for whom their privacy is even a bit valuable, will recompile KDE without this vulnerability...

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!

This is not a new idea. Read this Wired.com piece, Google vs. Evil. Subhead: "Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business." Or anti-Google sites like Google Watch. I'm not saying Google is evil, but they're doing things that start to raise eyebrows.

Extended Warranties are such a profitable business, I bet LaCie would eagerly sell you one and start such a business unit.

If they won't, one of the car extended warranty places would probably jump on the opportunity if they thought people would fall for thm.

The Google API

The Google Filesystem

The Google Homeland Security Database

The Google Censorship Features

The Google API

The Google Filesystem

The Google Homeland Security Database

The Google Censorship Features

Surely you've heard of Googlewatch?

Unfortunately, Blinkx has an even worse track record than Google when it comes to protecting My Rights Online. I installed the beta version of their software onto my "dumping ground box," an old Athlon 700 running on a FIC AZ11 motherboard with Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2, Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 with Adblock and Flashblock, and OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 SFX edition.

During my usage of the software, I saw numerous pop-under banners being spawned by Internet Explorer, even when I was using Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 with Adblock and Flashblock! It turns out that Blinkx actually creates a pseudo-proxy server and routes all traffic through it. Even historically secure browsers like Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 with Adblock and Flashblock were foiled by it.

After one too many ads triggered from Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 with Adblock and Flashblock, I re-imaged my dumping ground box. Please boycott Blinkx.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Watchdog and Privacy Advocate
Not affiliated with Seth Finkelstein, but still hates Michael Sims

I don't agree with much on Google Watch, but they think the YRO connection is clear.

While we all love Google for their great search engine, all is not well in the land of search engines. You might want to check out this site .

For an in-depth look at the real facts about Google, visit This Site.

Algorithm for determining terrorist tendencies revealed:

• Drives automobile with 'unpatriotic' themed bumper stickers as detected by stoplight 'traffic' video cameras (examples of offending stickers: "Bring our troops home", "No blood for oil", "Save the Whales")
• Home contains 'subversive' media as detected by random drive-by RFID scans of neighborhood (examples of offending materials: Farhenheit 9/11 DVD, Free as In Freedom, framed U.S. Constitution hanging on wall)
• Home computer uses 'non-government-approved-cyber-terrorist-hacker operating system', as determined from network scans subpoenaed from ISP's (and kept secret per the 'Patriot' Act(TM))
• Home computer accesses 'questionable' websites... centers of thought for known subversives, all too frequently. (examples: slashdot, kuro5hin, news.google.com)
• Subject's brain displays 'unacceptable' patterns of activity as determined by random drive-by, neighborhood cerebral scans (examples: Considering joining a labor union, Switching to alternative fuels, or voting for the 'wrong' candidate) [someone will point out that they can't do this remotely...yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar they're working around the clock on a solution]
• Subject makes 'strange' store purchases as recorded in credit/debit/check card billing history. (examples: Vitamin supplements [aren't our FDA sponsored^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H approved remedies good enough for them?], pizza [long known to be the preferred food of hacker-terrorists])
• Subject frequently votes for 'non-traditional' 3rd parties, instead of participating in our beloved Two Party System(TM) as recorded by the new, improved, and federally mandated Diebold Cyber-Voting Machines.
• Subject resists indoctrination^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H avoids our tried and true 'national passtimes' of televised sporting events, sitcoms, and talk shows, according to digital cable/satellite viewing records, preferring, instead, to spend more time on the internet -- a proven tendency of the typical terrorist/hacker.
• Subject avoids our wonderful system of 'No Child Left Behind'(TM) public education where they'll be taught useful skills like 'how to conform', 'shut up and let the teacher finish the lesson', and 'How to beat the essay E-grader' ...by sending their children to private/home schools, and therefore putting them in danger of, indeed, 'being left behind'.
• Subject conducts searches for 'forbidden' terms on Google (examples: "Abu Ghraib Prison", "community involvement", "private schools") [I know we all love Google here, but they're not perfect, just look at Gmail's privacy issues]
• Subject actually goes to the public library and checks out *any* books as evidenced by library checkout history. This is an obvious sign of a non-passive participant in society^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terrorist -- someone who does too much thinking^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H planning/scheming, and could be dangerous.

... The sad thing is, this is nothing. I could go on for days about various things like these that are in the works, or already in place that can be used to create an evironment that would make the old U.S.S.R. blush (Soviet Russia jokes not withstanding ;-) )

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1928

One thing to note here is that, if Microsoft-watch.com had been as dedicatedly critical of MS, I think they would have probably been sued into non-existence a long time ago.

That comeone criticizes google isn't necessarily bad.. Hopefully the pertinent people at google read this page from time to time.

They're one of the few companies that I really trust to do the right thing.

It is time for you to go and read Google Watch (have you disabled cookies from google.com yet?)

The company who puts a cookie on your computer that doesn't expire until 2038, has the ability to see lots of personal information about you, and who is interested in storing and indexing all of your email correspondance until the end of time, now wants to index my hard drive for me?

Call me paranoid, and mod me down because I'm sharing a negative opinion of Google, but I don't think I'm going to be giving this same company the ability to sift through my entire hard drive.

There's Google Watch.

There's Yahoo Watch.

And there's also Amazon Watch.

Amazon's privacy policy is very explicit, and they do have the generic version available that doesn't track you. Anyone who fails to use the generic version is asking for a comprehensive, personally-identifiable profile at Amazon/Alexa/a9.com that they cannot review and cannot delete. Amazon is very up front about this.

All such profiling, whether done by Google, Yahoo, or Amazon, is presently justified by the Holy Grail of "personalized search." But who needs personalized search when the cost is so high to your personal privacy? This is what the focus should be on -- criticizing all those pundits who help the profilers by trumpeting the possibilities of personalized search.

After all, 99 times out of 100 you can "personalize" any search on any search engine by merely adding one additional word in the search box to limit the results that are returned. Personalized search is for lazy people, but even these people don't deserve to be cyber-fingerprinted everywhere they go online.

You don't let a two-year-old play with matches, and you shouldn't let programmers at search engines play with "personalized search."

This is a web site that claims the cookie expires in 2038 because of pending 'brain implants.'

Surely it couldn't be because they're using a large number of 32-bit UNIX-like systems, and that there's the UNIX epoch in all UNIX-like OSes on 32-bit systems is 2038.

I mean, that'd just be kha-raaaaaaazie!1! It's obvious that they set the cookie to 2036 so they could steal our Precious Bodily Fluids. Where's the tin foil? Where?

Err. Yah. Yah, at that point I think it's safe to say anything on the site can be honestly diregarded as bunk. Or at best poorly writen SciFi. Either way, it's relationship with reality is on the rocks, and reality is already calling it's mother and a divorce laywer.

Unless you manually clean them (Or have your browser set to automatically clean them), the cookie actually expires on Jan. 17, 2038.

There's a tin-foil type site called Google Watch with a bunch of information about Google.

As I said in the grand-parent, I'm a larger-than-average fan of Google, so I believe most of the claims on the site are a bunch of paranoid rantings, but they do raise legitimate points about possibilities.

We should all be aware of Google's threats to our liberty. The almighty search engine's practices have become more and more worrisome. For example:

• The 1GB FBI^H^H^Hemail service
• The cookie that doesn't expire until 2038
• Their promotion of child pornography

Its no wonder that more and more people are questioning their motives. Read Google Watch if you don't believe Google is evil.

Google Watch also raises some interesting points concerning privacy, such as their persistant cookies and ties to the Bush Administration.

I felt pretty dumb, having given them my prime email address (myfirstname@mylastname.net), then realising afterwards that through the magic everlasting cookie I had just enabled Google to link every search I had ever done back to ME personally. Like, DUH!
Heck, I don't even know what "interesting" data might be in there, but seeing as it's about ME, I damn well ought to be able to get access to it (under UK law).

More here.

That is what people are getting annoyed about - not the email service itself, just the registration process.

I presume I probably wasn't the only person who put their email address into the 'interested in an account?' section on the gmail website before remembering that it could be linked to all my previous searches on this machine... http://www.google-watch.org/email.html suggests deleting the google.com cookie before and afterwards, but might be too late for that...

-jermy

One of the scariest things about Google, IMO is the amount of information they can collect by storing content locally using cookies without needing any kind of registration. Nothing more invasive than not filling out a huge form on a Web site I most commonly visit, especially when they collect way more information than is actually needed.

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

I'm not a typical tin-foil hatter, but it does pay to be aware of what's going on behind the scenes.

Oh yeah,

Google rocks!

Actually, if I remember correctly, this is about what Altavista has looked like for some time now. Also note that by doing a WhoIs for Altavista.com, you will find that Altavista is owned by Yahoo!... Which I just don't know about, to be honest. I use their mail service, but their search page is so bloated and ugly, full of content I neither want nor need from a search engine. As a result, Google is set as my home page, and when I want to check my web-mail account, I have a hotlink directly to https://mail.yahoo.com (cleartext password transmission is bad, mmmm'kay?). When I want information, want it fast, and want it organized in manner that at least vaguely appears to be relevant, I go to Google.

Waaayyyyy back in the day when I used to work at D.E.C. ('97 to early '99), I and most of my friends and co-workers swore by Altavista... Guess it also didn't hurt that I could feel the hum from the servers that powered it through my chair some days. Boy have things changed, but then, not much changed for the better after the Comwhaq buyout.

One major annoyance with Google lately though... Those stupid results that come back as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th result for evey search I've run in the last month+... You know, the ones that say "Find 'x' using the free 2020 search toolbar", and, "Find 'x' on smartpages.com," and "Find 'x' With Free Websearch Tools." What is up with this??? Why for they cannot make these go away, bitte? If I wanted to search for these somewhere else, I would do so. Why is Google doing free advertising for these people, as they are obviously not paid ads, but standard returns that appear to be just a database/dictionary/meta-tag exploit... Someone at Google must know about this, and I just don't understand why it's been allowed to continue, as this has completely ruined so much of their credibility since now 3 out of the first five results of any query are now completely unrelated and inaccurate =(

Otherwise, I've been loving on Google about 2 1/2 years now, and I haven't really looked back, even when I read sites (1, and 2) that called into question google's privacy practices, I wasn't really deterred, but these bad returns may be all it takes to make me start considering another move.

I was disappointed in the piece. Because I'm the founder of Google Watch, the reporter on the piece, David Hochman, called me twice in the last three weeks to talk about Google, for a total of about an hour. I have a feeling that the reason the piece came out the way it did is because he was constrained by his editors. The NYT has a custom-filtered AdWords feed from Google, and it's one of the reasons why the Digital NYT is in the black. Their record of publishing trenchant pieces about Google has been rather lame now for several years. Money talks, both at the NYT and at Google.

Have they consulted Google?

Does having a former NSA employee with security clearance count? I'm surprised no one else mentioned it.

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

There is more to google than the "i'm feeling lucky" button.

Unfortunately, if google changed their links now to recorded redirects, there would be a large outcry about privacy concerns. When google added a user cookie (the first popular search engine to do so.) people were concerned about someone's search behavior being tracked. When they started selling AdWords, people wondered if their google cookie could then expose their browsing habits. Right now, people are concerned about their Orkut project.

There are only so many times they can feign innocence on the matter.

Yes, Google has a spam problem. It has been getting worse over the last year. In April, 2003 Google stopped crawling the web once per month, and then recalculating PageRank based on that monthly crawl. Since then, there has been a question of whether PageRank can even be calculated accurately by Google.

I speculated about a 4-byte docID overflow problem in an essay last June at Google Watch. In recent months Google started a "Supplemental Index" for some curious, unexplained reason. Their total number of pages indexed was recently updated to 4,285,199,774 -- just below the maximum for a 32-bit integer. It looks as suspicious now as it did last June.

Last November, Google began using an on-the-fly filter to further refine the search results for ecommerce sites. Some spam was deleted, a lot of other spam took its place, and a lot of mom and pop ecommerce sites were dropped inadvertently. Many people were unhappy.

Further evidence that Google's old ranking system is broken is the fact that three famous Googlebombs, "french military victories," "weapons of mass destruction" and "miserable failure" are all still working. The first one is eleven months old. It used to be that such Googlebombs were suppressed at the next monthly crawl, when PageRank was recalculated. Now it seems that suppressing them is beyond Google's ability. How else can you explain why Google puts up with these widely-publicized embarrassments?

Google's results remain unsurpassed for noncommercial sites from EDU, ORG, and GOV domains, however. Their crawling of the noncommercial sector is the most complete of any engine. The reason Google does so well here is probably because spam isn't much of a problem in this area.

So far Yahoo doesn't appear to be making much of an effort at covering the noncommercial web. It should be added that Google has more of a spam problem simply because spammers have been focused on Google for so long. Once Yahoo gets the same attention from spammers, then we'll be able to make a fair comparison of Yahoo with Google.

Doesn't work anymore. Here's the google watch link to an article about the prank.

-Adam

If you really care whether or not they track you, then you should read about the cookie Google sets with a unique ID number. I personally don't care, but it would be interesting to have access to such data if it exists.

Too bad the article doesn't mention how google is trying to fight gaming the PageRank system or any of the other problems like commercials in the results. Still a great search tool though.

According to DEA, Google is breaking the law

Google Evil cookie

We got your number!

And so on...

Not to troll but rather a thought. Mod as you wish.

According to DEA, Google is breaking the law

Google Evil cookie

We got your number!

And so on...

Not to troll but rather a thought. Mod as you wish.

According to DEA, Google is breaking the law

Google Evil cookie

We got your number!

And so on...

Not to troll but rather a thought. Mod as you wish.

According to DEA, Google is breaking the law

Google Evil cookie

We got your number!

And so on...

Not to troll but rather a thought. Mod as you wish.

reading the article again your right. Try checking your cookie log and look for the google one. I think the googlewatch site was making a point about *cookies with long expiry dates*.

looking at the cookie on my machine it had an expiry date of 8FEB2038 attatched was the following data ID=36accc993aa66c41:LD=en:NR=100:CR=2:TM=107394243 5:LM=1075939002:S=swKwossf4gh4rD50 Now this is most likely the prefs cookie I set while I was mucking around with some google hacks.

• The fact that you record unique cookie ID, plus IP number, plus date and time, makes much of your information "identifiable." Authorities can also do a "sneak and peek" search of a Google user's hard drive when he isn't home, retrieve a Google cookie ID, and then get a keyword search history from you for this ID. [www.google-watch.org]

this is the type of problem I guess I was trying point out. One should not be overtly alarmed - but wary.

why your searchs of course. this information is gold - advertising, law enforcement etc

MBTI is ISTP