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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

search == tracked id
google privacy policy deficiencies

damn useful tool. but you leave breadcrumb trails all over the internet anyway.

search == tracked id
google privacy policy deficiencies

damn useful tool. but you leave breadcrumb trails all over the internet anyway.

They can probably alleviate some finacial pressure by selling the information orkut gathers to their NSA and other fed buddies..

I forgot to mention that I do understand to some extent why people like google, and when I use it myself I simply use this proxy, so that at least I can keep some of my privacy.

Given Google Inc's collecting of obscene amounts of information about each user, and their refusal to give any reason why or tell anyone what they are doing with it, their hiring of government spooks, etc..

I don't like the idea of Yahoo! storing all this data in the first place. How do I know that they won't sell this data to marketers? (Most privacy policies are bullshit.) Or give it to government officials looking for terrorists and political opponents and the such?

Yeah, if Yahoo starts doing all this we might end up with another google.

about a search engine who can't even spell their name correctly: google isn't googol

In fact take a look at Google-Watch. May enlighten some of the /.'s around here.

| I'm always going to Wikipedia -- you can't
| really avoid them, not if you use Google at all.

Hmm. Google's cool people, right? With a lot of hardware?

Not necessarily so. Although I use google and find them to be the best search engine available (with many cool features and tools), the site linked to previously does bring up some issues of concern.

google broken? (www.google-watch.org)

"... unique ID for each page stored as ansi c, 4 bytes on Linux system (~4yo) gives theoretical limit of 4.2 billion pages. ..."

discusses the move to 5 bytes and suggests how this move may be the cause of weird search results on google searchs this year - of course the other reason my be google foiling search cue jumpers.

google watch blogometer

Daniel Brandt, is that you?

I didn't know you had a Slashdot account!

http://www.google-watch.org

HTTP headers can't help you if the user agent at the other end of the socket impersonates IE, Netscape, or whatever...

You wanna be devious?...

Imbed your webpage start page on a 'banner ad'. It'll get filtered out by 'clueless' people using ad-blockers. This WILL NOT stop Net savvy individuals who want to access your content.

GIVE IT UP!!!

YOU *CANNOT* STOP CLIENT-SIDE FILTERING OF UNENCRYPTED CONTENT OF *ANY* SORT!!!....NOT EVEN GOOGLE CAN STOP IT!!!

Google now is in quite desperate situation: their PageRank's are undermined by link spammers and bloggers, Yahoo! and Microsoft are actively developing their own search technologies and buy other companies

Google also swallows its small competitors and thinks of personalizing searches, essentially giving RIP to its PageRank(tm) technology.

What keeps Google afloat nowadays is just its name.

1. Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming he wants to increase traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washing

(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...).

Investing in Google is a good bet, because they have zero scruples when it comes to making money. Their Adwords program pushes illegal opiates. The FDA doesn't care, the big pharmaceutical companies only care that many of the prescription drugs are coming from outside the U.S., and it seems that only Britain cares -- advertising drugs to the public in Britain is not allowed, so Google screens them out for their UK engine.

Since Google is broken at the moment. I'll see if their search technology can continue to scale...

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.

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.

The counts have been broken for the last five weeks. A count for the word "the" produced fairly consistent results until then of about 3.4 billion. Then it shifted five weeks ago to 5.2 billion. Lately it has been under 2 billion. Now it's just over 2 billion.

Webmasters who have various directories and know exactly how many pages are in each directory, began noticing five weeks ago that Google was reporting approximately twice the number of pages in each directory than have ever existed in that directory. Prior to five weeks ago, Google used to be fairly close to the actual number (assuming that you get a full crawl).

GoogleWatch speculates on the reason why Google has been behaving strangely ever since it stopped doing the traditional deep crawl once per month. The last standard deep crawl was in April but it wasn't used -- Google threw out this data (by their own admission) and reverted to earlier data. The speculative piece was written last June.

Since it was written, Google has started showing "supplemental results" on many searches. It looks like they are running a parallel index. Why would they do this? All the problems Google has been having, along with the supplemental index, seem to support GoogleWatch's theory.

If however, you are like most people, and you do draw a line between public and private information about yourself, then Google's innovative strategies combined with its overwhelming market share make it a privacy time bomb just waiting to explode. If Microsoft were behind Google, much of the world would be up in arms (Remember NT's supposed NSA Backdoor?) No so with Google. Strangely, perhaps because Google actually works pretty well and isn't laced with bugs that allow viruses to damage your home computer, no one makes a fuss.

In the recent years the public has sometimes been shocked to learn about some of the side effects that our technological progress has brought. Organizations combining data from multiple databases (for 'marketing' purposes) and technologies such as license plate recognition make possible a 'technical utopia' that Big Brother could only have dreamed about.

This combined with the hightened fear of terrorism and the corresponding (over-)reaction by governments has led to a information gathering infrastructure that is unique in world history. In the post 9/11 world there has been increasing pressure from the American government on organizations and companies (from your local library to European airlines) to forward all types to information to 'the authorities'. Google is most likely just one more intelligence source, though in all probablilty a highly valuable one, in the war against terrorism.

Suspicions that Google has 'ties' with the NSA was published in Slashdot (Should You Fear Google?) last Febuary. After reading some of the comments associated with that article, one begins to wonder if Goggle is just the Internet arm of the Echelon project.

While each tenticle pulling at our privacy is relatively harmless by itself, the combined affect of the multiple attacks on our personal privacy is large and disturbing. Worse still, is that we have only ourselves blame. Our very own democratic governments encourage and protect the individuals and organizations that are attempting to implement these policies. And largely because of own our ignorance and apathy, we don't raise our voices against it.

It's like comparing the public's reaction to a government proposal to mandate the installation of ID chips in its citizens, which causes a massive outcry, vs. parents desire to install the same chips in their children, because of their fear of abductions. The end result may be the same, but in the second case we did it to ourselves.

I guess the moral is that we should just be a bit more aware of what we're doing, and a bit more willing to say 'no'. While the current western decomcratic governments probably do 'have our best interests at heart', what happens when some unsavory character sells or gives this information to our enemies, or worse our government is no longer domocratic and becomes our enemy?

And then there's your comment about innovation. Perhaps you should remove the blindfolds from your eyes and have a look at Google Labs. They have all kinds of cool things going on there.

And the final straw is when you mention Google Watch as a source of information. Google Watch is so full of misinformation and lies that it is disgusting. It was started because some guy didn't get his page ranked highly enough, and he decided to attack Google. Just look at the text called "PageRank: Google's original sin". He is basically bashing Google for one of its greatest features. Why? Because he wasn't highly ranked. Also look at the yellow box at the top of the page, saying that Google unfairly pushed down its "competitor" SearchKing on the search results.

The fact is that SearchKing is not a competitor. SearchKing is, in fact, a company which tries to artificially increase a page's PageRank. When Google updated its engine and SearchKing was defeated, SearchKing tried to sue. Funny, that. Some of the worst scum of the Internet is suing someone for doing what's best for everyone...

Scroll further down on the page to see an picture of Bill Gates and the Google founders, seemingly comparing Microsoft's dirty tactics in taking over the browser market by adding MSIE to their operating system, to Google's growth based purely on its usefulness as a service.

Further, look at the "Google as Big Brother", text, where more lies are spread. The nine points are mostly strawman arguments. It is obviously that the disgruntled site owner tried to come up with something - anything - to get more contents on his anti-Google page. I could post the list of points and explain exactly why they are nonsense, but it has been done so many times before.

One point that stands out is "Google's toolbar is spyware". This is a huge lie. It is pure deception. In fact, Google should sue this foolish man. Google clearly explains how the toolbar works when you install it, and there's even a huge warning about it before you enable the PageRank bar. Not only that, but he brings up the Alexa search bar nonsense, which clearly shows his true intent: Lying and deceiving.

Then there's this nice argument: "Google's cache is illegal because, uh, because it must be illegal!" Yes, he's basically saying that Google Cache is illegal because it is illegal. But he is not saying why it is supposedly illegal.

He then proceeds to talk about how Google is not "your" friend, although he really means that Google is not the friend of people who try to artificially increase their PageRank. You see, he is just repeating his rabid nonsense about how Google is terrible because it deals with abuse.

Bottom line: Here we have an individual with an agenda. His obscure site wasn't ranked highly enough so he set out on a quest of personal vendetta. With lies, deception and FUD he tries to ruin Google but ends up looking the fool that he is.

I am not defending Google at all costs here, but you are clearly paranoid and delusional, and need a dose of reality. How exactly is Google being huge because it is the best alternative to a huge number of users a bad thing? Google is able to exist purely on its own technical merit, and does not have to resort to anti-competitive practice.

And then there's your comment about innovation. Perhaps you should remove the blindfolds from your eyes and have a look at Google Labs. They have all kinds of cool things going on there.

And the final straw is when you mention Google Watch as a source of information. Google Watch is so full of misinformation and lies that it is disgusting. It was started because some guy didn't get his page ranked highly enough, and he decided to attack Google. Just look at the text called "PageRank: Google's original sin". He is basically bashing Google for one of its greatest features. Why? Because he wasn't highly ranked. Also look at the yellow box at the top of the page, saying that Google unfairly pushed down its "competitor" SearchKing on the search results.

The fact is that SearchKing is not a competitor. SearchKing is, in fact, a company which tries to artificially increase a page's PageRank. When Google updated its engine and SearchKing was defeated, SearchKing tried to sue. Funny, that. Some of the worst scum of the Internet is suing someone for doing what's best for everyone...

Scroll further down on the page to see an picture of Bill Gates and the Google founders, seemingly comparing Microsoft's dirty tactics in taking over the browser market by adding MSIE to their operating system, to Google's growth based purely on its usefulness as a service.

Further, look at the "Google as Big Brother", text, where more lies are spread. The nine points are mostly strawman arguments. It is obviously that the disgruntled site owner tried to come up with something - anything - to get more contents on his anti-Google page. I could post the list of points and explain exactly why they are nonsense, but it has been done so many times before.

One point that stands out is "Google's toolbar is spyware". This is a huge lie. It is pure deception. In fact, Google should sue this foolish man. Google clearly explains how the toolbar works when you install it, and there's even a huge warning about it before you enable the PageRank bar. Not only that, but he brings up the Alexa search bar nonsense, which clearly shows his true intent: Lying and deceiving.

Then there's this nice argument: "Google's cache is illegal because, uh, because it must be illegal!" Yes, he's basically saying that Google Cache is illegal because it is illegal. But he is not saying why it is supposedly illegal.

He then proceeds to talk about how Google is not "your" friend, although he really means that Google is not the friend of people who try to artificially increase their PageRank. You see, he is just repeating his rabid nonsense about how Google is terrible because it deals with abuse.

Bottom line: Here we have an individual with an agenda. His obscure site wasn't ranked highly enough so he set out on a quest of personal vendetta. With lies, deception and FUD he tries to ruin Google but ends up looking the fool that he is.

I am not defending Google at all costs here, but you are clearly paranoid and delusional, and need a dose of reality. How exactly is Google being huge because it is the best alternative to a huge number of users a bad thing? Google is able to exist purely on its own technical merit, and does not have to resort to anti-competitive practice.

And then there's your comment about innovation. Perhaps you should remove the blindfolds from your eyes and have a look at Google Labs. They have all kinds of cool things going on there.

And the final straw is when you mention Google Watch as a source of information. Google Watch is so full of misinformation and lies that it is disgusting. It was started because some guy didn't get his page ranked highly enough, and he decided to attack Google. Just look at the text called "PageRank: Google's original sin". He is basically bashing Google for one of its greatest features. Why? Because he wasn't highly ranked. Also look at the yellow box at the top of the page, saying that Google unfairly pushed down its "competitor" SearchKing on the search results.

The fact is that SearchKing is not a competitor. SearchKing is, in fact, a company which tries to artificially increase a page's PageRank. When Google updated its engine and SearchKing was defeated, SearchKing tried to sue. Funny, that. Some of the worst scum of the Internet is suing someone for doing what's best for everyone...

Scroll further down on the page to see an picture of Bill Gates and the Google founders, seemingly comparing Microsoft's dirty tactics in taking over the browser market by adding MSIE to their operating system, to Google's growth based purely on its usefulness as a service.

Further, look at the "Google as Big Brother", text, where more lies are spread. The nine points are mostly strawman arguments. It is obviously that the disgruntled site owner tried to come up with something - anything - to get more contents on his anti-Google page. I could post the list of points and explain exactly why they are nonsense, but it has been done so many times before.

One point that stands out is "Google's toolbar is spyware". This is a huge lie. It is pure deception. In fact, Google should sue this foolish man. Google clearly explains how the toolbar works when you install it, and there's even a huge warning about it before you enable the PageRank bar. Not only that, but he brings up the Alexa search bar nonsense, which clearly shows his true intent: Lying and deceiving.

Then there's this nice argument: "Google's cache is illegal because, uh, because it must be illegal!" Yes, he's basically saying that Google Cache is illegal because it is illegal. But he is not saying why it is supposedly illegal.

He then proceeds to talk about how Google is not "your" friend, although he really means that Google is not the friend of people who try to artificially increase their PageRank. You see, he is just repeating his rabid nonsense about how Google is terrible because it deals with abuse.

Bottom line: Here we have an individual with an agenda. His obscure site wasn't ranked highly enough so he set out on a quest of personal vendetta. With lies, deception and FUD he tries to ruin Google but ends up looking the fool that he is.

I am not defending Google at all costs here, but you are clearly paranoid and delusional, and need a dose of reality. How exactly is Google being huge because it is the best alternative to a huge number of users a bad thing? Google is able to exist purely on its own technical merit, and does not have to resort to anti-competitive practice.

...Except that these are the same people behind NameBase. At any rate, it's interesting.

Google's domination of the search engine space has created a huge, central tracking point for ALL sorts of Internet activity. This sort of thing is inherently dangerous. If you are committed to a competitive marketplace, don't permanently settle on a single vendor for anything. That sort of behavior gave us the Microsoft/Cisco/Intel hegemony. Don't expect real innovation to come from those whose fortunes are only enhanced by maintaining the status quo. Be sure to check out Google Watch

Wow you are quite an avid google supporter.

Come on, we have all read about the dangers of PageRank. Search Slashdot's archives to refresh...Quite frankly, google isn't as good as it once was. Its about as useful as Alta Vista was in 1996.

My only point is PageRank for the most part sucks, and there are better ways of organizing searches.Here is a good site which discusses why PageRank is not God's gift to mankind.

Slashdot seems to be very pro-Google, and I admit to using their search the majority of the time as well, but everyone should at least take a glance at google watch. Of most interest is the privacy section. If any other site were to track the stuff Google does, /. would be up in arms protesting.

"Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly -- Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual."

Please note, this isn't a troll, and I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat (maybe I should?). Imagine the following scenario: a bomb goes off in the US. By tracing searches for "anarchist cookbook" to zipcodes within the area of the bomb blast, the FBI could have access to information that makes TIA look like a better alternative.

Maybe this isn't such a good feature after all...

Server Error

The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.

If the problem persists, please mail google@google.com and mention this error message and the query that caused it.

Nice job. Not only does Google invade your privacy, it also fails to search. Why are people using this piece of crap instead of better search engines?

I second that. One site to look at: Google-Watch.com

Google needs some serious competition, as they right now are far ahead of the pack. However, Microsoft is evil, we all know that, and Google has made some not-so-nice decisions as of late (see Google watch).

Hopefully, it won't be long before a Free Software search engine will enter the scene.

"some people"? It's one guy, and the guy is a nutcase. He's upset that his own site namebase.org isn't ranked as well as he wants, so he came up with a list of conspiratorial complaints. I read his complaints against google, and frankly they sound like tin-foil hat ravings. Then I looked at namebase.org and found that tin-foil hat ravings are not unusual from him. He's a loon.

I think google's great, but just to counter the usual fan boy posts here is a link to some people who don't think so:google-watch

... but I wouldn't trust their search engine even if I compared it to other search engines and saw its results were reasonable. The ranking algorithm of a search engine is always a heuristic of some kind, where even changing one of many coefficients by 1% can change the search results for some particular topic, so it's close to impossible to tell if the results returned for some particular search are biased because the authors wanted it this way, or if it's just an accident. There is actually no control over the different search engines (of course the ranking algorithm is a secret), and with people having objections to google (google-watch), I fear to even think what could be lurking inside a search engine owned (not 0wn3d) by m$.

But doesn't the cookie scare you? I find it terrifying to think that google has a database of every ip and all the searches performed from that IP, and that's collected even without cookies that never expire. Remember that google is a private corporation, and is likely to cow to any request for information by a law enforcement officer. I'm sure it won't be too long til all of this is linked straight into TIA. Check out Google Watch for more info.

some already regard Google as the evil empire.

I dunno, perpetual cookies which can tie your browser to a record of everything you search for is a worrying thing. Say the law changes a little bit.. DHS just needs to threaten Google legally, make them turn over the IPs of everyone who searched for the Anarchists Cookbook, for example, and then make some raids and your computer will agree with them that you searched for it, and hey presto, 25-to-life.

He would prefer that searches for, say, "Oliver North", turn up this, rather than this.

Quoting Brandt quoting himself: Regarding his opposition to Google's hegemony, Brandt says, "It feels like the right thing to do. It's the cyber equivalent of my draft resistance days." (see U.S. v. Brandt, 435 F2d 324, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, Dec. 4, 1970)

<snip>

1. Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf. Yes, it reads your cookie too, and sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you phone home. Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming he wants to increase traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

Google records everything they can:

For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

So Google is going to stop indexing blogs along with all other web pages in order to reduce worthless hits to queries. Why should this be such a big deal?

I am looking through the posts here and can't get over the obvious power that Google is now exerting over the Web. Other posters have all sorts of tips and tricks for trying to get Google's attention or manipulate it when necessary. The reason they have put in the time and effor to do so is that web sites that don't get picked up by Google just don't get visited.

A few months ago someone posted and mentioned Google-Watch.org This site is worth a visit. Since Google has become so many web users' default search page, Google now wields so much power that they are bending the web around them to suit their own corporate purposes. There are rumours of Microsoft buying Google. You want a frightening monopoly scenario? Try combining a desktop OS monopoly with the cookie-based records of millions of web users and Microsoft's well-known penchant for hyper-aggressive marketing and you have a potentially lethal Force on the web. A friend of mine was running an improperly-registered version of MS Office and following an upgrade of Internet Explorer, his MS Office was disabled. Of course, when I run Windows Update on a machine, I am assured that MS is not collecting any information about that system. Sure.

Who doesn't believe that this change in Google's policy will leave blogging unaffected? Obviously many bloggers enjoy having their content show up on Google and now that is being dampened. What is next from the almighty Google? What other form of web content will they choose to dump into the Internet's equivalent of Siberia?

All of this makes me wonder if there isn't some latent human tendency to put all power into one entity. Surely Linux users, many of whom are bloggers and serious Google users, should see there is tremendous danger in continuing to allow Google to exert so much power over the Web.

Google-watch.org is greater

Google, while technically advanced and lacking in intrusive ads, appears to have slowly drifted away from what most people would consider fair and impartial behaviour as it has grown in size. To take a recent example they have been refusing to index many non-corporate news sites in Google News, while at the same time deciding to start indexing press releases on the websites of major corporations.

While the crack down on independent news sites may have been unrelated to the invasion of Iraq it has certainly led some to speculate that they are under pressure not to index those who are not cheerleading the war. This is all before you get to the privacy issue and of course the allegations that one of their employees used to work for the NSA.

PageRank can also be extremely annoying if you are looking for information on an unpopular subject that is similar to a much more popular one. The ability to disable PageRank of even to invert it, to show the results with the least links to them first, would improve things greatly. It may be that the lowest common denominator effects of PageRank are all too welcome for some people.

Search engines are a critical part of the present web infrastructure and a website is of little value if no one can find it. In the long term it would be of great benefit to all if Google could be replaced by with some sort of distributed search facility with no centralised control, where the individual user would have full control of the process.

Google, while technically advanced and lacking in intrusive ads, appears to have slowly drifted away from what most people would consider fair and impartial behaviour as it has grown in size. To take a recent example they have been refusing to index many non-corporate news sites in Google News, while at the same time deciding to start indexing press releases on the websites of major corporations.

While the crack down on independent news sites may have been unrelated to the invasion of Iraq it has certainly led some to speculate that they are under pressure not to index those who are not cheerleading the war. This is all before you get to the privacy issue and of course the allegations that one of their employees used to work for the NSA.

PageRank can also be extremely annoying if you are looking for information on an unpopular subject that is similar to a much more popular one. The ability to disable PageRank of even to invert it, to show the results with the least links to them first, would improve things greatly. It may be that the lowest common denominator effects of PageRank are all too welcome for some people.

Search engines are a critical part of the present web infrastructure and a website is of little value if no one can find it. In the long term it would be of great benefit to all if Google could be replaced by with some sort of distributed search facility with no centralised control, where the individual user would have full control of the process.

Sign up at google.com if you want to bitch and moan about "having your privacy invaded."

granted, we had already this article and then there was playing with google, and don't forget why you should fear google .

Me, i'm all in favour of googlewatch. But, on the other hand, i might just be paranoid.... Tinfoil hat, anyone? But big companies online seem as much worth paying attention to as big corporations in the brick market, so i see this as one to pay attention to, and i really liked it when companies started ditching google. Yay for small webworks!!!

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

There have been various attempts by Fundamentally Clueless People to try to get Google regulated by Somebody, Anybody, Especially the Government, preferably by the FTC (because Google is alleged to be essentially a public utility) or at least to get the Ralph Nader folks turned on to Google-Bashing. After all, if Google claims to try to rank the most interesting and relevant topics high in its list, and you're not one of them, that's Just Not Fair! , and at least some arguments from Brandt or people like him want the government to force Google to rank things fairly. Well, duh! The reason everybody uses Google instead of some of its competitors is *precisely* because it usually does a really good job of finding the things everybody is looking for, as opposed to Displaying items 1-10 of the 13122319084324 web pages matching your search in no particularly useful order, and covers a reasonable fraction of the material on the web. The beauty of open technologies like the web is that if you don't like the pagerank, you can go make one of your own; instead of convincing the government Google to change its search order to work the way you want it to, you can just as well run your own search engine or convince your favorite Feds to run their own Politically Correct Search Engine. Meanwhile, if they mess up Google too badly, we'll have to go find something else anyway, and if some liberal-intentioned luser convinces the Feds to mess up all the US search engines, we'll use one from somewhere else, but that's degrading the value of Google for the whole world community, while running your own competitor engine is potentially very valuable to the world (if you're good at it, either as a standalone site or an additional-searches site), or at least neutral.

An entirely different attempt to control Google was the Search King lawsuit. (Slashdot story, LawMeme article.) Unlike Brandt, who's a clueless whiny-liberal type who knows fairness better than you do, Search King was merely greedy, a parasite that tries to sell people a service of improving their Google ranking and then whined because Google downrates sites that try to manipulate their rankings so that their boring pages show up before more genuinely interesting pages. (Of course, Google _will_ be happy to provide you a sponsored-listing ad entry if you pay them, but those are at least visually distinguishable.)

This topic and another topic both appeared on the slashdot page today. The first wants to indict Google as Big Brother. The second suggests we can sue companies who try to spy on us discreetly. Coincidence... or foreshadowing?