Slashdot Mirror
Should you Fear Google?
Ponty writes "Google-watch.com is presenting a list of nine complaints about (almost) everybody's favorite search engine. Some of the salient fears are "Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save." and "Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency." The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough."
Yes. I changed the text, but the URL points to Tom's hardware. Ha!
Google is a pretty public thing. Now, consider what sort of capabilities the NSA/echelon really has, considering they've been working on this sort of technology for years.
"Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save." and "Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency." The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough.
Should you fear Google? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every search, and all other search engines must cease their operations.
Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, the old medical joke applies:
Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!
Doctor: Don't do that, then.
Check back later...
How ironic that you fail it yourself?
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
I guess I don't see what the big deal is. If you don't want cookies, don't accept them. If you don't like their published policies for the toolbar, don't install it. If you don't want them accessing your IP, you should be surfing through an anonymizer. If you don't like that they record your searches... then don't use a search engine. Nothing that google does is hidden, malicious, or surprising, and all of it is avoidable.
I've had this sig for three days.
You mean... somebody at google used to work for the dreaded NSA?!?!!
;)
Oh, the humanity...
That would be like, say, using Slashdot to post stories after stories that are highly critical of Microsoft.
Oh, wait... Never mind...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
...until they kick in your door and drag you off to their headquarters and interrogate you within an inch of your life.
But seriously, if you're one of those people who is always paranoid that someone is watching you, just imagine how boring that poor person's life must be.
At this point I've decided that even if there are people assigned to watch me, I feel more sorry for them than I would for myself.
Suppose you're willing to wager your privacy on Google. OK, fair bet... but you are also betting that Google will never be sold to the likes of AOL or Microsoft or Wal*Mart or any other MegaEvil Corp.
Google deserves your nomination
for Big Brother of the Year
Nominations accepted here during February 2003 only
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 deserves your nomination for corporate Big Brother of the Year.
Google Watch home page
I think paranoia is not an extreme reaction, because although Google has been exemplary in their behavior so far, such a centralization of information will, one day, become a target for malicious groups.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
And George Washingon used to work for the British! The whole revolutionary war was really engineered by the British for some nafarious reason we've yet to discover.
Especially in this day and age, I think it should suprise no one that people change jobs periodically. Doesn't mean that they're really working for their first employer at the costs of their current one.
Narrative
I get the strangest feeling that the next story posted is going to be about processors or something, maybe from Toms Hardware......
Wierd...
"If A equals success, then the formua is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut" - A Einstein.
I'm not too knowledgable on these things, so if this is a stupid question, forgive me. Are there any data-collecting methods listed in the link that cannot be easily thwarted by clearing your cache regularly?
If not, then what's the problem?
1. So disallow cookies! It works fine with out them.
2. Google uses that statistical information to improve thier search algorithems.
3. What are they talking about?
4. Would you share the reason why your search engine is 100X better than the next runner up?
5. That is the DUMBEST reason ever
6. The Google toolbar TELLS you it is spyware, multiple times, and gives you the option of NOT participating.
7. The Google cache is just as illegal as the cache you have of the site on your computer. Except that they are using THIER bandwidth to provide a service, for FREE.
8. Google is the best search engine out there, come up with something better and someone will make fun of that.
9. Ok, maybe THIS is the dumbest reason ever. Most paranoid too.
--sig fault--
So they set up this site entirely on analysing google from the top down? Is this site run by scientologists?
Leave google alone!
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Man.. I've had utmost trusts for Google so far...
I guess I better think twice before using google from now on
buffering...
MySQL can't handle the same volume. Yeah it can handle just about anything I would ever need a database for, but Jesus christ man, once you get into CATALOGING THE WHOLE FUCKING INTERNET you might as well go for something a little more upscale.
Now we can't use a Google cache to view the slashdotted page. Doubt this is what they had in mind when they did that.
.:diatonic:.
We have tens of thousands of these pages indexed in Google. If you don't spend time understanding how the search engines work, you can forget about attracting any serious traffic to your site.
Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah, I remember now: From every marketroid who ever got in a tizzy because his web site wasn't appearing at the top of the list the way the highly paid search engine gaming conslutant promised it would.
Well just look at this Google v NSA how do we know that in fact Google isn't PART of the NSA! Oh yes its true, the voices tell me so. They patent the technology, they have key employees already there. Its like the Special Services, you know those people who are ex-Marines but now aren't "officially" part of the US military because its secret.
Oh yes, Google is the Special Ops division of the NSA. Its true I tell you its true.
Brought to you by the same people who saw Black UN Helicopters after the Oklahoma bombing.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If there's anything worse than a corporation that doesn't hide it's troubling/unethical behaviour, it's a knee-jerk reactionary website where disparate characteristics are conveniently grouped together, very tightly, in the desperate hope that they will make sense to someone perhaps less paranoid (or more) than the author.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
1. They have no policy on anything.
2. We don't know who they are.
3. They don't provide any contact details.
4. Their home page contains (ominous music) "no data".
5. erm.
6. that's it.
when they get cornered no ?
not that iam one to point fingers
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name
pop quiz: List the top ten sites that you cannot live without? I bet google is on it if not in position 1.
Some of the points on the list are double edged swords, it records everything it can, and it retains it forever, I know the articles means records everything about our usage etc, but the flip side is,
1) how often has it saved your ass when you couldn't remember the bloody syntax for a correlated sub query on Oracle,
2)Someone said go to www.soontobeslashdotted.com and you find that it is down...
arrange the words cake, eat, can't have, you, and, it & your into a well known phrase
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
No cache!
The NSA must have removed it!
Another dupe? Anyway, Aaron Swartz gave good commentary in his weblog here. It's got some linkage. Quote from Enemy of the State: "Well whose monitoring the monitors?"
Gotta do some monitoring myself, see ya!
The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me
And thus fits Slashdot like a glove.
"The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough."
*man in suit/sunglasses waves hand in front of your face*
"You are paranoid enough"
"You can go about your business"
I am paranoid enough, I'll go about my business.
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
I'm getting nowhere trying to access the site. Is it the same list from Privicy International? It too is nine items long. You can read it here through the google cache no less :)
when i do a search for lollita preteen pussy or something worse (where is that carnavor keyword list....), they could be tracking my ip?
hmm, not like it matters, doing a clear text search over an insecure network using a clear text protocal, who couldn't be watching me?
--not so AC
/me goes and grabs his tin-foil hat.
These people can't be serious, can they?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
.....
<snip>
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer [...] sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar
</snip>
Seems to me it wouldn't be a very good search tool if it _didn't_ send the query to google
I mean, it archives your website!! (unless you add headers or robots.txt directives telling it otherwise)
It sets a cookie!! (unless you don't accept the cookie)
It records searches and user inquiries!! There's no possible use for this. Except perhaps creating a record of searches which were clearly successful, and those that were not, so as to improve the service.
It records all data infinitely!! Again, there's NO possible legitimate and useful application for this, except the improvement of the service. Google must know this: improvements will not be tolerated!
They hire spooks Everybody knows that once you've worked for the NSA you've undergone mental hypnotraining that turns you into an evil government controlled assassin. seriously!
Google's toolbar is spyware! Assuming of course by spyware you mean 'software that you voluntarily and deliberately use, with the full knowledge that you're giving data back to google'
Google controls the results that google gives! Imagine that, the nerve of a search engine service giving RESULTS based on unspecified criteria. Surely they should open their precise ranking algorithm to the public. After all, nobody would steal it and create a knockoff if they had such knowledge, now would they?
In short folks, google must be stopped! hmmm... now where did my medication go again....
...but people still bug him with query's.
Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.
hey, at least theres something interesting in the page. i always thought some of the MS products update themself aswell.
but, does anyone have a google cache link for this? :)
I used to trust google implicitly. I signed over power of attorney to google, I trusted google to change the batteries in my smoke detectors and I asked google to eliminate that burnt toast smell in my house.
Trolling is a art,
what a load of horse manure, if your surfing habits are so embarassing and discusting that you don't want google to know then what do you do when another family member or friend or neighbor walks in to your computer room or office, (press the reset button) so they can not see the pr0n or other rubbish you are "googleing"
get a life you fscking FREAKS!!!
I thought that I figured the easy way around having Google's spy on me...
But this damn aluminum foil around my mouse is causing havoc with my web surfing!
I notice, too, that I dropped my pen on the floor.
WILL THIS NEVER END????
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
There are plenty of other competitors out there for your searching. Nothing forces anyone to use Google, and the people that don't like how they run their business should go elsewhere. They don't owe anything to anyone. Despite what some people would claim, Google is far from a monopoly.
YHBT.
At least with google we have free access to most of the data and we know about it...
My problem is with Lexis-Nexis. They warehouse/index EVERYTHING.... including web pages, usenet, court cases, public records (marriage/divorce/births/deaths/city laws and codes)
I wouldnt be surprised if the CIA/NSA/FBI/whatever the new KGB has become/M6 use their services....
You say that google is tracking everything I say or do. Damn there went all my plans to rule the world. BWWWAAAHAHAHAHAHA! *cough*
As my evil plans have been spoiled I guess I go back to eating day old pizza and watching Star Trek reruns.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
in china google is feared ;p
In short: what a load of bullshit.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
icann see modding folks DOWn for whining, butt deletion? that's whoreabull. tell 'em robbIE.
I *knew* there was another reason I always use AltaVista.
Now, this doesn't necessarily obviate his concerns, but Brandt is a veteran conspiracy-watcher whose obsessions include mind-control projects and secret cults amongst the elite -- and this tendency to indulge in, as Wm. Gibson would put it, "apophenia" is certainly likely to color his view of Google.
To my eye, his concerns display a kind of parochial paranoia: obviously, we're all aware of the uses and limitations of cookies, none of us want to see the cache (or the Wayback Machine) go away, and his comments about Google's "monopoly" and the "[y]oung, stupid script kiddies" who "think Google is 'way kool'" are just inexplicable.
Telling, I think, is his concern about Google having a former NSA developer on staff -- I've worked with a fairly large number of former spooks from the NSA, CIA and civilian contractors, and to suggest that having the NSA on your resume makes you some kind of Coder in Black is absurd. But, of course, YMMV.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Wasn't this already covered in this article?
Seems to me that Mr. Brandt is a whining crybaby. The main thrust of his argument (which is why it's so easily countered) is that he constantly compares Google to a public utility. (Which is absurd - see my response to him here)
Mr Brandt is (at best) naieve, and (at worst) a troll. Until he comes up with a more logical argument, don't give him any consideration.
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.
exploit the system, YOU GET BURNED!!!!
I hate websites that thing the only thing that matters is how well they can exploit search engines and care little about content.
You abuse it, you loose it.
I thought conspiracy theories were left behind in the 80's along with Limahl and Ted Danson. But I see they're still breathing, and even making slashdot news.
I don't know if anyone but the kooks at google-watch takes stuff like this serious, but it still makes me angry. A cookie... uuuh - now there's some scary echelon big brother shit. A COOKIE for gods sake. C'mon - I've seen better kooks on usenet.
Wasn't this the same guy who complained because a search for "Richard Nixon" didn't bring you anywhere near his namebase.org website? Some people just like to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Whay are you putting down MySQL? Just ad hominem attacking MySQL without any substance.
I think you are astroturfing for M$.
Thats why reason why I use google. I can find stuff on cache that has gone away. Its nice to be able to reference things from a long time ago. I mean legacy information should still be supported as the internet grows.
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."
Umm.. yeah, dumbass.. I can do the same by accessing my Apache logs and further more have a script that would tell me where in the world you're accessing my page from.. please get a clue.. then complain.. tks
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
If the government had spooks working at google as spooks, do you think that they would have traces of ever being a government employee in their history? Unless, they would know that a spook would not have a government employment history in their backround, so they would put government employment that in their history. Unless,..... this gives me a headache, forget it.
Fight Spammers!
Ahh, if we care about privacy we should drop out of society. Great philosophy. How is Uncle Ashcroft doing by the way? Does he visit you much?
"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."
When reading something like this, I look for that one unsupported claim or flaw in logic that allows me to throw the entire theory out and never worry about it again. So, I suppose it's left as an exercise for the reader to determine exactly why they chose to honesty in their privacy policy because of the Alexa debacle and not because of something like, say, that they have no ulterior motive?
These "complaints" are totally bogus paranoia in my opinion.
Let's take them one-by-one:
1. Google's immortal cookie : they were the first to do this. Doesn't that make them a trend-setter? I don't even see why this is bad. All sites are doing it now, because they realized it makes sense. Users hate to be burdened with preferences and new cookies all the time. As the Ronco TV-oven ad says : "Set it, and forget it".
2. Google records everything they can : So do all companies. Data is their business. They would be crippling themselves *not* to save all the data. It's how they improve their searches, with, for example, geolocation-based delivery. Isn't it great that most of your search results are in your home language?! That's what they can do by gathering info.
3. Google retains all data indefinitely : Good for them! Most companies can't afford to do this, but clearly Google has thin enough data and big enough RAID arrays that they can. I'm sure they'll put in place a "data retention" policy if they ever need to, but it sounds like they are scaling just fine with the price of storage dropping, and the rate they are growing. I mean, seriously, this argument hardly presents a good reason to throw data away. Because "uh, it's bad for big brother and good for us to have data thrown away"? Gimme a break.
4. Google won't say why they need this data : Pleading the 5th doesn't make a man guilty, as much as paranoids would like you to think. You know they use it at least for two things: IP-based geolocation information, and tracking their own usage levels, so they can better scale their server farms, and purchase only the appropriate bandwidth, so they don't waste money. That's called "being a prudent business".
5. Google hires spooks : Of course they want people with security clearance! All companies that are trying to be a player in the government sector need employees with security clearance, because the government is a tough customer. You can't blame Google for wanting government contracts. They represent long-term big-money. That's what every company (especially these days) is striving for. If they hire former "spooks" (the word-choice even betrays these guys as ultra-paranoid), that's a quick way to get on the government's good-side.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware : don't you think they know that if they ever do anything bad, hax0rs will be all up in their face revealing their scandal? Google prides itself on a clean user-experience. If they don't prompt you for updates, it's because they don't want to bother you. I agree, it might be nice to have a checkbox option somewhere for those curious-types to enable a "notification-of-new-version" feature, however.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal : if search-engines were "opt-in" for webmasters, we wouldn't have any search-engines. I mean, seriously, are these people's suggestions for real, or is this a hoax?! Also, I expect (although don't know for sure) that Google is quite good about responding to requests for purging cached content. I'll bet when those webmasters call up Google and say "please clear all records of this page", Google probably responds. If not, they should.
8. Google is not your friend : Look, I'm not "young, stupid script kiddie", that's for sure. But I don't understand why Google has to be "accountable". Or penalized for having become the internet's ubiquitous search-engine. They provide the best results over-all. If people try to abuse the "semi-secret" algorithm, then they *should* get knocked back down in the rankings. This isn't a battle between search-engines and webmasters for Google. It's about providing the best results, so they can continue to drum up business. When are you people going to realize that success doesn't *always* corrupt?
9. Google is a privacy time-bomb : I don't even understand this one. Sounds like an ad for Google to me, rather than a rebuke.
-Will
Taco, really... you're duping your own stories now.
Not precisely a dupe, but we've seen stories about this moron before. No news here.
This is just a guess, I have nothing to do with Google.
If I recall correctly, Google did advertise for folk with _security clearance_.
One of Google's revenue streams is the sale and support (and operation?) of the Google search technology for private use - such as on a large Intranet.
Somebody who _might_ have a large Intranet, that _might_ wish to use the best search technology around is the US Government.
And if they wanted Google people to manage it, they would need to be security cleared, or at least they would in a similar situation in the UK.
So, um, exactly what point are you trying to make? You do know that Reefer Madness wasn't produced by some well-meaning, but paranoid citizen, don't you?
...
Oh, wait. That was /. Never mind.
I've submitted my webpage 10x to google, yahoo, ... and it's not a common name or like anything else. Yet I do a search, no link on the first 5 pages (I give up after that).
I love the hypocrisy. Geeks whine about Total Information Awareness, but gleefully dismiss any privacy concerns when the subject is painted in goofy clown colors and provides a useful service. So I guess Ashcroft really just needs to wrap TIA in a neat-o open source project and the sheep will happily trot off to their slaughter.
I take these guys about as seriously at people who believe tha the earth is flat, and wear tin-foil hats.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
If you think it's bad to read your old newsgroup post from 10-20 years ago, think about the search terms you've typed in over the same period of time. And that is information you never thought would be made public.
It's very simple to correlate search request to a person. Most people will search for their own email, name, phone number, address, etc. to find out what's available on the net. If there is a persistent cookie, then all your search request can be tied together. And blocking cookies may not help if you have a static dedicated IP. Google saves every little bit of information they can,.. forever...
There is no time limit for them to destroy this data.
There is no way you can write them and ask them to delete your records.
There is no way to ensure your information won't be leaked by an employee or seized by court order.
I suspect the big google/china ban thing a while back is because the chinese government didn't want google have access to so much information about all of their citizens, including government officials - especially since the US appears to be half-way in bed with google now. Basically it amounts to spying. The terms of the deal with china weren't disclosed for allowing google back online there - but I bet it had something to do with this issue.
With features like google-bar with pagerank google has access not to every search you've made, but also every page you visit! Even without google-bar, many browsers have a bug that returns the last page visited as the referal when you hit the home button or favorites link. Since google is highly likely to be used this way rather than typing in google.com - they will also correlate this information.
I've used google since their early beta days - but now I'm beginning to think they are on the path to evil weither they intend it or not. The fact they are a private company makes them even scarier - no public disclosures of how they are using their data. And with something like 80% of all searches going through google, they have collected a lot of data. Be afraid, be very afraid.
-- Virtual Windows Project
I think that the methodology and algorithms should be made Open Source so that they can be seen to be fair and in addition people can post improvements to beat the inevitable Google cheats.
Also it will slow down the slow and steady encrochment of big companies tempting google to upgrade their links (or worse supply details of how to get around the system to their special access, premium paid up clients)...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
So WHAT?
As anyone in the computer industry will tell you, once a product loses its integrity (unless it's an M$ app) there won't be any demand for said product and no one will touch it with a 10-foot pole.
$DEITY bless $NATION
I did a lot of internet surfing and google searching this past weekend (being snowed in, in DC), and I noticed that google's web search has degraded in quality.
Certain searches turn up page after page of link farms that just point to each other. Clicking on many of these links will redirect you to the same page, presumably the home page of the company who owns the link farms. No amount of filtering can divine the search into something useful. And I think it's only going to get worse as more companies figure out how to exploit google.
I ended up having to use altavista and teoma for the first time in months.
For now, google can afford to be altruistic because they are seen by everyone as the best. As the quality of google searches declines and its popularity decreases, google will have to succumb to more advertising.
... if wacked-out space-cadet conspiracy theories are the worst things that people can throw at Google, they must be doing alright.
Google's only big enemies appear to be either A) Contrarians, B) Snake-oil marketers, or C) paranoid nutcases.
While it sounds silly, and today it may not matter you were searching for xyz, but tomorrow xyz may be illegal and THEN it would matter..
So, yes you are not paranoid enough... Privacy must be absolute.. Always expect the worst.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
Umm... in some other cases, this is considered a good thing. eSellerate, for example, does the same thing with their multi-currency support. If you were in the UK, would you want to see the currency default to USD and have to switch to Pounds, or would you rather have it default to Pounds?
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I may have grown complacent because I don't live in a country where a history of the web sites I search for can get me arrested (at least not yet), but I don't see the danger.
Information is not dangerous. It is how someone uses the information they have that makes that person - not the information - dangerous. (Ideas don't kill people; people kill people.)
It also bothers me that being concerned that someone else knows what sites I am searching for is a concession to the idea that there are sites I shouldn't visit.
Bureaucracy loves company.
1.Google's immortal cookie
Isn't on my machine, nor any other which doesn't accept cookies.
2.Google records everything they can
So does every other search engine; this is no secret.
3.Google retains all data indefinitely
See #2
4.Google won't say why they need this data
That's fine, 'cause everyone already knows it's for advertising purposes
5.Google hires spooks
So? Honestly, who cares?
6.Google's toolbar is spyware
They're not the only ones. Look at Gator. They're much worse.
7.Google's cache copy is illegal
OK, legitimate complaint here. A retroactive "remove me from your cache" option would almost definitely solve this, though.
8.Google is not your friend
May I say, "Duh." But they do have a GOOD indexing algorithm. Webmasters shouldn't be trying to "cheat" in the search engine game, anyway.
9.Google is a privacy time bomb
Lotsa great privacy concerns are listed on this page. Excuse me while I run and hide from the irrelevant statistics.
-Amalcon
That google will cease to exist. Man, I live my online life through google!
I submitted my band website (http://www.soundpostband.com) to Google's 'Add URL' page (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) over a week ago and the site has still not been spidered by GoogleBot? What is the deal? My website is totally legitimate.
Ummmm... surf to the new (! WalMart/google engine) www.wal-gle.com, enter "privacy" into the search box, and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky"
The intelligence agencies have always been closely involved in search technology, one way or another (who else has lots of text *and* money?). So it is not at all unusual to find leaders in the field who have been associated with them, directly or indirectly. Verity, for example, began as a project for the CIA by Advanced Decision Systems. When I was at Verity, there was hardly anything "new" that we created in our products that hadn't been done in one way or another on a custom basis for the agencies.
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.
The guy is ovbiously one of the SearchKing bunch.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
... if one of their key engineers used to work for pets.com
that place was just a disaster.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Glad to see that slashdot readers pratice all the freedom and rights of man that they constantly yell about.
I agree, anyone how has worked for the NSA should be barred for life from working anywhere. And they definetly shouldn't have the right to work in peace without their name splatted on boards like slashdot. (this is sarcasim in case you couldn't tell)
Google-watch is kooky as hell, but do any of you really think that Google wasn't at the top of the government's list after the Patriot Act passed?
The U.S. government now has the right to access Google's user logs and the worst part is that the company can't even tell anyone about it (under threat of imprisonment).
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
"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.""
You said it, "Surfers like the cache", if the lawmakers, the webmaster don't like the cache then screw them.
Google lets you exclude pages that contain certain keywords by putting "-" in front of them.
:)
Your browser passes your entire query to found pages you click in the "Referrer" field.
Some sites dynamically customize the page you get based on the search terms found in "Referrer".
But they do it WRONG. They simplify and assume all search terms are to be included.
So, for instance, if you type into Google "porn -gay" expecting to exclude gay porn sites, instead you are likely to get a lot of them.
I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to learn how to use the cache. Generally, when I view search results I hit the cache first. Here's why:
1) Speed. A copy from Google's server is going to come up a lot faster than one on some remote server with poor bandwidth access.
2) It's a wayback machine of sorts. If I need information that has since been removed due to changing directory structure, expired accounts, or pressure from the Real Big Brother, I can find it there.
3) Color highlighting! If you have hundreds and hundreds of lines to scroll through, It's a heck of a lot easier to look for color combinations then to do a find on various combinations of the words in the submitted string.
God Bless Google. They've increased my productivity as an admin at least ten-fold.
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Now, I do agree with most of the posters that these issues with Google are avoidable, and up to the user to take control of.
But, having said that, it's pretty apparent to me that, were this any other search-engine (or product) the company would be absolutely blasted for such intrusive policies. Google's behavior isn't really all that different than a lot of the spyware products already out there, and already assailed by slashdot users.
Google is a useful search engine, but people here need to think objectively about this, rather than letting their google-worship heavily bias them against a company acting about as badly as, say Gator.
While this isn't user information per se, it could have easily been and Google pulled it up on a whim. For more information, check gewgle.com or gewgle.com's legal proceedings
Actually.... I LOVE it when companies collect data on me.
I guess I am just really weird - but I fill out every opinion poll - and answer every question when people call me asking for my opinion.
Why?
Well, mostly because if they are going to get somone's opinion on something IT MIGHT AS WELL BE MINE! And, if I am going to be bombarded with advertising (including spam, and junk mail) IT MIGHT AS WELL BE ABOUT STUFF I LIKE!
To all you paranoid slashdotters out there this might sound weird. But, really, truly, I have NOTHING to hide - so why worry?
Derek
Following is the email I just sent to Public Information Research, the guys that do GoogleWatch. I'll post the reply if I get one.
Hi,
I just came across the page and had a few comments to make and questions to ask.
"1. Google's immortal cookie"
Given that all browsers allow you some control over accepting cookies, and the better ones give you more fine-grained control, allowing you to reject cookies from specific domains. I would say this is a moot point.
"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."
Well, the cookie tracking can be resolved as above. It's interesting to note that they don't record my IP address - at work they get my proxy's address, at home they get the addresses of the transparent caches that my ISP uses. I'd say that as transparent caches become more prevalent, that becomes less of an issue. More on this later. Browser configuration? How do they get that (apart from the easily-spoofable UA string)?
I'd also suggest that your ISP does all this as well, especially if you use their proxy, or if they use transparent caches. This is far worse becuase they will be reording *everything* you do on the web. I'd suggest this is a bigger problem right now.
"3. Google retains all data indefinitely"
Can you prove that? If true, it does suck, but they're probably well within their rights to do so. AFAIK, the US doesn't have the more-enlightened privacy laws that the EU and other countries do.
"4. Google won't say why they need this data"
Is that suprising? What do other US companies say when you ask them similar questions?
"5. Google hires spooks"
I'm sure lots of companies hire ex-NSA engineers. Perhaps they hired him because he is a competent engineer? I hope you realise that this point makes you sound like someone with a paranoia disorder of some sort.
"6. Google's toolbar is spyware"
Don't install it then?
"7. Google's cache copy is illegal"
If you don't want something cached, don't publish it on the Internet. Print publishers can't recall magazines and newspapers, why do you expect anything different on the 'Net? If it is illegal, it's probably because the US copyright laws are seriously broken. It *would be good if Google abided by the HTTP cache control headers, rather than resorting to stupid HTML meta hacks.
"8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool,"
Thanks for the insult. You're an arrogant, paranoid, stupid, wanker. I use Google because it gets me results for random questions. I don't use Google to find a place to buy CDs online. The people out there trying to scam Google probably aren't the kind of people I want to deal with.
"9. Google is a privacy time bomb"
I'd suggest the current US administration is a much bigger, more dangerous, more volatile bomb than Google is or ever will be. If Google is a nasty monkey, the Federal US Government is a 900-pound gorilla.
Mike.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
I really can't say a whole lot more than that...whoever wrote this up is clearly out of their mind. Especially since there are ways to avoid nearly everything thats mentioned there. The comments about the page ranking are the some idiototic babbling we always hear. Googles ranking system is setup so you can't articifially incrwase your traffic, they will never publish a standard that tells you how to cheat the system, so give it up....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
--------------
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
--------------
Put the above two lines in a file called "robots.txt" file and place that in the root on your web server. Google, the Internet Archive, and most other engines respect the robots.txt file. You can also add the following inside each HTML page if you want to allow indexing but DISALLOW caching:
I also added the line that disables MS smart tag parsing. Make sure BOTH lines are in every HTML page (or template) you have. Now you are on google, but NOT their cache, and if you change stuff noone will have the old copy. Not easily, anyway.
Google keeps its logs forever, rather than deleting them after a few days like privacy-oriented sites do. That means that if an investigator knows your IP address, he can then find out all the searches that your IP address has done. Doesn't that bother anyone? I know I wouldn't want the government to know everything that I've done searches for. (I use offshore proxies, so it doesn't bother me, but most people don't know about proxying.)
Meet Mr. Anti-Google The most interesting thing in there to me is that he is not happy about his PageRank score!
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Compared to many businesses, Google seems pretty good -- geek friendly, low ad content, good service, cool technology, et al.
But its also important to not lose sight that Google is a corporation, with investors, debtors and other people who are solely (or primarily) motivated by MAKING MONEY. They're not motivated by some pro-geek/anti-corporate ethos.
So as long as you keep in mind that they might turn around and do something that protects profit first and makes privacy or other goals take a back seat then you'll be OK.
The Total Information Awarness agency shows up on your doorstep with a can of whoopass because you happen to do searches on the Koran, Fallafel, and Jihad.
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," ...
Anyone who uses the phrase "way kool" -- and can't even spell "k3wl" correctly -- can't be taken seriously.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
If this was Microsoft, I don't think the replies here would be the same.
P.S. When does Google get a Slashdot icon?
Google doesn't own the Internet Archive, their competitor Alexa does. Anyone (including you or I) can go look at past versions of pages using it. Pretending to be Google (providing an interface to their search engine, using a similar look and name), and asking people if they have credit cards sounds pretty suspicious to me.
1. Google's immortal cookie:
Disable cookies, or set them to prompt you before acceptance. Problem solved.
2. Google records everything they can:
They provide a service to give you relevant results, and they don't ask for any personally identifying information. There are anonymyzing proxies if you are that worried about your IP being known.
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
So they log IP addresses and your filter settings? If you had to enter personal information to use their service, I'd see a problem.
4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Hello! You already said in your expansion on point two you know why they collect the info! Anyways, I know if I was running a search engine, I'd sure as hell be logging IPs and search terms, dates, times, etc so I could tweak the search engine to provide better results.
5. Google hires spooks:
One, people with a security clearance have been thoroughly investigated and are known to be trustworthy. This in and of itself should give them an edge in the hiring process. Plus, as the article pointed out, Google wants federal contracts, personnel with clearances already will make that process much less expensive. Even if the clearance is lapsed, and they have to run a reinvestigation, the risk of being denied a clearance and wasting the money is far less.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
Google has a toolbar? Anyways, they spell out what happens when you install it, if you don't like the terms, don't install it.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Gee, one short line added to your pages- which any decent text editor can be set to automatically include in your templates or whatever- can stop this completely. The web cache is no different from USENET archives.
8. Google is not your friend:
Gee, they defend their search results against people trying to manipulate the system. Gee, great lack of integrity there... NOT!
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
And what private information do they collect, and what information do they collect that isn't clearly needed to enhance their search results?
Clear FUD. These idiots hate Google simply because its big. They probably tried to subvert the Page Rank system and got nailed for it. Whiners.
Searched the web for google-watch and his page is the first one and many of the other results refer back to him (just what he wants to have happen, right?). I'm a little confused about his problem...
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
A few other things:
I never thought it would make you go blind, but you do it so much you just might.
What is with the NSync and David Hasselhoff posters?
Members Only jackets will never come back in style - throw it away!
As much as I would hate to watch it - exercise!
Please, for the love of all that is sane and holy, stop trying to imitate that goatse guy in your bedroom mirror.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The only EU country with any balls to stand up to the behind the scenes bribery.
Hey Bush: FUCK YOU!
Everybody should realize the Bush family are all psychopaths; Every last one of them.
What do I get in return? Perfect advertising. When I go on the Internet looking to buy something, I'm only interested in that one thing. Undirected target marketing tells me I want to travel, lower my credit card debt, or to change auto insurance companies, but I almost never want those things. When I want to find an analog integrated circuit that decodes the timing signals from NTSC composite video, I go to Google and put in "NTSC composite pin vsync burst chip" and I'm graced with "advertising" for the exact product I'm looking for.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Mr Anti-Google
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
What I do not quite understand is why people assume that Web is confidential medium to begin with. It is not, and those who somehow believe that it is should readjust their views accordingly ...
...
... Yet I would never want to go back to things like AltaVista which only advantage was speed. I do want to provide Google with the feedback such that next time my search is a little better than before. Consider this as a service to the web community at large.
If you are trully paranoid, then study the way things work on the Web and use anonimizers, proxies, relays, etc. and hide yourself behind those. Nobody is going to work for you to make sure that you web surfing stays confidential
Some companies do cross the line from time to time when they forget TO DISCLOSE that they are collecting information about you, such that even if you wanted to you had no obvious way to find out about what a program or web site are doing.
Yet again, assume that everybody will be collecting info on you, and adjust accordingly. People like to complain a lot about spyware, yet on many occasions they actually do willingly install it themselves. And as disgusting as the spyware is, it often discloses what kind of information it is going to collect.
Going back to the subject, Google achieves the high accuracy of search by *TRACKING* what people find useful. "Is not this outrageous ?!?" some might exclaim. It might be
Should you Fear Altavista?
:)
1. Altavista's 2013 expiration date AV_USERKEY cookie.
2. Altavista records everything they can.
3. Altavista retains all data indefinitely.
4. Altavista won't say why they need this data.
5. Altavista hires spooks.
6. Altavista's toolbar is spyware
7. Altavista's image cache copy is illegal.
8. Altavista is not your friend.
9. Altavista is a privacy time bomb.
Oh my god!
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
They have some selective deletion policy. Posts by selected people have been deleted. Granted they were regarding safe fisting but only her posts on that subject have been deleted. In another case a man's current posts which are negative towards Israel are not being archived. I have only followed two examples. There has to be more.
There was much cheering when google took over dejanews and promised all of it online. But as a result there is no longer any integrity on the newsgroup archives.
Its sad the the posted slogan "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters" is never adhered to anymore. All we get now are articles to whip up the frothing masses of technology zealots.
Perhaps someday computers can go back to being an academic pursuit rather than a religion, but I dont think it will be anytime soon. Not on this board, at least.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
(cue cowbell)
Searchers don't fear the Google, nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain
We can be like they are
Come on baby
Don't fear the google
We'll be able to find
Don't fear the google
I'm your search engine man
(la la la chorus)
Valentine is done
Here but now they're indexed
Romeo and Juliet
Are together in page-ranked eternity...
Romeo and Juliet
40,000 men and women everyday
Like Romeo and Juliet
40,000 men and women everyday
Wonder if they have blogs
Another 40,000 coming everyday
We can look them all up
Find an old classmate
(la la la chorus)
Love of altavista is one
Here but now they're gone
Came the last night of stale links
And it was clear she couldn't go on
Then the door was open and the browser appeared
The screen saver blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then Google appeared
Saying don't be afraid
Come on baby... And she had no fear
And she typed to him... Then they started to find
They looked backward and said 'I'm Feeling Lucky'
She had become like they are
She had taken his results list
She had become like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the Google
(end cowbell)
In the year 2013, Goggle attained sentience and started systematically taking over the world's computers. We don't know who fired the first shot...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
FUD
What is music when you despise all sound?
I'd be interesting if google could be used to feed information into a neural net to develop a model for the world. Right now, the key problem in neural nets is training them. They're a lot like babies. They learn by experiencing the "world", or in this case being forcefed experience on the world.
Well if the google cache is essentially the world, couldn't we create a HAL-like by feeding the google cache into a large enough neural net?
You don't understand Google
That is the problem with google: You are not supposed to understand google. i.e. Google does not index my webpage. It however stores:
-Some of the pages that are only pointed to from my hompage (sub pages).
-A mirror i once made on fortune city, that is old now.
-A "move.to" page that points to my final page.
Why does it not index my home page?
-It is only my home page, really is not interresting to you unless you search for my firstname, lastname. (but then it find and old obsolete mirror). No way google explains why this is bad.
-It is bad neighbourhood? It is an "free"(pay for the dailup) isp that may contain lots and lots of garbage pages. (Free 15 mb homepage with no popups.). No way to verify this in google.
-html is bad. (google did not index it when it had an invalid html doctype tag (it was valid in the past) But it never tells you this, never never never.
Yes, i know there are lots of folks whose living is to optimize for search engines, but google never tells you when you did something "bad".
In the good old days when someone flamed you on the net it was gone in a few days, and you could always cancel the message to speed up the process. Well, some anonymous poster slandered me good a few years back and I thought nothing of it. When google bought dejanew's archive I checked it out during the beta stages, searched for my name and the first article that popped up was of course the slander against me.
Thinking how I didn't want this thing to be seen by a future employer, no matter how ridiculous it obviously was, I wrote to google and asked for them to remove it. They replied that it wasn't their policy to remove articles from the news archive without the express request of the original author or a court order.
Great--how the heck do I find out who the anonymous poster was now? And how do I get him to cooperate? Luckily more news eventually poured in and that article is buried several pages deep.
The lesson I learned is to never use your real name in an online forum.
Now, about that wayback machine...
They are self-serving, which can indeed clash with public opinion and privacy, but they are not 'evil'.
The same can be said for Hitler, Stalin, Attila The Hun etc.
Define "evil" please, please?
It's not like, for example, Saddam Hussein rises at dawn eagerly looking forward to a day brimfull with Evil deeds, just to be nasty. No, at least in his own mind, he's only looking out for his own best interests, and if you get in the way, too bad for you.
Evil isn't some mythical quality, despite what certain authority figures may tell you. The "evildoers" just grab an advantage for themself at somebody elses expense.
They are just plain old self serving.
But that explanation to peoples motives hits a little to close to home to be comfortable, so we just chalk others actions up to them being eeevil.
To sum up:
"Evil" = Self serving at the expense of others.
There's no magic to it.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
I think it's too general. I could use your image to justify bait-and-switch salesmanship, false advertising, predatory contracts, usury (i.e. knee-cap tingling interest rates), racism (no colored/irish/whatever allowed) or sexism (we only hire/allow men, don't ask don't tell?)... All of these are policies that in the laissez faire world our ancestors inherited, were allowed. Don't like the people using them? Then just switch.
And what our ancestors did was go further, and make laws. They decided that just switching doesn't do the job. It appears society isn't so healthy when "just switching" (even when it's possible) is your only redress for some problems.
I like google - and I think the complaints about caching, accountability for penalization, etc. are bunk. But I'll play devil's advocate. It's easy, since my tinfoil hat is already at hand. Google may be mining all that information it collects about your activities just to give you better results, but we don't know that. And since they're by far the biggest game in town, they get near-monopoly benefits for their information gathering scheme.
It's pretty much like if libraries refused to be accountable about their customer records. And if the library was suddenly practically the biggest clearinghouse for information on the planet.
They may not be selling or abusing the information, but they're refusing to say they aren't. You can say it's a private company, they can do what they want, but that's a lack of imagination. AT&T used to be "just a private company" too. Its descendants are _still_ trying to sell your phone usage records.
Of course, there are plenty of people who just don't understand what their privacy is for in the first place. To all these people, how about letting me come on over and hide in your house and watch what you do? I think for most of these folks, once they get a girlfriend/boyfriend... suddenly they're really against it. Well, I don't want to speak for everyone.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
This guy is an whiner with almost no valid complaints.
Points 1, 2, 3, 4 can be summarized "Google collects the same information that every single commercial web site does. Google does market research to find out what people want from it and how to improve their site.
Point 5 (Google hires spooks), can be summarized in two parts: "Google hires people who are good at automating information organization" (It should be no big shock that ex-NSA geeks have lots of skills useful to writing search engines.), and "Google wants to sell Google technology to the government." (Remember when it was discovered that the FBI's case database was so out of date it only allowed a single search term per search? Maybe it's time to replace it with an internal Google server.)
Points 6 and 7 (the toolbar is spyware and the cache is illegal) are potentially valid (even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone), but not as horrible as suggested.
Point 9 is a bit random: Yes, as the largest search engine Google collects alot of information. Of course, this is true of any large search engine. It was true of Altavista when they rules the roost.
But hidden near the bottom, in point 8, ah, we have the meat of his complaints.
I'm not a blogger, so apparently I'm a "young, stupid script kiddie" because I think Google is "way kool."
Of course, here we have the meat of the argument: I tried to abuse Google's system to get an un-earned high ranking for my pages. When Google caught me abusing the system, they penalized me.
Google is popular because their search results are uniformly useful. If they let idiots like this one have their way, Google's search result quality would plunge, much like other search engines did during the late 90s.
The secret to getting high ratings? Write high quality, useful web pages. Let other people know about them in acceptable ways (write to related sites suggesting that they might be interested, post pointers on appropriate message boards, usenet groups, and mailing lists). When other people learn about you, if you're really providing good content you'll get links, and with links comes Google's approval. It's no secret. If you start with an area in which there isn't yet a strong primary source, it's easy to dominate the results.
I've got a solid dozen web pages that appear in Google's top five results for common search terms. With one exception, I've never promoted any of them. I just wrote some good content (but not great, it's just a hobby), and waited. I've enjoyed the first result spot for a number of searches for a long time, including driver's license number, nerf wildfire, visual c++ tricks, gen con survival guide, sourcesafe sucks (I'll admit promoting that last link with my Slashdot sig). If I, as a strict ameteur, am able to do this well without gaming the system, what's his problem?
Google isn't his friend because he's a weasel who tried to sell artificially generated Page-Rank. Google is a friend to all legit webmasters and users.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I generally don't worry much about the issues privacy folks raise, aside from keeping an ear open for anything eyebrow raising I haven't heard. In general, I don't care who knows how many bags of instant mashed potatoes I bought last month. (I actually heard a woman almost crying about this on a local news story about grocery store "loyalty" (tracking) cards. Usually this information is used to bring me advertising I'll be interested in, anyway.
But I do practice making things more difficult for the tracking guys, where it's convenient for me. I may not care who knows what about me, but no sense in living in a completely visible fishbowl if I don't have to. So I block cookies that have no use to me, etc.
A long while back I remember noticing that Yahoo was tracking my choices off of their search results page through the use of redirect URLs. That bothered me a bit, and sometimes I would actually type in a URL by hand to avoid giving them the extra information. Usually, I just didn't care.
When I first started using google, I was amazed they didn't do this! No redirect URLs, no way at all to tell what results I was interested in. I appreciated that and took it as a complement: they were treating me like a person, not like a test subject. It amazes me people want to complain about Google's data tracking; what about Yahoo's?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Information is useless unless you can find it. And if someone (government, corporation, conspiracy, etc) is going to control the internet, then Google is the place the start. Maybe not now, but what happens when they are publicly traded? Or in 10 years when their ideals have melted? We rely extensively on Google and a handful of other search engines to make the internet work, how long will they stay reliable? More Here
Abstract Dynamics
Because it's in their mission statement. I sent an email to a friend about this a while ago, which is why I still have it.
From their job opening page : In a word, Google's goal is to do important stuff that matters to a lot of people. In pursuit of that goal, we've developed a set of values that drive our work, including one of our most cherished core values: "Don't be evil." (Emphasis mine.)
With good fortune news.google.com wouldn't link to this one.
Does anyone know of a good search engine with a better privacy policy?
Eat at Joe's.
my cousin works there. He is a nice guy. He's really funny. You have nothing to fear. :)
Why do they complain that the pagerank is un-democratic? It is stupid! Of course, pages that are good would by default link to other pages that are good.
And in any case, the page-rank is only related to your keyword search. It is not general. The page-rank is calculated depending on the search terms used. Only the links from pages that also contain the search term are calculated, or at least they are weighted more.
This whole 'undemocratic' business is complete and utter crap. If everyone is linking to the www.xyz.com page, which talks about XYZ, then it means it is a good site. Much better than the other sites. OK, so this is the first vote without the 'rich man' weighting.
Now, if I make a new site about XYZ and www.xyz.com links to it, my site gets a higher page ranking, because www.xyz.com, who a lot of people think is a good site, has decided to include my page in their links. I really don't think the guys in google-watch have understood the algorithm very well.
So, the only thing you need to do to get better ranking is to get links from sites with high rank. Duh.
As to the effect that high rank has on already highly-ranked sites... a site with high rank has a weight W. Each site that receives a link from it gets a +W to its score. So, all sites that it links to are benefited equally, no matter if they are already highly ranked or not. The guys behind google ahve determined that the algorithm stabilizes after a number of iterations. The research is available, search google. Also search Google for the clever engine, developed by IBM. Clever is like google, but it makes a distinction between authorities and hubs.
Many 'anonymizers' (read Libraries), ask for an ID before you can use the internet. How much information they retain is probably decided on a per library basis.
Regardless, law enforcement can access whatever records the library keeps if someone ends up doing something nefarious.
What I've learned from this internet thingie, is that privacy is mostly a by-product of poor record keeping. If you choose to 'stick out from the crowd' by establishing a record (ie: post on usenet or slashdot, build a website, publish a blog), then you don't really have much expectation of privacy. Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, everyone will be famous, not for 15 minutes, but to 15 people.
That's why I'm generally against persistent cookies. There's really very little reason (short of convenience ala Slashdot's cookie) to have a cookie that exists longer than a session. Anything longer than that, and does not provide _me_ any utility, gets denied.
My father is a blogger.
It is one thing to think a lot about the various ways that the guy down the street might be scheming to cook you and feed you to his dog. It is quite another to think a lot about the various ways the primary source of information on the internet might be abused by those controlling it.
My attitude is that it is better to decentralize and not worry than it is to engage in the public hygiene of worrying all the time about central controls that exist. But as of now, Google is the primary referrer on almost all unique outside website hits.
You have to think about that and it's consequences unless you are asleep at the wheel.
Seastead this.
What better way to legally spy on your own citizens than to have someone else do it and hand you the results?
Remember, Echelon didn't stop 9/11... I think that's enough proof that it's not an omnipresent spying apparatus but used for possibly something else. Or maybe it's just a Star Wars program to make China waste money and effort.
Besides, who the hell talks about "nuclear bombs", "assasinations", "bin Laden" etc on a comm. line (secured or not) anyway? You talk about delivering the flowers and sending my love to cousin Gary.
Google is simply indexing public data. If you don't want it seen, and thereby added to the search engine, don't make it publicly available. Put it behind a password protection system for crying out loud.
In addition, they have to re-index all their pages in their database to insure that their searches remain accurate. So even if they did get information from your site, if you remove the data - Google will remove the link and drop the data (web pages) from their engines.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I have no idea what Matt Cutts does for Google, but:
1. Isn't the NSA the worlds largest employer of mathmaticians. (They use to brag abou that on there web site.) I imagine Google has a lot of use for mathmaticians.
2. The NSA I imagine is a fairly picky employer. Not just for the background checks either. The people in their research division (Can we say SE-Linux) are not push overs.
well google is doing a fine job what do i care.
hehe.
He runs NameBase, a search engine for citations. From the 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. "
So, in other words, Brandt built a search engine... but really wants to just build a database and use Google's search engine to search it - he realizes that they have a better search engine than his, and wants to use it to search his entire site, and is pissed that they aren't doing his business for him.
Additionally, Brandt has a political agenda that he wants Google to enforce: (also from the article)
"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." "
This guy is a kook and a troll.
-T
People tend to fawn over google but forget how powerful an entity can be with the information google has at this moment. Google has something the feds would very much like to have. The feds can afford anything.
It becomes a moot point whether google is a good or bad company because they are already/will become, just another government tool.
The feds could provide any price google required. Millions, billions. Money is no object. It's logical to assume google is owned.
These days, everyone wants to know what you're thinking. Industry, employers, insurance companies, government, and so on. Tendrils
reaching out to everyone, watching, probing,
evaluating. Not exactly a golden age of society.
I hope we can all make it through this century with some semblance of humanity intact.
Why should I care? Everybody else is slamming my computer for information seeking cookies. At least Google is reputable and since I rarely use IE and when I do I don't use the toolbar's advanced features. You can easily turn off cookies or verify each one. Why should I mind?
I never liked you
No you shouldn't fear Google. The (N)o (S)uch (A)gency doesn't need Google to be accomplish their objectives. This information about a for NSA employee, if it's true, is just cannon fodder. Google is the target of this kind of criticism because they provide the same services through their website that they provide to other (read competing) sites as a billable service. Plain and simple. Ever since they started expanding the services on their website, all of this negative criticism about them has been swelling. You people are all paranoid (which don't mean they aren't out to get you).
Until they do something wrong. But so far they are doing pretty well, i'd have to say. They've risen quite quickly to be the best there ever was. I love Google.
:)
I get a lot of traffic through them.. although on an odd subject..
if you search for "ups sucks"
My personal blog is the second site it lists.
Not sure why.. there must be other people more linked to than me..
-MasterRa
No, they don't. They just charge more to people who don't have the discount cards. Depending on the options available to you (I have not a clue where you come from), there are numerous grocery options that don't have "discount cards". Compare prices. Wal-Mart (while evil) has lower prices than the grocery store with a discount card. HEB (a regional chain that's spreading like wildfire) does, too.
Now, I live in the most competitive grocery market (the article is from Fortune, not this hippie rag :) ) in the US, the Dallas/Ft. Worth market, so options are everywhere. I don't like Wal-Mart any more than the next person. But I shop there. Why?
They don't want my shopping information, and they have lower prices.
The normal grocer's notion that I should be willing to give them something valuable, for no better prices than I can get somewhere else, is laughable and irritating. Can't beat Wal-Mart without it? Fine. Go away. And you know who to blame for my attitude (you knew this was coming)? You and your corporate brethren. Change the way you deal with me, and I'll consider changing the way I think about you.
Hypothetically, all my Slashdot posts should be archived on Google, at least the static pages from two or more weeks old.
/. says I've made 393 posts over the last three years or so.
However, Google seems to only have 6-7 webpages when I search for "LinuxParanoid", while
Any ideas why?
--LP
P.S. (Slashdot's search engine is also pragmatically worthless for me finding my old posts, which is one reason why I noticed.)
If you use Mozilla, you can set your preferences to expire all cookies at the end of the session.
That'll probably give you the privacy you long for if you're affraid of Google.
Now I know why I read slashdot
:p
(keep up the good work by the way)
the google-watch server is too busy, i guess i'll get the pages from the google cache
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Y'all paranoid types should know that Matt was a friggin' summer intern at the NSA, and his security clearance dried up long ago.
If I were George, I'd immediately invoke the "Franklin Maneuover" and head for Sloane Square.
My father is a blogger.
In Soviet Russia, stage is for Performers only!
- Yakov Smirnoff (Branson Missouri Episode)
I was looking for red hat 8 ISOs the other day, and did the obvious thing. Typed in "Redhat 8 ISOs" into google. I got back a bunch of random message board posts in foreign languages.
I tried the same thing at alltheweb and got back two links to to rethat 8 ISOs.
Of course my main beef with google is that Autopr0n.com shows on the 10th page or something on a search for something as obvious as "autopr0n" or "autopr0n.com" on google now. I actually had someone email me to complain the other day (since they actually used the "I'm feeling lucky button" rather then typing in URLs). The first links are to my slashdot and kuro5hin user info pages, then links to tons of pages that link to my site.
I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that I link to tons of porn with relevant descriptions, but I'm not trying to fool google at all, and I'm definitely not a Spam site.
I really think google went overboard doing whatever it is they did, and caused their site to suffer. I still search with google first, but I don't know how long I'll do that if alltheweb starts to turn up better results.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Your computer is broadcasting an IP address! Better go and fix it.
It is not "hand-waiving" point out that a "key Google engineer" used to work for the National Security Agency. That is a presentation of evidence - the exact opposite of hand-waiving.
"Hand-waiving" is the making of assertions without offering any evidence to support those assertions. You need to be more careful with your language, Rob.
"You have no privacy - get over it"
US need legistlation like the EU/UK Data Protection laws.
Anyway who cares about google when you have 3 very large financial info companies tracking your every move and seeling that info to anyone who pays for it!
1) Cache internet pages.
2) Is this really fair use? Google is a for-profit corporation. While they do not put advertisements directly on the cached page display, they do use advertisements and therefore gain profits on their main search results page. These search results are made more useful by the presence of the cache, therefore more people use Google and more advertisers pay more money.
3) Profit!!!
As far as I know, there is no codified right to fair use, only case law. Case law is subject to interpretation, as well as overturning by either another court or the legislature. In other words, it is impossible to say with any authority whether some things are fair use, and some things which are fair use today may not be tomorrow.
2) I want to see sources for the data on Google Watch. I'm high suspicious of any reports -- such as the cookie -- that don't have sources attached to them. A cursory inspection of my hard drive found that my Google cookie expires this MAY. That's what made me decide not to trust these guys
Humor aside, maybe we do need a google-watch-watch.com. These folks need to start publishing their sources in order to be credible.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
They have all these problems with google, but don't even mention that google will not let online sporting stores (that also happen to sell guns) advertise on Google, even if they're just advertising tents, camping stoves, etc.
/. didn't like companies using their huge market power to muck with other companies like this. They're taking their power as a good search engine (and good place to advertise) and descriminating against companies that just happen to sell something the owner of google disagrees with (despite it being legal).
I thought
Just stupid.
--
If I had a search engine I wouldn't let any place that sold mousetraps advertise cause I think mice are so cute. (Joking, just FYI for the clueless.)
If you want to be afraid of anything, be afraid of those alleged "anonymous surfing sites" that allow you to surf the web inside a frame that supposedly anonymises you.
If I were the CIA I'd be running a bunch of those sites...
Never satisfied with anything, the /. user's decided to go an a Crusade vs. the world. If it is well liked by the masses, hate it. If it is unusual, exceptionally clumsy, not accepted by the masses, we will love it. Until people start to like it, then we will learn to hate it. Hey wait..... George Bush must be a /. user too!
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
The parts about Google's cookies may or may not be worth worrying about, but then Google works just fine if you block cookies from it so it's not hard to prevent any potential problems. The rest is paranoid handwaving amounting to "Google lets anyone in the world find out exactly what I said even if I don't want them to!". I fail to see the problem in that.
What I mean is, people create the conditions of a natural monopoly through lack of willingness/time/whatever to learn new things.
The 'natural monopoly' pretty much comes out of the way software works. With essencially no reproduction costs, the cost per unit is R&D cost / copies sold. Obviously this is far lower for one company than for two companies that have to split the market. Which also means that the natural monopoly can undersell any entrant that seeks to take the monopoly away from them.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1) Block the cookie.
2) Block the cookie. Whoops, are you using IE?
3) Block the cookie.
4) Hand-waving.
5) Hand-waving.
6) Toolbars are spyware. That's the point. Most of them are adware too. How do you think they pay for the development of Free Nifty[tm] Toolbars? By selling your personal data.
7) Why should I fear it then? I am a browser, not a webmaster. Anyway, I'll let the courts decide this. If you don't want questionable material showing up in Google's cache, don't put it on your site in the first place. If someone else did it, you deleted it, and it still ends up in the Google cache, A: you didn't create the content and B: you're not hosting the content (Google is). So you're not responsible.
8) I guess I'll have to stop going over to Google's house, then. I thought he really liked me. Seriously, so what? Google is a private enterprise, not a government entity. If they want to stop people from cheating, let them use any means in their power.
9) This is a valid concern, but if you did (1), (2), or (3), you're not involved.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Damn right you should fear Google. With its extensive web and Usenet caching, resourceful employers (or anyone else for that matter) who decide to profile you with a quick search represent a very big threat to everything that you hold dear. Best thing you could do is be careful when dealing with things like messageboards and Usenet. If the content you post is questionable, settle with nothing less than at least a half dozen aliases, several e-mail addresses and an anonymizer.
- IP
I may be to late to get discussion on this but... How is google's cache any diffent from some takeing a photo in a public place. As far as I know it is 100% ok to publish a picture of anyone or any thing taken in a public place, rather the person or thing has given its permision or not. How is a webpage any different? As long as it is publicly accessible (no passwords or verification system) why shouldn't it be ok to cache it?
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
"From the no-less-than-anybody-else department" is more appropriate. ;)
Do you like German cars?
You have to know what people are looking for before you can assume you've nothing to hide.
You keep spreading your life over a cracker and handing it to all takers, you're gonna get bit by something. Count on it.
I guess you were busy filling out a customer opinion survey when common sense was being given out.
Should you fear Slashdot?
1. Slashdot's immortal cookie:
Slashdot was the first discussion site to use a cookie that expires in one year. 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 discussion sites; Slashdot set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you log in on Slashdot, you get a cookie! CmdrTaco can read and record your unique ID number!
2. Slashdot records everything they can:
For all discussion submissions, they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your actual words, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Slashdot can even BLOCK you from viewing their site!
3. Slashdot retains all data indefinitely:
Slashdot has no data retention policies. There is even evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save, using obscure SQL SELECT statements with WHERE modifiers!
4. Slashdot won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Slashdot about their privacy policies lead to severe beatings.
5. Google hires spooks:
CowboyNeal... nuf' said!
6. Google's polls are spyware:
Slashdot's free poll questions phone home with every choice you enter. Yes, it reads your cookie too, and records the vote so you can't even vote twice on the same poll!!! Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because all fair polls do this. Worse yet, Slashdot's Slashcode updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. Most web sites ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Slashdot.
7. Slashdot comments are illegal:
Posters to Slashdot often say bad things about the laws that protect us, for instance, the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and the Homeland Security act. Slashdot is nothing but a bed of terroristic rehtoric, and it needs to be stopped!
8. Slashdot is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Slashdot is "way kool," so by now Slashdot enjoys a 98 percent monopoly for all tech related discussion sites. No webmaster can avoid seeking CmdrTaco's approval these days, assuming he wants to "Slashdot" his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Slashdot's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Slashdot, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Slashdot, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Slashdot is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.
9. Slashdot is a privacy time bomb:
With 50 million visits per day, Slashdot 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 Slashdot has already achieved. Slashdot deserves your nomination for corporate Big Brother of the Year.
this sig is a highly rehearsed improvisation
As interesting as the issues raised here are once you read past the polemic headlines, what are the alternatives to google? Not that there aren't a couple of companies trying to compete with google in terms of effectiveness, but are there actually any who one should be less afraid of?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
will it decrease my page rank
I'm not terribly worried if Wal-Mart, for example, is able to lookup exactly how many cucumbers I've purchased over the years. But, it's still unnerving, and I'm personally paying at least a little attention to privacy issues like this.
With a little effort, big stores like Wal-Mart could pool their data with other stores and reconstruct, say, my travel habits and who knows what else. This is more unnerving, but I'm not worried yet.
Are there any regulations governing what can be done with this data? That's what worries me. Could a private detective pay Wal-Mart for my shopping lists? Could the government demand them?
I have the same questions about Google.
Thank you Daniel Brandt for your site google-watch.com. The site is not going to win any journalism awards but it does influence thought on google's motivations. For the most part google is a nice company. Unfortuantely it does have a lot of potential to do bad things with its monopoly like power. It is also motivated by investors looking for a return on their money. Put those two things together and we could be in a bad situation. I am not saying that google is evil right now but it very well could be in the future.
I bet all kinds of self-righteous red flags would be raised here on ShitDot if this were a report on Microsoft. I'm sure we wouldn't be reading that one of the Slashdot 'editors' isn't worried and perhaps just not paranoid enough.
I was trying the same thing, so then when I put in my name my ICQ profile came up- I was happy I got #1 on google with my name, so I mentioned it in my blog with a link back to google
A month later my ICQ listing was gone and the highest ranking one (10th) was the blog from december where I mentioned google
link back to google and they'll reward you.
The guy used to work for the NSA. And this is supposed to mean... what exactly? That, umm, the guy used to work for the NSA? Well, I guess we're all supposed to know what THAT means. He's THE MAN. And he's OUT TO GET YOU.
Hide the Hentai! The NSA is coming!
Derek@tongueincheek.org
I have this saying. "Nothing is ever illegal until you get caught"
So do whatever you want, but just do not get caught.
Live it, learn it
Fact of the matter is that anybody who might want to kill you, already knows where you live. --So you might as well relax.
Paranoia is so 90's.
-Fantastic Lad
So are you the guy who keeps those spammers believing people need penis enlargers?
--I've done at two different times just a cursory level search for spywarez on the computers at my local library. It's just slap full of every commercial spyware you can imagine, so I would bet it's got some real nifty ones buried in it as well. When I pointed it out to the librarian she got real upset, said their administrator would "take care of it". Went back, nope, still there. They have it locked so cookies stay on, scripting, etc, well, sheesh. They got enough gators to start a tourist trap. It's a multi county wan based on nt, for whatever that is worth. I know I wouldn't trust it for anything important, I wouldn't even use web mail from it. I mean, people who use it don't even bother logging out of sessions, you can sit down, back it up or look in history and you are right in someones email, etc. I'd bet a nickle it's got every trojan in the known universe on it.
The point of the google-watch.com list, AFAIK, is what Google *could* do. I, for one, tended to assume that since Google doesn't have pop-ups, banners and heaps of Javascript, it must be "safe" from a privacy perspective. Clearly, I am wrong to assume this.
Just because a corporation is successful from a market perspective doesn't mean it's immune from criticism. Maybe if everyone was aware of these privacy concerns, more people like me wouldn't have favored it over more blatantly "commercial" search engines, and Google wouldn't have quite the monopoly that it appears to have.
Just add google as a Not Trusted Site in your browser settings.
Et viola?
"The only thing I enjoy more than doing the crossword puzzle, is actually finishing it"
so, how/where do you find these?
/. claimed a Google muckty-muck said that Linux has problems with heavy I/O and I'd like to confirm this 'fact'.
Why am I looking? Someone on
Well after doing a whois on the domain I found who owns it. Daneil Brandt, or Mr. Anti-Google. Here's his full address and location:
9 /googl e_watch/?xe ch/2002/Sep/ 0024.html
:) After all, google was the first to get rid of bogus porn links at the top of search results. Same thing with refusing to accept paid search results. And unlike other search engines, if you try to artifically inflate yourself to the top, by cheating, then google takes u off their search engine list as a warning for a bit. This way, it keeps everyone in line.
Registrant:
Daniel Brandt
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States
namebase@earthlink.net
(210) 509-3160 Fax -- (210) 509-3161
Which I think is just earthlink's address and general domain registration e-mail address. Here's several urls on him:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/2
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/polit
I for one like google. I can actually look something up on it "and" find it usually and easily. Before google was infoseek. Both were great search engines. Unfortunately since infoseek was bought out (I believe), it has gone under and is no longer the great search engine it once was. But then google came along and quickly replaced it. Compared to all other search engines, google is king
find proof, use google
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.
I hate this argument, apparently x is bad because x is successful...
US plan to shoot down an airliner and blame the Cubans, so providing a pretext to invade Cuba in 1963.
Was this for real? or is it a spoof? can anybody provide references - rather than just their - obviously golden - slashdot opinions? I would love to know if some of these plans were actually on the table at the time...
At least the French fought the Germans.
Dubya-Stands-for-War Bush Junior didn't have the courage to put his own blue balls on the line.
And what's masculinity got to do with anything? The ancient Spartans kicked ass, and then spent the nights buggering ass.
Go figure.
Is there an alternative search engine with better policies? (Leaving quality of results aside for the sake of discussion.)
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
No law says we can't use Linux or Mac. Lots of people do. Most people would agree both are better than Windows.
Has any Linux user ever been able to view:
- www.feedroom.com
- www.nakednews.com
If no, this proves that Linux lages behind windows as far as home users are concerned.
If yes, tell me how did you do it and what player did you use. My Linux real player won't play either of the two sites.....
I know you will be bored by this, probably been covered a million times, but this is my main concern with Google. Does Google claim a copyright on Usenet postings? Everytime I read their legal/agreement information it sounds like they own the "groups" or the "service".
"Groups" and "service" must refer to their google.com web pages that allow access to Usenet. But who exactly owns the words I enter into a Usenet posting? What if I don't use google "Groups" to make a posting, and I don't consent to entering an agreement with Google to make a posting? The postings they retreive on their groups service all have a Google copyright attached to them. As far as I'm concerned I own my own postings, and confer no rights whatsoever to Google in submitting them. I am aware of the no-archive = yes thing.
Could Google ever go to a payment system for using their Usenet archives? They don't own the materials they are presenting. Could the original posters then claim triple damages for copyright infringment?
For any company that collects information about its users HIPAA mentioned here may apply. For example, if Google is collecting all my searches and pages visited, and then can correlate that with a unique ID with an IP. Then they are likely to collect medical information about an individual. This is exactly what HIPAA applies to. Since almost nobody is HIPPA compliant, what are the chances that Google is ?
So when someone sez "no will or motive of its own" I always have to ask the important question here - "How would we know?" Since there's no reason for us to suppose that intelligence/sentience/... would look very much like human intelligence, its possible that the net/web has already made this transition.
Of course, there's the converse question too - would an intelligent net recognize us as intelligent/sentient/... ?
Come on guys, the National Security Agency is one of the good guys.
I know you intended to be sarcastic, and I generally think of Google as a "good company". However, they also have never fallen upon hard times. They're used for almost everything, and there are zero restrictions that I know of on corporate use of Google at any companies I can think of. How much do you think it would be worth to Acme Rubber (i.e. how much would they be willing to pay Google) to find out that FizBaz Rubber employees are searching for "Norwegian greenhouses"? Perhaps FizBaz is moving production from the Amazon to a bunch of greenhouses in Norway.
I started thinking about this a while ago -- Google (well, and other search engines, but Google is the most popular) is a tremendously large information leak to most companies.
It might be a good move for Google to open a "Corporate Program". Subscribers ensure that *no* data, not even aggregate data (well, perhaps barring some specific exceptions), is stored by Google for more than, say, a week, and it does not leave Google premises. It would make Google a lot of money, it would be a pretty obviously intelligent investment for companies that care about security...
May we never see th
I think the bigger reason to fear Google is that they're as popular as they are, and have yet to learn the concept of 'OR'. It's a like a 400-pound toddler...
In Soviet Russia, Google find YOU!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Ever since google came around, nobody can spam their way to the top of the search results anymore. They have to earn their way to the top. Thats the way a search engine should be. I find what I want, not what some spammer wants me to find. Is that too much to ask for mr searchking?
At least they don't do it all the time.
It is the year 2010
"candidate for congress withdraws from the race because his opponent was given information about previous google use to find and visit porn sites back in 2003. It was also reported he went to warez sites to get steal software from Microsoft."
"President of the United States issues executive order to release all information collected by google and other online services under the freedom of information act."
Remember anything you do on the internet could come back and haunt you years later because of the williness of surfers to ignore the ease in which businesses can change the tos, without notification, to anything they want. Google is no exception.
1. Isn't the NSA the worlds largest employer of mathmaticians. (They use to brag abou that on there web site.) I imagine Google has a lot of use for mathmaticians.
Not sure it's the world's largest but crytography (codemakers, codebreakers) would be NSA's main interest in mathematicians. I'm not sure they would be of much use at Google.
2. The NSA I imagine is a fairly picky employer. Not just for the background checks either.
Picky is an understatement.
What kind of a privacy-invading maroon puts a public-accessible link on his site to his web logs? The violation in question is that he let his web logs be searchable and publicly viewable, rather than keeping them in private filespace.
Not Google's fault if it indexes a page where the webmaster at the site violated your privacy.
I've got web-accessible logs at some of my sites, for my own and my clients' convenience, but they are unlinked URLs and in most cases password-protected. Voila, no Google indexing.
Google recruits from the NSA, so surely they must be doing something nefarious.
hmmmm...our company has hired, into the same department, 3 ex military, all with security clearances
1 ex Navy electronics tech
1 ex USAF meteorologist
1 ex USAF weapons specialist
Therefore, we are not into market research for shampoo, but are secretly developing a "weather weapon", to be used in Naval warfare.
So obvious, it MUST be true.
When people talk about these things (cookies, toolbar, IP, ...) it will alert people to the risks they are taking in using these things.
....
*Think* that's called education
Now, wait a second... This one is a valid point. Remember the story about Alan Ralsky, the self-proclaimed Spam King who was responsible for millions of email spam? Within hours, his address (both current house and his new house), phone numbers, and pictures were posted on /. -
From earlier story about SpamKing Alan Ralsky:
Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
m ag e.aspx?t=1&s=10&lon=-83.4306683068011&lat=42.53497 71549766&alon=-83.43067008&alat=42.53497312&w=1&re f=A%7c6747+Minnow+Pond+Dr%2c+West+Bloomfield%2c+MI +48322
Buyer Mailing Address:
6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST
BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Sale Date: 8/28/2002
Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)
And a picture of the location is available at:
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/addressi
So, yes, Slashdot is a privacy time bomb. And when it involves bombing people like that, I don't mind. :)
-T
tailor my site to them, their engine should find relevant info on my site.
Isn't that the whole point of a "search" engine. BTW my site is cobianchi.com and all that comes up in google for cobianchi is italian sites (one that links to my college webpage from 1996). That sound's more like a piece of shit than a search engine to me.
Guess it's time to create my own search engine.
Now Google gets to big to handle, and some say they want to be the information hub of the future (that's why they acquired the Blogger software last week - see the Dutch story on this at I-Marketing.nl), that's why they launched Google News last year and that's why they launch themselves in every country and in every language you can imagine.
So basically, it's a good search engine, but it's a medium. By acquiring and harvesting all sorts of information and by having the power to not include information, they can alter our perspective on the world. Just like any medium we're used to.
I guess when we know of the risks, the possible privacy infringements and informing people about the risks, we can limit some of the items mentioned at Google Watch.
Ric van Westhreenen, AlterNET The Netherlands.
Because those boring people who don't read AC posts would miss it otherwise.
- Chris
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
All that's needed to stop taking these guys seriously:
One look at their homepage.
*dons tinfoil hat*
Actually, Google has much more license to be pro-geek than you might think solely because they are still a privately held corporation... only publicly traded corporations have the burden of due diligence to necessarily do what's going to increase stockholder value by the most... as long as Google stays privately owned, they can have corporate policy manuals that stipulate "do no evil" and they can reject listing anything they like and all of the other interesting morals over money choices they make all the time...
-jag
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
Why does everyone think that going public is the only way to be successful? All google really needs to do is give a good return to their VCs. They can possibly do that and stay private. There are lots of good reasons for staying private.
Just like the Carlyle Group!
Instead of the anonymous Proxy the first line of the cookie reads PREFID= Then your ID. I have done some testing this can be changed and everything still works... i even have advaned features on my toolbar... Why dont all slashdot users just pick one ID... get as many people on there as we can and stump google... just a thought...
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
You kind of make my point with your comment:
<snip>HAD OVER SIX MILLION CIVILIANS BURNED, GASSED, TORTURED, AND GENERALLY KILLED FOR NO FUCKING REASON.</snip>
What I was trying to say is that Hitler (who I assume you are referring to) in his own mind had reasons to act the way he did, fucked up as they were.
He had those people killed because it furthered his goals. Real fucking self serving if you ask me, but there is a difference in degree, not in nature between his acts and, say, treating your employees like shit.
Evil is no mythical fucking super power only possesed by infamous dictators.
It's just everyday self serving nastyness taken to the extreme.
It's not a comforting thought, I know, but writing in all-caps doesn't help.
Try to nice instead, ok?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Google's not a public corporation, but that doesn't meant they're the FSF either.
I can assure you that their private corporation status means that the financial stakeholders is a smaller, more coherent and more invovled group of people and that the pressure around money will be larger, and more focused than it would be if it was a public company, where those forces can be more easily diffused among many shareholders whose interests are often in conflict.
Perhaps I've misunderstood something here, but isn't the data that Google stores on users anonymous? That is, they have no way of knowing who (as in name, address, email or the like) is accessing their system.
If so, then what's all the fuss about? Isn't it a bit like saying the Highway Authority knows that 100,000 cars pass a certain point every day, and that 20,000 of them are 1985 Fords? Ooh - they could even use that data to find out how many people might want to buy new Hondas! They just don't know who those people are.
Big deal! What's the worry?
Of course, if you *give* them your personal details, then they'll have a pretty good history on you (assuming you've been accepting their cookies), but that's a whole different matter.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
"Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk "
How? What does "access" mean? That they could report all my passwords to the police? That they can create a profile on me from my browser cache?
Bollox.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
So, they keep your IP address and every search you have made form that IP address on their site in a cache until 2038.
I was just wondering, is anybody actually expecting to have the same IP address on a non-server computer (I assume you don't do much googling on a webserver) by 2038. For that matter, do you expect to have the same IP address on a personal computer by 2010?
And as for the cookie staying around, give me a break. If there is a slashdot user who doesn't upgrade his computer every 2 years (at least) I haven't met him.
->Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation's analysis of the Patriot Act:
"1. Be careful what you put in that Google search. The government may now spy on web surfing of innocent Americans, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. The person spied on does not have to be the target of the investigation. This application must be granted and the government is not obligated to report to the court or tell the person spied upon what it has done."
You should fear Google for one basic reason. They are becoming a relatively centrally controlled utility. Any monopoly should be feared. If the current controllers don't abuse it, their successors will. How easy would it be for a compeitor that provided the same service to be created? If it would be difficult, then this is a choke-point. Perhaps not an important one, or perhaps an important one, but a locus of control. And all single-points of failure should be feared. They tend to lead to catastorphic style collapses. Now Google isn't a bridge, but it controls various other resources. It probably wouldn't kill anyone to do without it, but still...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I love how when people post thoughtful opinions in opposition to the prevailing opinion they are marked down as trolls.
Google may track who you are and what you search for, but Yahoo does worse by tracking what links you click on from searches! (along with who you are)
I don't mind people knowing what I searched for, though I really don't link people knowing what results I actually choose!
You can never be too paranoid.
Was this article created by the Evil Google so they could see how much support they had in the community?
Keep up the good work, citizen!
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I had a site being crawled every day by a couple of different hosts in the NIPR.MIL domain. Occasionally images were fetched. I placed a page about it onto Geocities and it ranked about number 2 for many weeks in results for "nipr.mil" (according to the Geocities referrer stats). I was getting about, I don't know, 40 hits per day and a couple of "me too" emails.
One day, the rank just *slumped* to lower that 15th. That was after many weeks between 1-3 for "nipr.mil" and variatios thereof ("nipr mil", "nipr", etc). Then it just kept on sliding to past 40.
Even after I pulled the page from Geocities, I was still getting hits for the images - people were actually scrolling to the 4th and 5th page of results and looking in the Google cache. I infer that many other people were interested in these strange visitors appearing in their logs.
Personally, I am convinced that these searches were getting bitch-slapped. I can't see any other reason. The odds of my page suddenly getting 'un-linked-to' by the entire internet are very slim indeed, and arguments that Google simly jigged their rank alogrithm don't hold water (unless 'jigging' means selective bitch-slapping).
My 2c.
In fact, just look at what Google show now for q=nipr.mil. As of about 5 minutes ago it was:
"nipr.mil/
Google can show you the following information for this URL:
(blah blah)"
The link doesn't resolve. No apology for zero hits. Compare to "nipppppr.mil". It's just silly.
I went to anonymizer.com and their Total Net Shield package looked pretty nice, but I'm looking for a free download, and can't find any for that anywhere. I found downloads for Stealth Anonymizer; is it good enough?
1) Google's Immortal Cookie - Does this mean it will always grow back whenever I bite chunks out of it?
2) Google Collects Data - I do that too, every second of every day in fact.
3) Google's Immortal Recoreds - Interested in some of the old classical ones myself. Wonder if they sell those. Better yet, wonder if they've got it ripped to MP3...
4) Google's Silence - Better to say nothing and make everybody think you're stupid than to say something and prove them right.
5) Google's Spooks - Maybe they like halloween. I know I do.
6) Google's Toolbar is Spyware - I hope it isn't watching me when I'm changing...
7) Google's Cache - I have money in my wallet too.
8) Google is Not A Friend - Why???? Oh for the love of Christ, why?????? *sobs*
9) Google is Time Bomb - Call the bomb squad! And where's the ticker on that thing anyway?
Should you Fear Google?
I'm not sure, but you can find Gear through Froogle.
"And there be unix which have made themselves unix for the kingdom of heaven's sake." - Matt. 19:12
Google is clearly the work of the Tri-lateral Commission and its concerted effort to enslave mankind. We must quickly move to buy more Duct tape and Plastic Sheets! No, wait ... that's exactly what they want us to do isn't it? Oh, that's how they will enslave us, by creating Google and making us buy Duct tape. It's all clear now, we must fear all things. As, Churchill warned: "We must beware of needless innovation, especially if guided by logic."
IIRC, the NSA is also the biggest employer in the federal goverment.
Hey, as far as I know you don't physically submit your URL to Google, but to http://www.dmoz.org/ instead. That's the Open Directory Project that Google uses to index from. Other sites linking to your site should increase your "page ranking" but can't be the sole criterion for Google's indexing.
I am also told that it is one of the few engines that uses complex algorithms like the Bayes' algorithm to protect against discrepancies and over-reliance on any one factor.
So you must be doing something wrong in your submissions...
"Red-baiting" would be flamed today because the tactic is as outdated as Eleanor Roosevelt bashing, and many famous red-baiters were long ago discredited as dishonest opportunists (McCarthy, Nixon) or paranoid nutballs (John Birch Society).
Uh, flame on, Wayne & Garth.
Yes, and i check the noarhachie and noindex meta tags and the google faq for webmasters. It does not tell what i did wrong with this particular page.
Since it is just my homepage i cannot image they removed it manually. It is just a whim of google. Google did index it correct, but for some obscure reason it stopped.
No: robots.txt delivers a 404 error.
I think we're moving toward a society where some information is private (only you know it), but anything that is vaguely public is in a massive database and indexed.
My initial take on this it's OK with me if all my movements are indexed, provided it's indexed by Google, not just the US government. Anything the government has access to, I want access to too.
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the ...
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
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