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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
"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?
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.
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
... 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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)
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
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!
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.
You should start to worry when such information is used as circumstancial evidence against you (e.g. "Bob's profile indicates that he reads a lot about terrorism, so he must be a terrorist, so let's question him/arrest him/deny him entry to our country).
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
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
I think the real issue is about folks who use google, not the sites google searches. On one of his pages, the author talks about how web logs and querey strings are logged and can be mined for border-line "personally identifying information". His page pulls data from his own web log, so as I was reading it, I noticed my IP address showed up in his list. If you can tie me to my IP address, then from google's logs you can tell where I've planned to go on vacation, what flavors of pr0n I prefer, what techie subjects I'm interested in, what books/movies/etc. I like, and so forth.
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).
This argument is fine when the law is fair and reasonable, but let's just say hypothetically that there is something you like to do, that is one day perfectly legal, but that becomes illegal - say because you moved states or countries. Hemp law is an obvious example here. All of a sudden you have become a law breaker, and depending on where you moved you could face harassment, a fine, jail, torture, or death - all for behaviour that was perfectly legal, and still is perfectly reasonable to you personally.
many laws are only on the statute books because they give the state the power of selective enforcement, that is they can choose to prosecute or not based on all manner of reasons which may have little if any relationship to the law itself. In Holland it is not legal to smoke grass, but there is a policy of selective enforcvement. If, hypothetically, the Dutch govt. knows you are a pot smoker and takes offence at something you have done - like pissing on the american embassy in museumplein (not likely now they've put a bloody great tank outside it) - they can arrest you for posession of pot, or at least threaten you with that. Drug laws in particular are always used for this type of social control.
so while "I don't break the law, thus do what you like" seems like a valid argument, it fails to recognise that many laws are stupid, and should you find yourself in disagreement with a stupid law, you must resort to criminal behaviour if you want to resist.
each new law creates a new class of criminal.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
This planet is littered with the graves of those who thought the same, boring people exterminated for being educated, expressing an unsupportive position or even wearing reading glasses. To believe you're safe because you're not interesting is to believe people are always rational, which is irrational and historically refuted by the 20th century.
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...
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
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/... ?
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.
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.
So you're saying Google should resort to corporate extortion then?