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."
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...
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.
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
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--
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
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--
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.
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,
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"
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 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
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!
"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
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.
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).
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.
That google will cease to exist. Man, I live my online life through google!
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)
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.
That was a silly statement, what he is saying is that it is no different than going into a bar and dropping your business card into the fishbowl to try and win a free lunch. And besides they don't get a whole lot of information from you. Maybe an IP, whatever fake name you put into your profile (Good idea using a fake name) what browser your using, some other data, I do the same thing on my site with CGI script, not for any terrible reason, I just want to insure my site looks ok on all the browsers people use.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
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?"
--------------
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.)
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
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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
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).
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
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
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
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.
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"
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...
Did you check your robots.txt file
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
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
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.
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."
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!