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Google Never Forgets
downsize writes "CNN.com is running an article that provides some insight into how long Google stores our search, email and overall web activity and posits that it 'could prove a tempting target for abuse.' From the article: 'Some don't see Google's long memory as a bad thing. Weinstein doesn't think so. "There's really no good reason to hold onto that information for more than a few months," he said. "They seem to think that because their motives are pure that everything is OK and they can operate on a trust basis. History tells us that is not the case."' In regards to Google's email service, Gmail, Google may find themselves with many upset users due to 'a 1986 law [that] gives less protection from government searches to messages more than six months old...Even when a user deletes a message it may remain on company servers, according to the Gmail privacy policy.' Same goes for POP mail, just because you download it off the server, it's not 'out of Google's long memory'."
This is all something we accept when we click "OK" to Google's TOS, without even reading it. If you don't like it, you can always use some other alternative, no guarantees that it will be able to match up with what Google can provide.
With that said, who is to say other companies don't do the same thing? You honestly think once you delete an email with another service, say, Hotmail, it is instantly evaporated off their servers? Of course not.
I can understand the concern over storing deleted email. But, keeping caches of web content is a bad thing? Some (like me) would argue that deleting old, cached content would be analogous to burning books. The more history, the better if you ask me.
sig: sauer
Everyone should always assume that anything they post on the internet will be somewhere forever. Any email they send or receive might well be duplicated somewhere else as well.
I guess we're going to find out if things like google searches are going to bite people in the future or not. This feels like Patriot Act stuff to me, potentially, they way that libraries and book stores can be required to provide information about your reading habits. As a writer, I really don't like it. What if I want to write a book featuring terrorist villians, and do a lot of "suspicious" searches doing my research?
It's troubling to me.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Keep in mind Google's motto is: "Do No Evil". Making it possible for others to do evil is thus acceptable under the terms of the motto.
Google is allowing you to use their equipment to do searches and you're surprised they're keeping the results?!
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The article may have a point. Of course, that point is it's own counterpoint. How often have people used things like Google's cached copy of data or the Wayback Machine to prove that a company really did say or claim something after they'd removed or altered the claim and denied ever saying/claiming the original? Google's long memory cuts both ways, and I think it's too useful for keeping track of things to give it up just because it might track my things. And of course it can also be used to counter people who might claim I changed my tune or concealed something when I didn't.
Does it really matter? It's on the Internet, so it's accessible from any country.
Just ask USA-based Linspire, Inc., if it matters. (Microsoft forced the company, then known as LindowsOS, Inc., to stop doing business in Benelux and with Benelux citizens -- no matter where in the world they had addresses -- under their former name.) The 'Net and absurdity-friendly countries mean that the court system of one country can be used against a 'Net-based company in another country, even if none of the parties involved have physical presences in the one country.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
On today's front page so far we've had:
OSS: Europe vs. the USA
Gaming: Nintendo vs. Sony
Gaming: PCs vs. Consoles
Gaming: Sex & Gender vs. Gender
Platforms: Apple vs. Intel combined with MAC vs. Linux.
Google: New feature
Google: Owns all your data, again.
Linux & Apache: Used by popular (real) news site (wow).
Next up:
Flames vs. Yawns vs. News, the slashdot version of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Sure, this is a troll, flame whatever. But isn't that what we do here lately?
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