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Can We Trust Google?
theodp writes "Google worries go mainstream this week in TIME's cover story, Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets? Touted as an 'inside look' at how success has changed Larry and Sergey's dream machine, the piece offers some interesting tidbits but in the end is pretty much a softball effort that even toes the mum's-the-word line on the relationship between Larry Page and 'blond, blue-eyed force of nature' Marissa Mayer. Guess it's the least Time Warner could do after pocketing $1B of Google's money."
You cannot expect the people who hear your call and help to fulfill your request to not make a note of it, and possibly associate your request with your current IP address.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
That is the real question.
After several stories written recently about companies having their customer databases compromised, can we really trust any company to keep our data secure?
I would say no.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This article is stupid gossip with almost no content. I don't really care who's dating who. I expected an honest article Google's business dealings, not something lifted from Star Magazine about how Brad is mad at Angelina.
AccountKiller
First of all, I think the link to the article is misleading. Okay, I didn't read all ten pages but did it actually discuss whether or not we can trust Google with our secrets? Or did it actually talk about Google's current trend and their "Do no evil"-vision.
Secondly, why would you trust a third party with your secrets? "Hey John, I got this really secret business plan that must not under any circumstances fall in to the wrong hands. I'll use my web-based free e-mail address to mail it to the necessary people and not use our secure corporate network instead." "Yeah, good idea."
Stupid, I say. If it's a secret, keep it a secret.
Private centralized search engines are a threat to free speech if the world becomes too dependant on them. Its not such a big deal now, but I think we need to think about it as sites like Google become integrated into more and more applications, like Firefox.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets?
So far Google has been dealing with two different sets of data through its products:
1. Our (seemingly) anonymous search queeries, through Google search.
2. Our private documents, through Google desktop search.
What do you trust Google with?
So far, they have said no to the US government to keep your #1 private.
If you haven't opted in to #2, then so far you haven't even exposed yourself to the issue of trust with Google beyond 1.
People in China, of course, have a different form of trust relationship with Google for #1.
Those are 3 separate issues.
...is no. YOU cannot trust anyone other than YOU with YOUR secrets. Why would we be concerned with whether or not we can trust a commercial organization such as Google with our secrets? If you use Google's tools, as I do, and love them, as I do, don't have an expectation of privacy even if it is stated. If you need privacy, have a separate computer or a separate boot instance on your computer (bootable ISO perhaps) and keep things compartmentalized. Google has some awesome tools for day to day computing and it's silly not to make use of them. The inclusion of your "secrets" is not a requirement nor is it wise.
No.
But why would we need to trust google anyway?
Google does it's job and does it well, but if you need secrecy, you shouldn't trust anybody that doesn't have a personal gain in keeping your secret safe.
If Google were to go bankrupt if it ever revealed my secrets, I'd trust them. But not any sooner.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Better question, who's putting their secrets on web pages that Google can index? These are web sites. They are supposed to be publicly available.
"pretty much a softball effort"
Of course it is. It's Time.
"In the morning, they noticed a change. The writing on the wall at company headquarters had been changed; it now read:
....to excess'."
'An Animal Shall Do No Evil
From http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/dom/980302
You can find the article online several places, just not at Time's site. http://govsux.com/didnt_remove_saddam.htm
The question isn't only whether or not you trust Google. Or any company, for that matter.
...) and the governments of their countries involved, all of them can snoop and pick at your traffic.
There are many companies (ISPs, telcos,...), people (admins,
And here we are, sitting and wondering if you can trust Google with your private information when we're sending it unencrypted across wire that can easily be tapped. It's kinda like wondering if your can trust your steel doors when your walls are made of plywood.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are plenty of "non-corporate" entities (in the sense that most people on slashdot use the term "corporate") that are in receipt of your private data and information about your history.
Your dentist's office? Your kids' family-run daycare facility? The obscure regional charity to whom you donate things (like money)? The alumni association that actually directly debits your checking account every quarter? The small professional newsletter that has all of your correspondence? The online forum that seems too small-time to worry about, but which knows every search string you've ever entered while engaged in some flame-war about USB vs. Firewire?
There are plenty of people who through simple incompetence (to say nothing of malice) can use or let go of information about you, your family, and your dealings with the world. "Corporations" actually have more at stake, in terms of their public reputation, stock price, etc., when they make a big mistake. A small-town doctor's office with copies of your checks, links to your prescription and insurance info, etc., is much less likely to be well firewalled or even thinking, beyond locking the closet with the file server, about true security.
To say nothing of the corner restaurant that recently hired some new waiter that's been mag-swiping credit cards after serving you your pasta. Dumb and unethical people operate at all levels of organization, both personally and professionally. I do hosting work for all sorts of individuals, groups, non-profits, and businesses. Believe me when I say that the larger businesses are way more focused on keeping your data battened down than are the others, even though things like messages and credit card numbers flow just as readily into the hands of the smaller, looser, less capable entities every day.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
Because chances are in your lifetime, ownership of that data will change hands.
If nothing else, the current management will die.
You cannot see into the future ergo you cannot trust it to act with benevolence toward you.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Here's what I think is going on. It's not about Google and China or Google and Trust. It's about Google and the US government. Google stood up to the Bush Justice Dept over search records. Today, generic ones, tomorrow maybe more specific ones.
The result? A large stock slide and all this speculation on how Google is "not to be trusted." It smacks of Bush tactics -- turn your enemies strength into a weakness. Trust = mistrust, Bad = good, etc...
Was Time a big supporter of the War in Iraq? Is Time hammering on the latest Bush scandals in anything more than a typical corporate media lipservice kind of way?
And can anyone explain why Google had a sudden, one-time tax hit that no one else predicted? From what I understand, if not for this 40% tax hit in the last quarter, Google would have beat its Wall St. estimates by a penny or two at least. How is it that analysts didn't see the tax hit coming and yet everyone jumped on Google's sudden "big miss?" Is it possible the tax hit was something the IRS "figured out" after a call from the WH?
And what exactly is behind all this "Google is really evil with China" crap? Sure, no one outside the Chinese gov't wants censorship there. But it's China that's censoring. Google has to place physical servers in China to offer any level of quality service due to China's meddling with Google.com and other sites. Servers in China are subject to Chinese law, no matter what anyone might want. So it's a choice between self-censoring by law and crappy service.
For those of you who'd choose "no service" do you practice what you preach? I hope you don't use Chinese products, electronics, clothing. And if the measure of business ethics is whether a given government has done wrong, then why don't you protest all of the other companies that do business with China, or all of the other countries that do wrong, including, at times, the US? Should Google pull out of the US market over Iraq, or secret torture, or unwarranted wiretapping? They tried to stand up to the Bushies, and look what happened so far...
Oh, it's becuase Google said something about evil. Well, I never took "don't be evil" to mean Google had to be the world's Mother Theresa. No one expected them to donate all their profits to starving children, did they? Or to avoid all advertizing because ads are largely misleading (why else would anyone buy this crap?) "Don't be evil," to me, meant "don't be microsoft"--don't screw your competition--play fair and win on the merits. And they've done just that. They label ads, they even label when they're censoring in China, which is about all one could expect.
Bottom line: don't trust Google with your sensitive data. Don't trust anyone. Don't even put it where people can steal or subpoena it. Common sense.
It's the hipocrisy of Google that annoys people the most. Of course, we expect this out of other scumbag companies. But when a company whose model is "do no evil" does it (particularly one that has consciously sold itself as rebellious and free-thinking), the glaring hypocrisy makes the reaction even angrier.
And, in regards to the idea that a company is obligated to follow local laws, that is true. What the company is NOT under obligation to do is business in that country to begin with.
If a country has laws which require its corporations to violate basic human rights, then any corporation doing business with them becomes an active partner in their crimes. There are plenty of countries out there with laws providing for horrible executions, beatings and gang-rapes of women, etc. Any corporation even doing business with such a country, much less turning over personal user information to them, is an accessory to their oppression.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No one but Google hears your request, not everyone in the whole world.
Untrue. Your ISP knows it, some routes know it too.
As succinctly pointed out by another fellow ./ in another thread on google, the media hype may not be 'fair' when it focuses on google but no other company today is waiving a "Do no evil" banner. In the words of one of Yahoo's CEO's: "Well, of course you shouldn't be evil. But you also shouldn't have to brag about it either."
In fact, the very strategy that gained so much trust and support for google may now be backfiring as they try to mediate these conflicts. They need to expand into China, but do you censor? Is that evil? Who assigned Sergey and Page as the moral police? How come they can call the shots on what gets filtered? Couple this with the Patriot Act where google can make all the fuss they want but in the end they'll have to concede and keep mute about it and you get articles like the one we are discussing here.
So personally... No I don't trust google. It's not because of any industry attachments or a failed stock acquisition, its common sense. I'll keep my data on my own hard-drive, I won't index it with a third party tool and I will encrypt my email. Call me paranoid but at least I sleep well.
the indexing of public pages is clearly not the point here