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."

Comments

Gotta love it.

[imboboage0]

Here's everything you can read. Unless you're a subscriber to TIME.

It's time to make some big decisions, so the Google guys are slipping on their white lab coats. After eight years in the spotlight running a company that Wall Street values at more than $100 billion, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are still just in their early 30s and, with the stubbornness of youth, perhaps, and the aura of invincibility, keep doing things their way. So the white coats go on when it's time to approve new products. For a few hours, teams of engineers will come forward with their best ideas, hoping to dazzle the most powerful men...

TIME Magazine subscribers, log in here to continue reading

Personally, if GMail, Google Search, Image Search, and Google Desktop are results of things done their way, I'll take more of it; I use all of those on a regular basis.

Googling Google

[stuffduff]

If you google Google you will see a list of critics, detractors and alternatives, after a few pages of Google top ranking itself. While there are some crackpots there is also some pretty interesting stuff; certainly worth the effort.

Does going public effect the level of trust?

[plebeian]

I was wondering if anyone else questions the value of Google as a publicly traded company. As a private company the company could afford to take more idealistic stands and just work through the backlash. Now that they are beholden to a bunch of fickle investors that over emphasize the bottom line. Does "Don't be evil" take a back seat to making profits?

Can we trust Time magazine

[LarsWestergren]

This is offtopic, and I don't mind much if it is modded as such, or even flamebait (because it is prehaps needlessly political). That said -

As a geek I love Wikipedia and how the net has given me information at my fingertips. A few sites have censored themselves, but the Google cache usually reveals this. Very gratifying. But now that Google has become so dominant, and is helping China to censor stuff from their citizens, do they really deserve our trust? Can we really trust ANY online media? If we don't have hardcopies, how can we guarantee that information isn't altered or wiped out for ever? In 1984, there is a whole ministry that works with throwing stuff into "the Memory Hole" that the regime doesn't like. Now it might be possible to do it with a press of a button.

A pretty nasty example of this comes from Time magazine itself:

A composition instructor at the University of California at Irvine got a disturbing email from a friend who was searching Time magazine's digital archives looking for a certain article written by George Bush Senior and his Defense Secretary, Brent Scowcroft. In that article, the two men purportedly explained why they decided not to occupy Iraq in 1991. Their reason was that such an action would have exceeded the UN's mandate to remove Iraq from Kuwait , and would have destroyed the precedent of an international response to aggression. They went on to argue, in the March 2, 1998 article, had they chosen to occupy Iraq in 1991, the US would probably still be occupying a bitterly hostile land.

The article, in today's light, seems like a clear rebuff to junior's invasion. But the article is gone. It's no longer in Time's digital archives - as if it never existed. The Irvine instructor decided to charge her students with the task of verifying the existence or nonexistence of the article. As it turned out, the article was in fact real, and was still archived by a number of subscription-accessed library research databases - but it was no longer in the Time archives. Interestingly, none of her digital-age students thought to look for the paper copy of the magazine in the library. The instructor did, finding not only the missing article, but also finding that editors changed the titles on many of the articles remaining in the Time archives.

Time's post-facto editing is especially disturbing since it shakes the very foundation of library sciences. An archive is a collection of past works. By definition it must be left intact. Archive managers have no right to edit history. In this case, Time blew their chance to censor this story in 1998.

The whole article I quoted from is here.

Re:Can we trust google with our "secrets"?

[quokkapox]

As much as we all have loved them we need to accept that the glory days of the internet being a warm protective cloak of anonymity are coming to an end, much in the way that "mundane less adventurous settlers" made law enforcement tame the wild west.

Speak for yourself. I am warm and comfortable in my own cloak of anonymity, with my own level of protection, and I realize that one simple mistake could compromise one of my identities, and possibly my entire house of cards. It's complicated, but you can remain anonymous on the internet.

It takes some effort to do it properly, just like anything else in this world.

Secrets?

[PinkyDead]

Just curious, but what exactly are these all so precious secrets that need protecting.

Obviously, if you're living in Area 51 this doesn't apply. But for the vast majority of people what do we really have that is so important.

The big one is of course salary, I know a lot of people who are really secretive about this one. Why? Who cares - it's really only interesting if your raking it in - in which case it's probably published in some kind of company return - or your making the same as any other joe schmo and it's published in some crappy salary review (or close enough).

Second one, deepest emotions/thoughts. Either you've put the on the web through a blog or you've not told anyone - in which case until Google Brain comes out, that's where they're staying.

Third, opinions. Everyone thinks that their opinions are unique. Bad news folks they're not, you share them with millions of others - no one cares.

Fourth, shopping habits. So what if the local supermarket knows I buy bread, cheese and eggs. And if they use that information to sell me stuff I want - well all the better.

I'm sure there a loads more types of secret but I'm just at a loss to know what the big secrets that Google can possibly know that we all need to get upset about the erosion of our civil liberties.

Of course, if you are living in a police state and you risk death if the government figures out your real intentions, then this is obviously important. But what do you care, your living in a police state!

Simple answer: no.

[Stavr0]

Long answer:

• I do not trust the US Government.
• The US Government, using the Patriot Act can subopena my secrets from Google without my knowledge or consent.

therefore

• I do not trust Google.