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Google to Continue Storing Search Requests

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the careful-what-you-search-for dept.

isabotage3 writes "Although he was alarmed by AOL's haphazard release of its subscribers' online search requests, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt said Wednesday the privacy concerns raised by that breach won't change his company's practice of storing the inquiries made by its users."

6 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Not really bothered, personally... by FunWithKnives · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I, for one, don't mind all that much if Google saves my search inquiries, just so long as they keep the information private and (hopefully) anonymous. Google has also had a pretty damn good track record at doing just that.. Comparing them to AOL isn't even apples and oranges.. More like apples and live grenades...

    --
    "We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
    1. Re:Not really bothered, personally... by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The fear here is whether a government ever forces them to open up. Yes, I mean A government, not just the government.

      http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/04/22 43249

  2. Never? by SandmanWAIX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We are reasonably satisfied ... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google, although you can never say never," Schmidt said during an appearance at a major search engine conference in San Jose.

    Well .. you could if you didnt store them.

  3. Re:False Positives by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the government ever does hunt for people guilty of something . . .

    Who said they're hunting for guilty people?

    KFG

  4. Re:The differance by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what if Doubleclick (may they burn in Hell forever) knows that some guy visits Slashdot, ThinkGeek, and PennyArcade? I figure my privacy is fine as long as they cannot link the activity back to me personally.

    The ignorance in this statement is so staggering that I had to respond and lose the moderations I've made on other posts to this story.

    If you have any account online for which you have ever disclosed your true identity (like in order to make a purchase) then that account information can and will be cross-referenced with all of the tracking data that the tracking companies have been able to put together on you. They are expectionally good at finding those information leaks and putting 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 together to make 4.

    Don't be lulled into a false sense of security even if you are the type to disable cookies. Cookies are not the only way Doubleclick and the like track people. Embedded images, tags, 3rd party style sheets with god knows what javascript, ip address correlation, etc. The bag of tricks is practically bottomless.

    I religiously use the following extensions to Firefox, with almost every site fully locked out, and even then I still leak personal information like a seive:

    NoScript
    CookieSafe
    AdBlock Plus

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  5. Similar to the Gmail network of friends by programmerar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On a somewhat related note: i'm interested in the way Google set up their registration for Gmail. You have to be "invited" by someone else. This means that if they saved all the links between people, which i'm sure they did, they could see the network of people all around the world. They could see how many steps any person is separated from another.

    Like someone said a few posts aboove, all the saved searches do amount to a very interesting sample of peoples minds. In the same way, Gmail registration data will be an interesting sample of human networking.

    --
    Waiting for you by the bridge