Google to Continue Storing Search Requests

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."

Comments

Google == NSA == Data Mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that Google is really a front for the NSA. Think about it, massive quantities of data, searches
that can be corealated and traced back to individual users, gmail storing and 'indexing' all your mail, it's
the governments wet dream.

Just wait until Windows-Live services take off , and G-Drive as well. Why not have all your data ready for inspection
by the nice people at the NSA.

'scuse me, there's a knock on the door, the folks from the black pizza van prolly wanna ask for directions.

From a purely academic view point

[LiquidCoooled]

Storing every single search performed by every person in the world across a whole epoch could pretty much give you the pulse of the world.
Watching as news spreads and worries and concerns grow or when good news occurs or even just good publicity, there are millions of people all adding entries into the real hitchhikers guide.

Google will be almost certain of knowing the current number one chart hit at any location on Earth at any time simply by the concentration of searches for that artist/song, it could follow gun culture or tv plotlines or anything flowing into its servers.

In the right hands, this could become an amazing asset for the whole world. I believe the current owners of google are primed to achieve such a feat.

I however wonder what will happen when Page and Brin are gone or are sidestepped by the government.

Re:The differance

[AchiIIe]

Do not forget that
a) Google keeps a permanent cookie
b) If you ever used gmail, that same cookie has been linked to your permanent cookie

We need something that will keep those results private, something such as:
a) Greasmonkey/adblock setup to disallow google searches access to the cookie
b) Automated searching tools that will pollute ones searches with fakes,
c) Deeper leveled (ie Proxomitron / privoxy ) scripts that clear this out

and while here, I would like to talk about clusty.com, they have a fantastic privacy policy, I encourage you to read it: http://clusty.com/privacy

Re:The differance

[nolife]

Permanent cookie?
I set cookies to delete automatically when closing FF and have used some combination of tools or manually doing it at least weekly for years. I doubt mine is anything close to permanent.

Re:There is a difference

[hublan]

I have it on good authority that AOL saves not only your searches[...]

You don't need good authority for that. An obviousness helmet is all you need.

The difference here is that Google makes its living on an (ever increasing) income of advertisement money, whereas AOL's business model revolves around steady income from their (albeit dwindling number of) subscribers. Google want their data kept private more than you want that particular data kept private (and this is the crucial point in all privacy discussion on Google) in order to keep their core business model intact. All the while AOL are willing to put the exact same data for sale to the highest bidder, since it isn't strictly relevant to their core business model.