Jaiku Bought By Google, Some Fear Privacy Issues

Platonic writes "According to the New York Times, Google's recent purchase of Jaiku, a little-known micro-blog service (think Twitter) might raise privacy concerns due to the automated nature of the web site's services. From the article: "The deal, announced this month, has much of the tech-tracking blogosphere abuzz. Some claim it is the harbinger of a new, truly interconnected world, where a chunk of our existence will migrate online ... Chris Messina, an open-source entrepreneur and founder of the consulting firm Citizen Agency, takes it a step further. In a blog post after the Jaiku deal was announced, he said that he envisioned a world where all information had migrated online, where the address book "lives in Googleland,"'"

Comments

WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[bazald]

It seems inevitable that our information will migrate online. It is unfortunate that it is human nature to fear losing privacy.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[apparently]

and why exactly shouldn't people fear losing their privacy?

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[moderatorrater]

It's actually very fortunate. Privacy is something that I value highly, and yet sometimes I don't mind losing it (I wouldn't mind every one of these posts coming back to my employer, etc). Fighting the loss of privacy will help keep the loss of privacy in check so that, when we reach an equilibrium with the internet, when the change isn't so great, we can sit back and see that we've struck a good balance between public information and the ability to keep things private, for instance, which porn sites we subscribe to.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[sakdoctor]

Are you saying you value privacy. What are YOU hiding?

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[hedwards]

Since when is the fact that a person is terribly dull and fully uninteresting considered private information?

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[apparently]

Your response has nothing to do with the parent's comment. Before entering a discussion, it might be good idea for you to de-ass your head. The air is great out here, and people won't have to yell so loud to reach your ears.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[bazald]

Hey, my first down moderation. How very exciting. As your post seems to be the only interesting reply, I'll respond to you.

You say that one thing we might wish to keep private is which porn sits we subscribe to. I say the reason one might want to keep such a thing private is very indirect. You aren't worried that others will you look at porn or porn of type $(?). You are worried that there will be a societal backlash. The problem is that society doesn't accept common thoughts and behavior as normal. The problem is not that you are losing your privacy. Privacy in and of itself has no value.

At least, that is my opinion. You are free to disagree. Still, moderators, -1 troll is not a substitute for -1 disagree. At least, that is what I read in someone's sig. It sounded right to me.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

They definitely should. It's just that they're using a cell phone, which in terms of secure communication is somewhere between telnet and renting an ad in Times Square. Then they're installing software on it that helps you to make a public journal.

Google knows what you're searching for. That's a big deal. In the USA, we have illegal wiretaps to worry about, nevermind the fact that legal ones are easy enough to get that illegal ones are hardly necessary.

step 1. watch nothing but network news
step 2. make blog posts that are so useless you can automate them
step 3. google: "all your blurry camera phone pics are belong to us"
step 5. now i can blog about real issues, like security
step 6. ???? (0 comments, 10 trackbacks)
step 7. profit

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[king-manic]

You say that one thing we might wish to keep private is which porn sits we subscribe to. I say the reason one might want to keep such a thing private is very indirect. You aren't worried that others will you look at porn or porn of type $(?). You are worried that there will be a societal backlash. The problem is that society doesn't accept common thoughts and behavior as normal. The problem is not that you are losing your privacy. Privacy in and of itself has no value.


Porn is really prevalent with men and semi-prevalent with women. Although it's a short coming of society that such behavior can be seen as a liability even though it is common, it none the less is true. Thus If you wish to keep your subscription to "Norwegian obese midget sex" to yourself it really ought to be up to you. You are judged for the majority of the things you do. Thus many pieces of information may be used to paint you in a negative light. The right to privacy helps you release only the information you wish.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[moderatorrater]

I agree that you didn't deserve that down moderation, and I didn't mean to imply that was the only one. I was using it as an example, like hiding a surprise party from your significant other or hiding your whereabouts from a stalker. Besides, even if society should change (which is another argument), it's not going to any time in the near future.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[Eternauta3k]

That way you wouldn't have to take any measures to stop others from knowing your private stuff.
However, we value our privacy, so care about big broogle.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[hedwards]

I would say that to you, it had a lot to do with the previous post. Which is far more than I can say about your trolling.

I don't personally care when my own friends go to the bank, the grocery store or the laundromat. If the place is robbed while they are there that is interesting, and worrisome as well. Since they are my friends, I would care if they found some sort of new food to try or if they figured out a time when the laundromat is more convenient, but mainly because I know these people.

Microblogging is tedious by its own nature, and whether it is done in a manual fashion or it is done automatically, it is still a tedious and exceedingly dull thing to read. As such if nobody, or very few people, are reading it the amount of damage it can do to ones privacy is quite small.

Private information is just as unread if it is unread on a website as if it is unread in a safety deposit box. Unread is unread, and while the odds of it remaining unread are much greater in the bank, until the information is read or viewed, it is still basically private. Once somebody tries to access the information is when placement makes a difference.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[apparently]

Read the parent fucking post, numbnuts.

"It is unfortunate that it is human nature to fear losing privacy"

Where do you see a reference to "microblogging" in that? The ONLY thing that sentence states is that it's unfortunate for people to fear losing their privacy, and THAT is what I took issue with.

Again, read the parent fucking post, and stop making tangential arguments.

Re:WIll Happen, People Will Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is far more than I can say about your trolling.

For the record, someone pointing out that you're a dumbass isn't trolling.

Jaiku

[jcicora]

I can see the point of people concerned about privacy. However, I think the kind of service discussed in the article, a sort of address book 2.0, sounds pretty cool. Its something I would probably go for if I had a life. And as for the privacy deal, there's nothing forcing people to use this kind of service.

Re:Jaiku

[moderatorrater]

And as for the privacy deal, there's nothing forcing people to use this kind of service. If 90% of the people in the world are constantly updating the site with where they are and who they're with, the site will almost always have your location whether you sign up for it or not.

If 90% of the people in the world are a part of the service that degrades their privacy, the reasonable expectation of privacy gets lowered, and people start thinking that you have something to hide. It's an idiosyncrasy until it's a cop that gets that suspicion.

On the other hand, if 90% of the people in this world are willing to give up privacy for convenience (a very logical choice, one that everyone on this site has made, probably many times), then perhaps the other 10% should accept some compromises and deal with it.

Re:Jaiku

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google bought a gallon of milk, someone would complain about the privacy implications.

OMG! This is scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt many of us could imagine that the online systems we use might migrate online.

Next, they'll be telling us our IP addresses are broadcast TO THE WORLD!

Oh great, just what I need...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

I can see it now... I need that address I saved to google to send that document to that important client but- uh-oh! 404! I love the internet! I'm so glad I migrated all of my personal information to Google!

Re:Oh great, just what I need...

[Joe Tie.]

To be fair, that's one of the nice things about google. They've been pretty good about moving applications they've bought out into gdata, with the offline backup that suggests. Not to mention gears.

Google Coolaid

[Apple Acolyte]

If Google bought my company I'd tell everyone to migrate their whole lives to Google, too.

Re:Just peer pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

only peer pressure will force people to use it

kind of like Myspace - many people only have accounts cause their friends do

fear big brother or don't - it really does not matter cause he is here

Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's recent purchase of Jaiku, a little-known micro-blog service (think Twitter) might raise privacy concerns due to the automated nature of the web site's services.

On the contrary, I'm sure Twitter will be along to assure us that any resulting problems are all Microsoft's fault.

Do your part, don't use Google

[pembo13]

More space for me. On a more serious note, don't put things online if you don't want the world to know. Better yet, assume everything transfered via the internet is world readable (444)

Re:Do your part, don't use Google

[Garridan]

Truer words haven't been spoken (nor written) about the internet. After all, the company you trust today may wind up in the hands of Google tomorrow...

Re:Do your part, don't use Google

[tppublic]

"don't put things online if you don't want the world to know"

My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove.

Re:Do your part, don't use Google

[LordP]

And in the case of Wikipedia, writable (666)

Re:Do your part, don't use Google

[KlaymenDK]

My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove. So true, so true. It mattered little that I guarded my (work) email address like a paranoid, when a "trusted" friend of mine sent a stupid joke email to me. And 70 other people. From Hotmail. (Oh, and our corp spam filter sucks, naturally.)

*takes off hat and takes a moment of silence, for privacy lost by the carelessness of others*

Re:Advice please....

[Pojut]

Next time she asks you to go down on her, say "I will be right back."

Come back with a clothespin on your nose and say "Here goes nuthin'..."

Little late...

[Frosty Piss]

It's a little late to start taking privacy issues with Google...

Re:Little late...

[moderatorrater]

Why do you say that? Google still requires participation from the users or else they'd shrivel up and die. If everyone stopped searching with Google, a large portion of their revenue would disappear instantly. If everyone disabled or white-listed javascript, then Google would lose the foothold in third party sites too. It's the nature of the internet that you can do whatever you wish, and you get to determine what happens in your browser. People use Google because they trust them, and if that trust disappeared so would the company.

Mandatory ...

[foobsr]

From TFA: "This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing." ... "In practical terms, Jaiku's mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing. ... "

It has leaked that there are plans to make the use of the service mandatory for US-inhabitants.

CC.

Blogosphere

[theantipop]

Is there a way I can block all stories involving usage of the word blogosphere? I've accepted blog as the hip way to say webpage, but blogosphere takes it a step too far.

What's next, newspapers are papticles and the news industry becomes the infoknot.?

Re:Blogosphere

[zdzichu]

Remember, that sphere is geometrical object which is hollow. So everyone proudly claiming he is part of blogosphere is empty inside.

So what? Huh?

[decipher_saint]

For those who were as baffled as I at first FTA:

Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, described the service as a "holistic view of a person's life," rather than just short posts. "We extract a lot of information automatically, especially from mobile phones," Mr. Koponen said from Mountain View, Calif., where the company is being integrated into Google. "This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing."

So this tool automatically gathers little scraps of information about a user and draws lines between what it thinks are logical connections (like any good tinfoil hat aficionado might do in a dank basement) into some sort of tag cloud for that user. Ostensibly the use is used by applications as a sort of "stuff about you" repository, so maybe in one application you set your default home address as something when you go to use an application that requires your home address it could dip into that repository and insert it for you.

The pro: It's like having an assistant
The con: It's like having an assistant who works for the FBI

YRO Ad Libs!

[R2.0]

_________ (random company)bought by Google, ____________ (some random blogger) fears _______________ (some wild ass speculation).

Re:YRO Ad Libs!

[jcicora]

I wanna play! Microsoft (random company)bought by Google, tinfoiljoe(some random blogger) fears Armaggeddon (some wild ass speculation).

Google is using OSS to become bigger than MS

[athloi]

See Google reliance on Mozilla. They're using open source software and net standards as a way of warring against Microsoft, Sun and Apple. Soon they will own just about anything, so we the consumers should make a decision now about how much of our data we want Google to be able to correlate from the many different sources (search, blogs, micro-blogs, cloud OS, chat) it has at its disposal, and can reveal to law enforcement agencies.

Re:Google is using OSS to become bigger than MS

[Chosen Reject]

That decision is actually fairly easy to do. Just don't put it online. If you don't want people to know about it, don't make it publicly accessible.

Re:Google is using OSS to become bigger than MS

[Chyeld]

Ok.

All of it?

Phew, that was easy.

Seriously though, omnipotance is only scary when it's one way. If the government knows everything about me, but I also know everything about them, I really don't need to fear them.

90% of the things people are worried over the world finding out about them are things that 90% of the world shares in common with them. And the remaining 10% of the things people are worried over others knowing about them are easily overlooked when you know the 10% of everyone else as well.

Re:Google is using OSS to become bigger than MS

[justo]

mod parent up!

Weak article.

[kebes]

I usually avoid commenting on how bad an article is, but TFA was frustratingly fluffy. I had to read halfway through before even having a vague idea what the company in question actually does. To save others the trouble, allow me to condense the article down into only the meaningful sentences:

Google [acquired] Jaiku, a small Finnish start-up active in the obscure field of microblogging ... Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, [said] "We extract ... information automatically, especially from mobile phones" ... In practical terms, Jaiku's mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing. ... a live diary, constantly updated so that we can see, on our cellphones, where our contacts are and what they are doing.

And the worry is, apparently, that this kind of live updating information (via mobile devices) will be an invasion of privacy. Of course it will be. But, people will learn what intrusions they are willing to tolerate, and take it from there. Take Facebook as an example: many people put all kinds of personal details on their profile. Others set their privacy settings quite high, so only their closest friends can see anything. Others don't use Facebook at all. At the end of the day, users will simply activate features to the extent that they find them useful. A close-knit group of friends might quite enjoy keeping track of each other so that they can meet up at a concert. Privacy-conscious people will disable all those features, of course. Most people will learn enough about the interface to activate/deactivate these features as desired.

I understand the danger of having a single company (Google in this case) having easy access to comprehensive data about your life (location, email records, search habits, etc.). And I firmly believe that people need to educate themselves about the dangers of releasing too much personal information. But I fail to see how this recent Google acquisition is cause for great concern. Mobile devices are increasingly useful. So are social networking tools. Merging the two is an obvious next step, and a step that Google is taking.

Re:Weak article.

[OneSmartFellow]

Jaiku - because YAWN (Yet Another Wiki Network) was already taken.

Re:Weak article.

[Anonymous Coward]

A fourth group uses facebook, but makes no guarantee about how "accurate" their contact info is.

If Google didn't have direct access to the info, they'd still be indexing it. The tubes that make up the internets are see-thru.

Something tells me all of these people talking about google + program they installed on their phone = zomg sky falling (the American ones anyway) will conveniently forget to vote in the national elections. NSA LOL!!11!! (Cuz yeah, jaiku matters. Right.)

Re:Weak article.

[Rexdude]

I've used Jaiku. It's like a combination of Twitter and an aggregated feed publisher. You can register all your 'places' on the net, and it publishes a consolidated RSS feed about your activities. For example, you can add your del.icio.us bookmarks, your Flickr photo stream, your last.fm 'recently played' music, or any other feed (say from your blog), and any updates to any of these are published as one combined feed. You can add other Jaiku users as friends and view similar updates from them.
They provide a mobile application (Nokia S60 3rd ed. is supported currently, don't know about others) that lets you publish messages like Twitter. This also integrates with the phonebook, so you can enter the Jaiku ID for your friends, and get an update of what they're doing. The mobile app only shows what updates your friends have made to Jaiku, i.e. it won't provide details of their other feeds.
It's an interesting app, somewhat like Facebook's 'news' page, lets you publish minute by minute details of whatever you're doing-if you're so inclined. And of course, your Jaiku page is accessible by anyone, so much for privacy.

When was the last time you got a 404 from Google?

[wsanders]

I don't think Google is capable of giving a 404 anymore, short of Global Thermonuclear War (TM). Of course, when Global Thermonuclear War breaks out, that's when you need your address book the most, but good luck with your phone working then, either.

Don't you understand the Internet 2.0?

[Colin Smith]

I had to read halfway through before even having a vague idea what the company in question actually does. With 2.0, you don't do! You just are.

Re:Don't you understand the Internet 2.0?

[buswolley]

In Soviet Russia, You just aren't what you don't not (2.0) do.

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Or a new wave of massive DDOS attacks?

Profit

[gammygator]

1. Google buys some somethin' or other. 2. OMG!!! It threatens your privacy. 3. ??? 4. Profit!

Jaiku haiku

[benhocking]

Jaiku, blogger site Once alone, now of Google Privacy, evil

Chris Messina Rebuttal To NY Times

[mmurphy000]

Here is Chris Messina's blog entry on his inclusion in the NY Times piece.

In a nutshell, he doesn't like the NY Times' headline.

So, to put it simply, there are no "new" privacy issues raised by Google's acquisition of Jaiku; it's simply the same old ones over and over again that we seem unable to deal with in any kind of open dialogue in the mainstream press.

Twitter??

[Anonymous Coward]

"think Twitter"

Oh please God, no....

Re:Twitter??

[Joe U]

Google is going on some convoluted anti-M$ M$ M$ OMG M$! rant?

Wait, there's a website with the same name as that asshole.

I'm not human!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh...

This seems a little strange to me. Blogger worrying about whether or not I'll find out about the antics of their pet cat?

What am I missing here? Seems blogging is the antithesis of privacy.

-mcgrew

PS- GOD DAMN IT! I posted a comment to a story five stories down, went to get some dead cow at McHeartattack, came back and I'm STILL getting a slowdown cowboy. FUCK! This is absurd!

It lives both in Googleland, and...

[Anonymous Coward]

he said that he envisioned a world where all information had migrated online, where the address book "lives in Googleland,"

Now all your data will live forever in both Googleland AND the NSA's data mine.

If your data is ever used against you, just remember the mantra of the conservative: "no one could have forseen"... "no one could have forseen"... "no one could have forseen"... Chant it enough times, and you will eventually start believing.

Gotta catapult the propaganda!

What happened to healthy paranoia?

[jhRisk]

Remember the uproar from the PIII chip serial numbers? How about the GPS tracking enabled in phones? We didn't even know what they had planned but the fact they existed and could potentially be used to track us was enough to foster consumer action that eventually made it possible to at least disable them. Granted in those cases the fact we had no way of disabling it was an important aspect but my point is that we had issue with it in principle. Unfortunately over the years I've noticed a decrease in healthy paranoia... or is it just me?

Google IMHO started to break this healthy paranoia by putting out a product that will index your email on their systems for an undisclosed purpose... and we ate it right up because woohoo it's a ton of storage and Google does no evil! This IMHO is but another probe to see how much they can get away with. I see it much like M$ and what they can get away with antitrust-wise, the RIAA and legal process, etc.

Besides privacy concerns, do we now need antitrust-like legislation regarding how much information about a person's life a single non-governmental agency can hold? This is not nearly as obscure as a PII serial number in terms of how dangerous, easily misused, etc. yet instead of being in an uproar we're "questioning" it. Replace Google with almost any other company (except Apple due to Jobs' reality suspension field) and I'd bet the "questioning" would be more like an uproar.

Beware the wolves in sheep's clothing... and, no, I'm no one's fanboy as in my role I have to be platform agnostic.

Re:What happened to healthy paranoia?

[RuthlessMinx]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for saying this.

I know the Apple fanboys and Gmail Sheep don't want to hear it but it needs to be said. Just because a company's motto is "Do no evil" doesn't mean it's living up to it. Just because it may be the best/dominant search engine right now doesn't mean you should use it. Frankly, Google having a monopoly on internet searches is a little frightening. It's like having only one company that controls the TV, only one that controls newspapers, or one that controls radio (oh wait Clear Channel).

Now combine that with all your email. And your mobile phone usage. This becomes the best consumer targeting data in the world. Not to mention a potential land mine of privacy woes.

Re:What happened to healthy paranoia?

[caller9]

Isn't it obvious why they need all this info? They're breeding the AI that causes the singularity.

I think I'm joking, but I probably have overly healthy paranoia.

Re:What happened to healthy paranoia?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Don't be evil," retardo.

Jaiku haiku (now with formatting)

[benhocking]

Jaiku, blogger site
Once alone, now of Google
Privacy, evil

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[moderatorrater]

I know there were some DDOS attacks that brought down Yahoo, but has Google ever been successfully attacked like that? The only time I've ever heard of Google having any sort of problems with malicious users was their insecure javascript running gmail, and that's been fixed.

Re:Advice please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell her that, while cats clean themselves with their tounge, you will not use your tounge on her cat.

Or, you could take the cat to the vet and have the vet figure out why the cat smells.

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[MrDoh1]

You obviously don't use GMail.

Think 'Civil Rights Movement of the 60s'

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to take one striking example, if the parent poster would look back to the civil rights moviement in the 60s and listen to the stories of how people like MLK had to move around in subterfuge to avoid being harrassed, threatened and killed by crazy individuals and/or the government, you might see why not having privacy is a threat to liberty. King's assassination didn't come out of nowhere...he had been expecting it for years. Those rights activists had to do things like check into a hotel under their own name and then recheck in a different hotel later before going to sleep because within hours the news of their location would spread through the grapevine...and that was in the 60s before all the digitization of info. Think of how hard it would be today...you would have to have an employ that was off the payroll using his credit card to reserve rooms under a different name, and you'd have to rotate through them...and even then, algorithms could be applied to figure out who is connected to whom. I'm sure lots of high profile people are practicing this today, in fact. So, if the world becomes more oppressive and we need leaders and activists like King again (and we really actually need them now. where are they? all we have now are unevocative weasels), providing privacy for their travels will be crucial. They won't have their lives all uploaded to google. Sure, all you all with your uninteresting lives and unimportant activities don't have anything to fear...but we need privacy for those people who actually participate in global affairs and who actually affect the world so that they can speak up.

Re:Think 'Civil Rights Movement of the 60s'

[bazald]

Anonymous Coward? How fitting. It is precisely because of cowards that we need privacy. If more people accepted people for who they are, and stood up against people who don't, privacy would have little value.

You are right however that the thoughts expressed in my post were incomplete. They were not poorly thought out or intended to troll however.

Re:Think 'Civil Rights Movement of the 60s'

[h-xman]

If... yes, that's the problem. We live in this real world and not in an 'if-world' - that's why we need privacy and we should protect it. "If more people accepted people..." - yep, maybe... but it's not gonna happen. There is no use using idealistic dreams as arguments. BTW, I think we should be very carefull with the word 'if'. How many deadly ideologies have started by assuming that we would be all happy if... and trying to make some of these 'if's real?

Re:Think 'Civil Rights Movement of the 60s'

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a jerk. Just because an unlogged post is called 'Coward' by the hosting website, does it really mean anything? No. It's a meaningless label, and is more of a joke than anything else. Do you accept the 'coward' BS as gospel truth because you are that impressionable, or because you just like any opportunity to be a jerk? The reason I'm AC: I'm just lazy and don't register an account and don't care if my post gets buried in score:0 oblivion. It's just a silly discussion forum. Mind your youthful testerone rush of careless arrogance and be more polite.

It's About Trust

[rueger]

The idea of Google or Facebook pulling data from my mobile phone and adding it to some on-line profile seems a bit much, although really it's a small and logical step from what places like Facebook do already.

If anyone can pull this off it will be Google precisely because despite some bad press the vast majority of people outside of Slashdot still trust the company to "do no evil."

As we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.whatever, companies will increasingly need to be able ensure that user data is both respected and protected, and will need to offer Facebook-like tools that will let users decide what data will be available for what uses. Very soon we will all demand the option of saying "My regular phone number is available to everyone, but my cel number is restricted to people on buddy list #1, and my MSN handle to people on buddy list #2."

The real seller would be one unified contact list that could be used across e-mail, Facebook, Myspace, and whatever other systems we access regularly. Kind of like what Google already does with their Gmail/Blogger/groups etc ID, or what Microsoft probably hoped for with Passport.

Re:It's About Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Don't be evil," retard.

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Not yet, but as the internet gets more advanced in security, so do the attackers. Forget the DDOS of Google scenario for a second... how about just a DDOS of your own local ISP or, even simpler, no telephone service for a few days. We already rely on the internet a lot... imagine having to rely on it totally for all of your information when so many things could prevent access.

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[Chyeld]

That's what "Google Gears" is for. In otherwords, the only time you should have a problem is if you are not only being DDOS'ed, but on a completely new machine that's never hooked up with your service before.

Dvorak agrees

[athloi]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2204615,00.asp

Google does something, privacy concerns raised

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like every action Google takes raises privacy concerns.

Google is an information company. They do stuff with information. There will *always* be privacy concerns. I don't think that makes Google evil.

Though, as far as I am concerned, Google became evil the day they turned down my employment application.

Nothing to worry about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you've got no friends to hide. /sorry

personal information is worth a lot of money...

[wdavies]

even without concerns for misuse, it's a question of informed consent && a free market for the value of your personal data. Google's self-proclaimed goal of collecting all the world's information is possibly monopolostic and in its economic interest to reduce the percieved value of that information to you.

For example, in exchange for datamining your search and placing highly valuable tagetted ads, Google et. al. gives you free websearch. People get this, and agree to it-- but its probably not so much the case with say Doubleclick beacons showing their page views being synced with their searches...

Slashdot must have...

[reabbotted]

a program that finds Google's newest acquisitions, then writes an article titled "X bought by Google, Some Fear Privacy Issues."

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[wsanders]

I use gmail for all my email. It has never been down as long as I can remember.

Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for non-monetizable, zero-revenue Web 2.0 ideas!

"Look Mr. Venture Capitalist! When I give stuff away, I get millions of 'customers'! I'm brillo!" ... I've seen this movie before.

Re:When was the last time you got a 404 from Googl

[MrDoh1]

"I use gmail for all my email."

I do to, and all I can say is you've been very lucky. I've had 6 or 8 GMail outages, some for 30 mins, some for a few hours. Not in the distant past either. The most recent outage for me and my accounts (or, probably the server my account was on) was about 3 months ago.

Go search Google Groups. You will see lots of people that get random messages from GMail saying it's down. There's some people in those groups where GMail has been down for days at a time.

For you, GMail won't work. Same PC, another user logs into a different GMail account and it does work. I've never seen it go down for everyone, but don't think for a minute it doesn't go down for people all the time.

One more closed service

[jj421]

I have to admit, I am getting a little sick of Google purchasing Web 2.0 sites and closing them to new users. I was literally on my way to register when I found out that Jaiku had gone the way of GrandCentral...

Micro-Blogging Alternatives.

[TuxOtaku]

Oh well, guess everyone will dump Jaiku. I know I have....It's all about Pownce for me now. Hate on Kevin Rose all you want, his take on micro-blogging is MUCH better than Twitter and Jaiku.

Jaiku AND Zingku

[kbahey]

Actually, Google bought two mobility sites: Jaiku and Zingku, not just one.

This may be in anticipation of the launch of the gPhone, rumored to be launched end of this year.

Haiku?

[IcebergSlim]

Like farts in the wind
Your data floats free from you
Your porn's now public