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Mozilla Exec Urges Switch From Google To Bing
Andorin writes "Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, has published a brief blog post in which he recommends that Firefox users move from using Google as their main search engine to Bing, citing privacy issues. Disregarding the existence of alternative search engines such as Ask and Yahoo, Dotzler asserts that Bing's privacy policy is better than Google's. Dotzler explains the recommendation with a quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time...' Ars Technica also covers the story."
Choices, choices.... Do I hand over the care for my personal privacy to Beelzebub or Ba'al?
The Long Now Foundation
A full comparison of alternate search engines instead of recommending just Bing would have been a better statement. He could have lined up Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc and compared privacy policies side by side for the people he's speaking too.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Anyone who thinks, for even a second, that Microsoft will respect your privacy _more_ than Google is a fool. I'm fine with anyone having an issue with Google's policy's regarding personal data but for anyone to think that Microsoft will be better is simply laughable.
Sounds like fear of Chrome
Hell, charge money for it as a value-added service to route the search requests through their anonymizing server, which they promise not to log, for the paranoid user. I'd feel a lot better doing that than using some dubious Tor node.
The problem with a pay-based anonymizing server is that they have to get money from you somehow. That alone leaves a bit-trail which can be traced by the government, and in many countries the governments are actually mandating that commercial service providers keep logs. So, for the truly paranoid, I don't see how a fee-based anonymizer is superior to Tor. With Tor, if you're willing to use multiple nodes (and accept the resulting huge performance hit) then it seems to me you get better security than using a single commercial anonymizer.
Switch from Google to MS, because of PRIVACY issues?
I would like to point out, that Microsoft has come under horrendous fire because of their business practices and privacy and other things as you all know. Now because they realize that they are in fact losing (although slowly) market share to F/OSS because of these issues - the EU has been really hammering Microsoft, MS has been becoming more sensitive to the privacy issue. It seems like whenever I do anything with a MS product these days message boxes pop up stating what data and where they are sending it and whether I would like to opt out, decrease certain parts of the data, or just send it all. Why even with my Visual Studio Beta 2, there were all these statements regarding what they'll be collecting.
What I'm saying is, when it come to my privacy, I'd trust Microsoft before Google - but that's as far as I trust any organization.
I would also like to point out that while all of you are fretting about your searching habits and what porn site you guys re visiting may be tracked by Google or whoever, the credit bureaus and your bank is sending your: SSN, dob, name, address, past addresses, spouse's name, mother's maiden name and other very sensitive information all over the World. I had an issue with a credit report and I settled it with a very nice woman in India - I think - her accent was muddled. She refused to give me her location because of "security reasons". That was Trans Union. Banks offshore quite a bit of their back office processing.
MS and Google are far far off of my radar as far as privacy issues and for "evil" business practices.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
lolll...right up until you find out that you weren't employed by Company "A" because their personnel director - a devout Baptist - ran a background check and stumbled across the number of searches that you do for cheerleader-specific porn.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Yes, I'm sure Google's traffic will nose dive immediately and they'll mend their ways once me(*) and thee switch to Bing.
* Disclaimer: me and thee excludes me.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Bitter Executive is bitter about Chrome.
Anyone who worries about privacy on the Internet shouldn't be on the Internet. I admire Schmidt for his honesty. I worry more about those who talk about keeping privacy while at the same time profit from it.
Every feature you hate somehow leaks your personal data to Google if you aren't careful. Interesting co-incidence eh?
Also does Adobe and Apple really need couple of cents from Google? Adobe Flash which has way bigger market share than Google comes with toolbar option selected by DEFAULT. You know the deal with impossible to change Google search on Safari/OS X.
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
Isn't that their job?
Free Martian Whores!
If someone like Asa suggests using a Microsoft technology because your company currently looks more evil than "satan himself" (remember?), you should look to mirror and ask what is wrong.
Two items. One, Schmidt's quote was taken out of context. He was referring to "do"-ing a search something you'd rather not be known, because ALL the search engines keep records and ALL of them are subject to subpoena.
Two, "Firefox" isn't making a change - this is one person expressing an opinion. If the organization was that concerned, they'd drop Google as the default browser.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Alternatively we come to a more honest world where everyone realises that pretty much everyone looks at porn.
And if he tries to pull that on you in the interview you whip out your phone and google him and fine he's a fan of MILFs and you then both compare favourite websites. You then look up who else he has looked up and find that they had far more dodgy tastes than you do and use this to your advantage in the salary negotiation phase of the interview.
Power and knowledge are only scary when the few have them, as soon as everyone has them then that's a lot less worrysome...
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
i'm sorry but what the hell are you searching for that gives you viagra and porn?
Sure, theres that search everyone does once in a great while where they go "oops, definitely shouldn't have googled that", (my recent one was the audio/video app "g-spot")
but for the other 99% of the time the results are incredibly relevant. other spam sure, (like when i search for an electronic component and just get tons of keyword hits at greymarket sites), but viagra/porn?
Schmidt was warning users about the risks inherit in using ANY search engine "including Google" and that governments can access data kept by search engines in the future. Dotzler's reaction is truly cringe worthy.
He then goes on to say "There is no ambiguity, no "out of context" here." right after COMPLETELY taking the quote out of context. This is ugly.
It might suck until you found another job, but at least you didn't end up working for some religious tight ass.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
That's just what the marketeers are trying to persuade the 'facebook-generation' - I'm sure that generation's kids will value privacy, what with all the horror stories their parents tell them.
Which is why Google's CEO had a point, however close he was to the idea that mattered - if you don't want Google to know something, don't tell them. The same goes for the rest of the internet. Hopefully common sense prevails - it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know what you might want to keep tucked away, out of your logged-in Google searches. Searches for anything Google doesn't need to know about are better left to an anonymous search engine.
I don't think Google is any different from any company, to be honest, and I don't tell them anything they don't need to know about me. I still think Schmidt's quote was turned from a fairly mild statement (if it had been communicated properly) into a fearmongering rampage, but if it made somebody wake up and start being smart about what they post, I'm all for it.
You think. Privacy of human life has more diverse things than affinity to porn. You might have a disease that you wouldn't prefer everyone to know about it. That could be a bad thing you might like to hide, but you might also prefer to hide positive things about yourselves in order to normalize your relationship with other people. Only when social interaction is at zero level (as we slightly start to have with facebook generation) your notion about privacy can be considered okay.
No, Google does and always has taken user privacy seriously. But the fact is, and Schmidt is being quite frank, here, they don't have the right to deny requests from law enforcement agencies, and as long as that's true, no company will fail to communicate everything you've ever done to the feds whenever they want to know about it.
Look at it this way: would you expect Balmer to point out that giving Microsoft any information about you would ultimately lead to it being in the hands of the Federal government? No, of course not. Microsoft will quite happily hide that fact from you and make you feel more secure. Google will warn you about it up-front, but they ALREADY LOST THAT CASE IN COURT (yep, Google tried to refuse to hand over search histories).
So, you get to ask yourself: who do you want to do business with: the company that warns you about risks to your privacy so that you can moderate your behavior accordingly or the company that tells you that everything is just fine. Schmidt made me uncomfortable, and that's a good thing.
Just because there's nothing wrong with what you do today, doesn't mean someone won't decide it was wrong tomorrow.
You mean when Microsoft rolled over and handed out private information when the Feds came knocking....
Google's CEO was point out that simple fact that when the government wants information, NO ONE is going to deny them. So your best course of action is not to engage in activities that can get you into trouble because businesses are not going to protect you.
twit!
No, marketing's job is to make you want it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
There are only two problems there.
1. Exactly who is "your generation"? You make it sound like it's some uniform Borg collective, where everyone does the same things and realizes the same things. In reality, for every suburban white kid who grew with Facebook and with doing this or that thing, there'll be at least two who grew with fundamentally different experiences. The guy judging you may not be the guy who grew up with porn, college toga parties, and SW like you did, but some guy who grew up sleeping with his arms crossed out of fear that otherwise he might touch himself accidentally at night and JESUS SEES HIM. And who thinks that SW is the work of the devil because it teaches people a different religion. (As opposed to, of course, those of us who think only the prequels and the wookies are the work of the devil because they ruin the whole setup and moral underpinnings of the original trilogy;)
2. Don't underestimate hypocrisy and group-think. People who grew up doing X, and even people who do X every night, might want to see you hanged, drawn and quartered for doing X too.
Preachers who watch gay porn at night (or in a few cases even got caught actually having gay sex), didn't go, "meh, I did it too, and it doesn't affect my work." They then went to the pullpit and preached that gays are an abomination, and the Lord sent us aids as punishment.
Communities who buy far kinkier porn, asked that some porn producer or sex shop owner be jailed for it. They didn't go, "meh, I watch worse stuff at home and it hasn't affected my work or relationships yet", they went more like, "OMG, lock him up for spreading that sin and corruption."
People who did pot in college, and sometimes a long time after it too, push to have others drug tested and fired if they as much as ever were within a mile of someone smoking pot. Or push for tougher drug laws if they're politicians.
Basically the way people react to X has _very_ little to do with "I did X too and didn't affect me", and a lot more with "do I want to be seen as supporting X, or as the guy who's tough on X?" The same guy who might actually chug more beer in a week than you do in a month, may well fire you for appearing on Facebook or youtube drunk in a pool of your vomit once, because that's the company image he wants, and/or that's the kind of guy he wants to be seen as.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...and who listens to some exec when he says, "Use another company because I say so!" and doesn't think for themselves.
There are privacy concerns with Google. Understandable.
There are also privacy concerns with Bing.
Eric Schmidt's quote not only said, "perhaps you shouldn't be doing [bad things]" but also "privacy with search engines in general [is a farce]." This is nothing new! People just want to warhgrhable over it so they have something to talk about during the day. There really is nothing all that new here. Do you think you're not already tracked around the internet in the first place? Thinking anything different would only be fooling yourself.
I think there are more important privacy concerns then someone's enjoyment of porn, which no one is likely to discover anyway.
How about political or religious views which people are far more likely to express on social sites? Perhaps some atheist will decide they don't want you working for them because you're a devout Christian. Or a conservative manager wont hire because they've read up on your liberal views. The discrimination doesn't only go one way. And then there's the bigger danger of people have access to your medical records. Imagine the difficulty you might face if employees know you have a persistent medical condition that might necessitate some time off.
You really couldn't care less, right? You're already at the minimum of caring. If you could care less, then by all means, please start caring less right away.