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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.
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"
Bitter Executive is bitter about Chrome.
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
Isn't that their job?
Free Martian Whores!
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.
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.
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.
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.