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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."
The generation growing up today (the facebook generation) will have no concerns for privacy. They'll laugh at your paranoid concerns about privacy. It will be a better world where people are not scared of this new fangled idea of letting others access your information.
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.
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Whoa, that page has some crazy background. Reminds me of something out of the 1990s.
Anyway, before all the conspiracy theorist posts pop up, this looks like it's just a post on his personal blog, which includes posts about his beard and other random things. Even if Mozilla was officially endorsing and getting paid for Bing searches, Google already has the same deal so there's no issue there.
Of course, this could just be a member of the Mozilla community jumping at the first chance to get back at Google for making Chrome... hmm...
I actually applaud Firefox for this change.
What change? They didn't change anything.
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
You know Microsoft's privacy policy isn't all that better. They still associate your search with your name and ip address for 18 months after you searched. 'Fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain' is a bit of a hyperbole, wouldn't you say?
Switch from Google to MS, because of PRIVACY issues?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
Dear customers. We noticed that it's not healthy to eat heavy doses of arsenic. Please switch to hydrogen cyanide.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A point the article makes is that Microsoft, as a corporation that has dealt heavily with many things outside of just search, is very much grounded in privacy concerns and legal matters related to it. They are likely to uphold their privacy policy very strictly on their internet services.
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.
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.
Two things to consider:
1 - When Bush stated publicly that the federal government should have all search data tied to IP addresses, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft handed it over without any official government mandate or court order. They just volunteered your private information. Google refused.
2 - At the same time several of these issues were coming to a head at once (Bush's statement, Yahoo turning in a Chinese blogger, Google being forced by Brazil to give out details on a child pornography ring on Orkut) Google announced they were changing their policies and anonymizing logs sooner to protect people's privacy. They said their new anonymization policy was better than anyone else out there. I haven't read them all, so I can't say for certain.
So one company has shown they will fight to protect your privacy until they are absolutely forced (Google didn't even hand information over to Brazil when a judge ordered them to do so initially), and they anonymize their logs sooner.
So why in the world is Bing better for privacy?
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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.
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