iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Newsletter
Advertising
My main concern is with "finger printing". Is google trying to tie IP addresses with personal identifying information? Is it tracking what I, the person, am searching? Who is it sharing the information with? What will it do with it in the future? What happens if the government supoenas the information? These are the questions that make me uncomfortable with Google.
CommentTuesday, May 29, 2007
All the fears being sparked over Google's dominance in search, along with its land-grab of DoubleClick's data mined consumer information, are really just an illusion.
Personalized search is the key to freedom when it comes to using Google. The company's Peter Fleischer, global policy counsel, said the search giant's policy's put the user in charge of what they share with the company.
 |
| Google Says You Are In Charge |
 |
His op-ed piece appeared in the Financial Times, where Fleischer discussed the function of personalized search, and the challenges in finding a middle ground with its services.
He discussed the concept of context as it applies to how people search. Fleischer cited the example of searching for Paris; one searcher may searching for a romantic European getaway, while another could be looking for love life gossip about a certain hotel fortune heiress.
The more personalization people permit Google to have, the greater relevance their search results will have for those users. That's where the quandary takes place, according to him:
The question is how do we deal with this challenge? Stop all progress on personalized search or give people a choice? We believe that the responsible way to handle this privacy issue is to ask users if they want to opt in to the service. That is why Google requires people to open an account and turn on their personalized search functionality.Though people can turn personalized search off and on as desired, the option to do so is what has been questioned: Why should Google keep data for any reason? Fleischer said there is so much information coming online each day, "more targeted and personal results can really add to people's quality of life."
In other words, better living through Google.
Publish A Comment
| Popular WPN Business Resources |
 |
 |
|
|
|
-
Email Marketing Not Dead Yet
Because email marketing is one of the oldest forms of Internet... -
Jason Falls Predicts Google Will Buy Twitter
It is clear that Twitter is a valuable tool for business. -
Goodbye Vista, Hello Windows 7
Microsoft released its latest edition of Windows on October 22nd to...
     |
bollocks
This is just another case of Google glossing over the reality of how their service really operates. One of the things the data protection agencies seem to have overlooked is that a lot of websites carry one form of Google service or another that provide tracking capabilities behind the scenes, and these are not optional:
- Google Analytics
- Google Adsense
- Google checkout
+ users have the Google toolbar installed, often shipped with new computers preinstalled and increasingly with the PageRank bar activated, which means it sends data to Google.
+ the search engine powers 70% of UK searches
+ Potentially Doubleclick via acquisition.
This means when you add all these services it is practically impossible not to send all your internet usage data to Google without NOT using the internet at all. Addiionally as their terms and conditions state they may merge data from all their services.