Is Google too powerful?

[Myrrdin]

Taken from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2786761.stm
From a report of Googles buyout of a weblog software publishing company.

"Google is a privately-owned US company that has a policy of collecting as much information as possible about everyone who uses its search tool.

It will store your computer's IP address, the time/date, your browser details and the item you search for.

It sets a tracking cookie on your computer that does not expire until 2038.

This means that Google builds up a detailed profile of your search terms over many years.

Google probably knew when you last thought you were pregnant, what diseases your children have had, and who your divorce lawyer is.

It refuses to say why it wants this information or to admit whether it makes it available to the US Government for tracking purposes.

And the much-loved Google toolbar tells Google about every web page you look at.

Yet it so dominates the search engine market that no website can afford to ignore it, and it indexes so much of the web that few users think of using another. "

I just wish I had been the enterprising person who registered goggle .com. for us typo infected information seekers.

 

[Lancecastor]

Doubleclick & google will wind up replacing all existing data warehouses and market research companies in the world.

 

[Guest]

Scientology+US Government=World peace.

 

[Gilly Bean]

Actually, I guess I must not be among the majority, but I can't stand google. I use it only as a last resort. I use yahoo for most of my web searches.

 

[Phoenyx]

Just delete the cookie

 

[Guest]

What's the worst thing that can happen though?

 

[Star of Penumbra]

I must be missing something, because I don't see why I should care.

 

[Cuckolded_BlK_Male]

Yes, it's rather scary that people willingly supply google with so much personal information. Over a period of years they should be able to guess what you are going to do before you know yourself. Of course frequent erasure of cookies, and dynamic I.Ps that really are dynamic would help combat this.

 

[Lasz]

Actually, I guess I must not be among the majority, but I can't stand google. I use it only as a last resort. I use yahoo for most of my web searches.

Yahoo uses google and orginizes its searches.
So yahoo, basically is google.

 

[weed]

Fact is, Google works. I get better responses on my searches there than anywhere else.

And I love their news site. I like being able to see what the different papers have to say on similar stories.

Firewalls, a generic ISP and caution putting banking/credit info into your pc are wise practices to protect you from any of the sites that track info. I believe many do in the name of marketing info.

 

[JazzManJim]

Google probably knew when you last thought you were pregnant, what diseases your children have had, and who your divorce lawyer is.

How?

It knows what you're searched, but it doesn't much know anything beyond that. It certainly doesn't know the motivation for your searches.

I stopped reading past this point. It's just another Internet Boogieman story.

 

[Starblayde]

Just delete the cookie

all hail the most intelligent person to read this thread

 

[crappie master]

What about:
Lycos
Looksmart
Hotbot
AltaVista
Webcrawler
and Ask Jeeves?
Are they as invasive?

 

[Starblayde]

What about:
...
Are they as invasive?

they're not as well used... they might have such cookies, but pretty much everyone i know uses google.