Should you Fear Google? 588
Ponty writes "Google-watch.com is presenting a list of nine complaints about (almost) everybody's favorite search engine. Some of the salient fears are "Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save." and "Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency." The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough."
Google should scare you (Score:5, Insightful)
Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Should you fear Google? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every search, and all other search engines must cease their operations.
Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, the old medical joke applies:
Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!
Doctor: Don't do that, then.
I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wager your privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
I still dont understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is free remember, doenst charge people or companies to be listed and works off a nice referer system for site ranking. Yes its not infalable but neither is anything else so why do compaines keep getting up in arms about it?
From what it seems like to me is that companies are looking for (as usual) the cheap and easy way out on advertising. When their site doesnt rank where they want it to on google, they complain, call them cheats, etc... Well, tuff. Google is a privatly owned company who is providing a free service to others. If they want to black list your name and make sure it never comes up again in their database, oh well. They have that right. Instead of complaining, bringing up law suits, and making entire sites trying to debunk a search engine, why not try and make a good product/service/etc..?
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
All of their practices that are decried in the webpage are either perfectly normal behavior (the cookies) or just not an issue (NSA, etc.)
Spyware? (Score:3, Insightful)
<snip>
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer [...] sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar
</snip>
Seems to me it wouldn't be a very good search tool if it _didn't_ send the query to google
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
You need make no effort to maintain your privacy. As long as you do nothing, your privacy is inviolate (at least by google). It is when you take an active action and hand some third party your information on a silver platter (or a tcp packet) that it is, yes, your responsibility to ask that third part what they plan to do with your gift (there's no contract, is there?) to them.
Nuts (Score:2, Insightful)
The author is obviously an idiot.. (Score:3, Insightful)
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
Umm.. yeah, dumbass.. I can do the same by accessing my Apache logs and further more have a script that would tell me where in the world you're accessing my page from.. please get a clue.. then complain.. tks
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:1, Insightful)
My one strike rule (Score:2, Insightful)
When reading something like this, I look for that one unsupported claim or flaw in logic that allows me to throw the entire theory out and never worry about it again. So, I suppose it's left as an exercise for the reader to determine exactly why they chose to honesty in their privacy policy because of the Alexa debacle and not because of something like, say, that they have no ulterior motive?
Why Google hires spooks... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I recall correctly, Google did advertise for folk with _security clearance_.
One of Google's revenue streams is the sale and support (and operation?) of the Google search technology for private use - such as on a large Intranet.
Somebody who _might_ have a large Intranet, that _might_ wish to use the best search technology around is the US Government.
And if they wanted Google people to manage it, they would need to be security cleared, or at least they would in a similar situation in the UK.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to the article, since number 8 is practically word for word pulled from that loser who's suing them for decreasing his page rank, I'm really skeptical about the motives of this site. Google has no obligations to web masters. They're responsible to people who do searches to return useful results. As long as they continue to do that, then they'll be on top.
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:3, Insightful)
That having been said, they also should be able to retrieve that information, which is what makes them a succesful business.
And I agree, they authors of this complaint list definitely make themselves out to be not the brightest-bulb on the internet!
Google is a huge personal privacy threat (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very simple to correlate search request to a person. Most people will search for their own email, name, phone number, address, etc. to find out what's available on the net. If there is a persistent cookie, then all your search request can be tied together. And blocking cookies may not help if you have a static dedicated IP. Google saves every little bit of information they can,.. forever...
There is no time limit for them to destroy this data.
There is no way you can write them and ask them to delete your records.
There is no way to ensure your information won't be leaked by an employee or seized by court order.
I suspect the big google/china ban thing a while back is because the chinese government didn't want google have access to so much information about all of their citizens, including government officials - especially since the US appears to be half-way in bed with google now. Basically it amounts to spying. The terms of the deal with china weren't disclosed for allowing google back online there - but I bet it had something to do with this issue.
With features like google-bar with pagerank google has access not to every search you've made, but also every page you visit! Even without google-bar, many browsers have a bug that returns the last page visited as the referal when you hit the home button or favorites link. Since google is highly likely to be used this way rather than typing in google.com - they will also correlate this information.
I've used google since their early beta days - but now I'm beginning to think they are on the path to evil weither they intend it or not. The fact they are a private company makes them even scarier - no public disclosures of how they are using their data. And with something like 80% of all searches going through google, they have collected a lot of data. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Re:Wager your privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Self serving is a good American value, up to a point.
And that point is when it begins to conflicts with other people's abilities to live their lives in the way that they choose to.
Once self serving turns into self serving at the cost of others, that IS indeed evil.
Re:Number 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
This has other advantages like getting Google in the language you speak without customizing any settings.
"IP delivery based on geolocation" isn't generally a bad thing IMO, since the whole point is to send users more relevant information. Even if that information is advertising, if you're reading ads anyway, it makes more sense to be reading relevant ads...
As I've said before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Google's only big enemies appear to be either A) Contrarians, B) Snake-oil marketers, or C) paranoid nutcases.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you pay for the locks on your doors?
Do you have blinds or curtains on your windows? Did you pay for them?
Do you have window tint on your car? Did you pay for it?
Privacy, like other perceived rights, must be preserved, protected, and defended by the individuals valuing those rights. Griping to the powers-that-be doesn't help, because they don't always share your interests.
Get used to paying for, and possibly fighting for, your right to privacy.
Geolocation by IP address (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... in some other cases, this is considered a good thing. eSellerate [esellerate.net], for example, does the same thing with their multi-currency support. If you were in the UK, would you want to see the currency default to USD and have to switch to Pounds, or would you rather have it default to Pounds?
Whoop-dee-doo. (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't on my machine, nor any other which doesn't accept cookies.
2.Google records everything they can
So does every other search engine; this is no secret.
3.Google retains all data indefinitely
See #2
4.Google won't say why they need this data
That's fine, 'cause everyone already knows it's for advertising purposes
5.Google hires spooks
So? Honestly, who cares?
6.Google's toolbar is spyware
They're not the only ones. Look at Gator. They're much worse.
7.Google's cache copy is illegal
OK, legitimate complaint here. A retroactive "remove me from your cache" option would almost definitely solve this, though.
8.Google is not your friend
May I say, "Duh." But they do have a GOOD indexing algorithm. Webmasters shouldn't be trying to "cheat" in the search engine game, anyway.
9.Google is a privacy time bomb
Lotsa great privacy concerns are listed on this page. Excuse me while I run and hide from the irrelevant statistics.
The author revealed... (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy is ovbiously one of the SearchKing [slashdot.org] bunch.
The Cache is the coolest part of Google (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Speed. A copy from Google's server is going to come up a lot faster than one on some remote server with poor bandwidth access.
2) It's a wayback machine of sorts. If I need information that has since been removed due to changing directory structure, expired accounts, or pressure from the Real Big Brother [microsoft.com], I can find it there.
3) Color highlighting! If you have hundreds and hundreds of lines to scroll through, It's a heck of a lot easier to look for color combinations then to do a find on various combinations of the words in the submitted string.
God Bless Google. They've increased my productivity as an admin at least ten-fold.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't forget, you are going to their site for information they have. Not them coming to you.
So they record your searches. So? It allows them to find out what sort of search terms are popular.
Do people ask google questions? Or key words?
Sure, it might look suspicous, but maybe they are just trying to provide a better service in the long run? Some companies do try to do that still.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot and Google Worship - Double standard (Score:4, Insightful)
But, having said that, it's pretty apparent to me that, were this any other search-engine (or product) the company would be absolutely blasted for such intrusive policies. Google's behavior isn't really all that different than a lot of the spyware products already out there, and already assailed by slashdot users.
Google is a useful search engine, but people here need to think objectively about this, rather than letting their google-worship heavily bias them against a company acting about as badly as, say Gator.
Google != Big Brother (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi,
I just came across the page and had a few comments to make and questions to ask.
"1. Google's immortal cookie"
Given that all browsers allow you some control over accepting cookies, and the better ones give you more fine-grained control, allowing you to reject cookies from specific domains. I would say this is a moot point.
"2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration."
Well, the cookie tracking can be resolved as above. It's interesting to note that they don't record my IP address - at work they get my proxy's address, at home they get the addresses of the transparent caches that my ISP uses. I'd say that as transparent caches become more prevalent, that becomes less of an issue. More on this later. Browser configuration? How do they get that (apart from the easily-spoofable UA string)?
I'd also suggest that your ISP does all this as well, especially if you use their proxy, or if they use transparent caches. This is far worse becuase they will be reording *everything* you do on the web. I'd suggest this is a bigger problem right now.
"3. Google retains all data indefinitely"
Can you prove that? If true, it does suck, but they're probably well within their rights to do so. AFAIK, the US doesn't have the more-enlightened privacy laws that the EU and other countries do.
"4. Google won't say why they need this data"
Is that suprising? What do other US companies say when you ask them similar questions?
"5. Google hires spooks"
I'm sure lots of companies hire ex-NSA engineers. Perhaps they hired him because he is a competent engineer? I hope you realise that this point makes you sound like someone with a paranoia disorder of some sort.
"6. Google's toolbar is spyware"
Don't install it then?
"7. Google's cache copy is illegal"
If you don't want something cached, don't publish it on the Internet. Print publishers can't recall magazines and newspapers, why do you expect anything different on the 'Net? If it is illegal, it's probably because the US copyright laws are seriously broken. It *would be good if Google abided by the HTTP cache control headers, rather than resorting to stupid HTML meta hacks.
"8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool,"
Thanks for the insult. You're an arrogant, paranoid, stupid, wanker. I use Google because it gets me results for random questions. I don't use Google to find a place to buy CDs online. The people out there trying to scam Google probably aren't the kind of people I want to deal with.
"9. Google is a privacy time bomb"
I'd suggest the current US administration is a much bigger, more dangerous, more volatile bomb than Google is or ever will be. If Google is a nasty monkey, the Federal US Government is a 900-pound gorilla.
Mike.
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I am a fan of google. I like what they do, and I use their site all the time. I hope the keep going.
HOWEVER, that does not mean that we can just write off the power they have. Since this is slashdot, I think I have a good analogy for you.
Microsoft.
Microsoft is not in any legal sense a monopoly (prior to the court ruling, anyway). No one says in law that you have to use any Microsoft product. Heck, my home machine is strictly Linux, and so far that's legal. But remember a certain court fiasco a while back, and the one bone we got tossed.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
Why did they come to that conclusion? No law says we can't use Linux or Mac. Lots of people do. Most people would agree both are better than Windows.
In the computer world, people are the cause of monopolies.
Not to say they are to blaim, although that may be true at some level. What I mean is, people create the conditions of a natural monopoly through lack of willingness/time/whatever to learn new things. There is a high cost in training time to use anything computer related. Most people have paid that price for Microsoft, and didn't enjoy the experience at all. They wouldn't change if you offered them the perfect OS, because they wouldn't want to suffer through retraining. That's why most Linux GUIs target Microsoft. Not because it's good, but because it's what people know.
Google has a massive inertia behind it. It is now, for many people, THE interface to the web. For many people, they are not going to want to put in the effort to find a new/better search engine even if google starts to do little annoying things. They'll live with it, because it is faster than researching to find a better setup. That also presupposes a better setup, which would be tough. Google has put a lot of work into this.
Thus, Google has power. Not by law, but by market reality. Thus far, they have done the right things with that power. For that they should be cheered and supported, and I'll gladly join that crowd. But no one with real power in a market can EVER be totally trusted, no matter how good they have been to their customers in the past. All it takes is a change of management and the whole thing can go down the tubes. Google is a flashy bandwagon, playing a great song. I love going along for the ride. But if they start playing yellow submarine, I'm ready to dive off. And most people aren't. And that's the (potential) problem.
Fear Google? Fear the corporation. (Score:5, Insightful)
But its also important to not lose sight that Google is a corporation, with investors, debtors and other people who are solely (or primarily) motivated by MAKING MONEY. They're not motivated by some pro-geek/anti-corporate ethos.
So as long as you keep in mind that they might turn around and do something that protects profit first and makes privacy or other goals take a back seat then you'll be OK.
Point by point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disable cookies, or set them to prompt you before acceptance. Problem solved.
2. Google records everything they can:
They provide a service to give you relevant results, and they don't ask for any personally identifying information. There are anonymyzing proxies if you are that worried about your IP being known.
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
So they log IP addresses and your filter settings? If you had to enter personal information to use their service, I'd see a problem.
4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Hello! You already said in your expansion on point two you know why they collect the info! Anyways, I know if I was running a search engine, I'd sure as hell be logging IPs and search terms, dates, times, etc so I could tweak the search engine to provide better results.
5. Google hires spooks:
One, people with a security clearance have been thoroughly investigated and are known to be trustworthy. This in and of itself should give them an edge in the hiring process. Plus, as the article pointed out, Google wants federal contracts, personnel with clearances already will make that process much less expensive. Even if the clearance is lapsed, and they have to run a reinvestigation, the risk of being denied a clearance and wasting the money is far less.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
Google has a toolbar? Anyways, they spell out what happens when you install it, if you don't like the terms, don't install it.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Gee, one short line added to your pages- which any decent text editor can be set to automatically include in your templates or whatever- can stop this completely. The web cache is no different from USENET archives.
8. Google is not your friend:
Gee, they defend their search results against people trying to manipulate the system. Gee, great lack of integrity there... NOT!
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
And what private information do they collect, and what information do they collect that isn't clearly needed to enhance their search results?
Clear FUD. These idiots hate Google simply because its big. They probably tried to subvert the Page Rank system and got nailed for it. Whiners.
I've always wanted this kind of advertising... (Score:3, Insightful)
What do I get in return? Perfect advertising. When I go on the Internet looking to buy something, I'm only interested in that one thing. Undirected target marketing tells me I want to travel, lower my credit card debt, or to change auto insurance companies, but I almost never want those things. When I want to find an analog integrated circuit that decodes the timing signals from NTSC composite video, I go to Google and put in "NTSC composite pin vsync burst chip [google.com]" and I'm graced with "advertising" for the exact product I'm looking for.
Web is intrinsically nonconfidential (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are trully paranoid, then study the way things work on the Web and use anonimizers, proxies, relays, etc. and hide yourself behind those. Nobody is going to work for you to make sure that you web surfing stays confidential
Some companies do cross the line from time to time when they forget TO DISCLOSE that they are collecting information about you, such that even if you wanted to you had no obvious way to find out about what a program or web site are doing.
Yet again, assume that everybody will be collecting info on you, and adjust accordingly. People like to complain a lot about spyware, yet on many occasions they actually do willingly install it themselves. And as disgusting as the spyware is, it often discloses what kind of information it is going to collect.
Going back to the subject, Google achieves the high accuracy of search by *TRACKING* what people find useful. "Is not this outrageous ?!?" some might exclaim. It might be
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is, right?
Right?
You may be right, but I don't like your image (Score:3, Insightful)
And what our ancestors did was go further, and make laws. They decided that just switching doesn't do the job. It appears society isn't so healthy when "just switching" (even when it's possible) is your only redress for some problems.
I like google - and I think the complaints about caching, accountability for penalization, etc. are bunk. But I'll play devil's advocate. It's easy, since my tinfoil hat is already at hand. Google may be mining all that information it collects about your activities just to give you better results, but we don't know that. And since they're by far the biggest game in town, they get near-monopoly benefits for their information gathering scheme.
It's pretty much like if libraries refused to be accountable about their customer records. And if the library was suddenly practically the biggest clearinghouse for information on the planet.
They may not be selling or abusing the information, but they're refusing to say they aren't. You can say it's a private company, they can do what they want, but that's a lack of imagination. AT&T used to be "just a private company" too. Its descendants are _still_ trying to sell your phone usage records.
Of course, there are plenty of people who just don't understand what their privacy is for in the first place. To all these people, how about letting me come on over and hide in your house and watch what you do? I think for most of these folks, once they get a girlfriend/boyfriend... suddenly they're really against it. Well, I don't want to speak for everyone.
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Less intrusive tracking, actually (Score:4, Insightful)
I generally don't worry much about the issues privacy folks raise, aside from keeping an ear open for anything eyebrow raising I haven't heard. In general, I don't care who knows how many bags of instant mashed potatoes I bought last month. (I actually heard a woman almost crying about this on a local news story about grocery store "loyalty" (tracking) cards. Usually this information is used to bring me advertising I'll be interested in, anyway.
But I do practice making things more difficult for the tracking guys, where it's convenient for me. I may not care who knows what about me, but no sense in living in a completely visible fishbowl if I don't have to. So I block cookies that have no use to me, etc.
A long while back I remember noticing that Yahoo was tracking my choices off of their search results page through the use of redirect URLs. That bothered me a bit, and sometimes I would actually type in a URL by hand to avoid giving them the extra information. Usually, I just didn't care.
When I first started using google, I was amazed they didn't do this! No redirect URLs, no way at all to tell what results I was interested in. I appreciated that and took it as a complement: they were treating me like a person, not like a test subject. It amazes me people want to complain about Google's data tracking; what about Yahoo's?
Re:Actually.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why you actually should fear google (Score:3, Insightful)
Information is useless unless you can find it. And if someone (government, corporation, conspiracy, etc) is going to control the internet, then Google is the place the start. Maybe not now, but what happens when they are publicly traded? Or in 10 years when their ideals have melted? We rely extensively on Google and a handful of other search engines to make the internet work, how long will they stay reliable? More Here [abe1x.org]
"Who is Google-watch.org?" (Score:5, Insightful)
He runs NameBase [namebase.com], a search engine for citations. From the Salon article:
"When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. "
So, in other words, Brandt built a search engine... but really wants to just build a database and use Google's search engine to search it - he realizes that they have a better search engine than his, and wants to use it to search his entire site, and is pissed that they aren't doing his business for him.
Additionally, Brandt has a political agenda that he wants Google to enforce: (also from the article)
"In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld." "
This guy is a kook and a troll.
-T
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
No offense but, fuck off, _I'm_ eating your cake right now.
(You do get that right, you don't want something copied then don't put it on the fucking internet moron)
Re:Google Data Retention Policies (Score:4, Insightful)
Should you fear Google? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument is fine when the law is fair and reasonable, but let's just say hypothetically that there is something you like to do, that is one day perfectly legal, but that becomes illegal - say because you moved states or countries. Hemp law is an obvious example here. All of a sudden you have become a law breaker, and depending on where you moved you could face harassment, a fine, jail, torture, or death - all for behaviour that was perfectly legal, and still is perfectly reasonable to you personally.
many laws are only on the statute books because they give the state the power of selective enforcement, that is they can choose to prosecute or not based on all manner of reasons which may have little if any relationship to the law itself. In Holland it is not legal to smoke grass, but there is a policy of selective enforcvement. If, hypothetically, the Dutch govt. knows you are a pot smoker and takes offence at something you have done - like pissing on the american embassy in museumplein (not likely now they've put a bloody great tank outside it) - they can arrest you for posession of pot, or at least threaten you with that. Drug laws in particular are always used for this type of social control.
so while "I don't break the law, thus do what you like" seems like a valid argument, it fails to recognise that many laws are stupid, and should you find yourself in disagreement with a stupid law, you must resort to criminal behaviour if you want to resist.
each new law creates a new class of criminal.
Re:You're never paranoid enough... (Score:1, Insightful)
This planet is littered with the graves of those who thought the same, boring people exterminated for being educated, expressing an unsupportive position or even wearing reading glasses. To believe you're safe because you're not interesting is to believe people are always rational, which is irrational and historically refuted by the 20th century.
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft.
I have to disagree with your analogy, because there is nothing google has done and can do (at least that I am aware of) to enforce it's monopoly.
If google suddenly becomes crap (either because of the user experience or their behind the scenes actions), then there is nothing to force you to keep using google. There are however many reasons that force lots of people to keep using Microsoft products against their will.
Re:Should you fear Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft uses all kinds of methods, including changing the data formats, hiding protocols etc, that keep someone locked in.
Once you use MS to run something, you're stuck with it pretty much.
Google, on the other hand, runs right out of any browser around. If you want to swap, you can run the same query in another engine, no problem, no hassle.
IF, however, Google started forcing you to use a special browser to access it's site, which disallowed other browsers on the system, and prevented you accessing any other search engine, I'd have to say, yes, they were like MS at that point.
I don't know if they're evil, or not.. I just prefer to think of them as handy. They can do what they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, and they don't play silly buggers with my system, and make claims to it. If it starts to be useless, I'll go onto the next thing that's not..
For now, however, it's very useful. And I like it.
Malk
Anonymous surfing sites (Score:2, Insightful)
If I were the CIA I'd be running a bunch of those sites...
All web toolbars are spyware (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Block the cookie. Whoops, are you using IE?
3) Block the cookie.
4) Hand-waving.
5) Hand-waving.
6) Toolbars are spyware. That's the point. Most of them are adware too. How do you think they pay for the development of Free Nifty[tm] Toolbars? By selling your personal data.
7) Why should I fear it then? I am a browser, not a webmaster. Anyway, I'll let the courts decide this. If you don't want questionable material showing up in Google's cache, don't put it on your site in the first place. If someone else did it, you deleted it, and it still ends up in the Google cache, A: you didn't create the content and B: you're not hosting the content (Google is). So you're not responsible.
8) I guess I'll have to stop going over to Google's house, then. I thought he really liked me. Seriously, so what? Google is a private enterprise, not a government entity. If they want to stop people from cheating, let them use any means in their power.
9) This is a valid concern, but if you did (1), (2), or (3), you're not involved.
Damn Right (Score:3, Insightful)
- IP
Re:Wager your privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it's just my cluelessness when it comes to business, but I don't understand why you would think this is necessarily true.
Self Aware (Score:3, Insightful)
So when someone sez "no will or motive of its own" I always have to ask the important question here - "How would we know?" Since there's no reason for us to suppose that intelligence/sentience/... would look very much like human intelligence, its possible that the net/web has already made this transition.
Of course, there's the converse question too - would an intelligent net recognize us as intelligent/sentient/... ?
News Flash (Score:3, Insightful)
"candidate for congress withdraws from the race because his opponent was given information about previous google use to find and visit porn sites back in 2003. It was also reported he went to warez sites to get steal software from Microsoft."
"President of the United States issues executive order to release all information collected by google and other online services under the freedom of information act."
Remember anything you do on the internet could come back and haunt you years later because of the williness of surfers to ignore the ease in which businesses can change the tos, without notification, to anything they want. Google is no exception.
Re:Google should scare you (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.google.com is a good start. ;-)
Security Clearance hiring (Score:3, Insightful)
hmmmm...our company has hired, into the same department, 3 ex military, all with security clearances
1 ex Navy electronics tech
1 ex USAF meteorologist
1 ex USAF weapons specialist
Therefore, we are not into market research for shampoo, but are secretly developing a "weather weapon", to be used in Naval warfare.
So obvious, it MUST be true.
Re:It's not the NSA I'm scared of (Score:1, Insightful)