Comment Re:RTFA, lemming (Score 1) 93
Your financial industry analogy doesn't hold water. In fact, modern financial markets depend fundamentally on a verifiable identity linked to a physical address. When you start an account, you provide SSN and a legal address as well as all kinds of other much more detailed information. If they wanted to begin data mining and marketing, they could probably do it under the contract you sign, but it might not be in their interest as their primary revenue stream is elsewhere.
Not the case with Google. It may seem like you're getting something for nothing when you use their kick ass free services, but you're not. You're giving them rights to your personal data. If you don't like it, you can take your search engine and email business to a competitor.
Google is treading a fine line here, and I think it is important for people to say publicly what details the are and are not willing to share with Google or its advertising customers.
However, make no mistake, they are trying to establish a verifiable persistent online identity for you. Will you be able to shake off the e-identity if you really want to? Yeah, you can go down to an internet cafe or steal someone's wireless or use some kind of anonymizing program, but there will always be risks and somebody might still be watching... just like walking around you neighborhood in a ski mask, it makes people wonder why you need to be anonymous so badly and might draw increased attention to your activities.
I'm all for privacy, and for the ability to go "off the record" sometimes. We all need to be able to vent and not worry that whatever we said is going to be thrown in our faces during a job interview or something.
Unfortunately, secure identification is crucial not only to Google's commercial success but also to the future of the internet as a viable governance mechanism that will one day replace our current violence prone and provincial political institutions. I believe that Google (or at least some elements of the company) have been flirting with that possibility for a long time. To me that is actually a hopeful rather than a frightening prospect... though they are human and the influence of power is still morally corrosive no matter how not evil they intended to be.
Either way it will be interesting to watch it unfold.
Not the case with Google. It may seem like you're getting something for nothing when you use their kick ass free services, but you're not. You're giving them rights to your personal data. If you don't like it, you can take your search engine and email business to a competitor.
Google is treading a fine line here, and I think it is important for people to say publicly what details the are and are not willing to share with Google or its advertising customers.
However, make no mistake, they are trying to establish a verifiable persistent online identity for you. Will you be able to shake off the e-identity if you really want to? Yeah, you can go down to an internet cafe or steal someone's wireless or use some kind of anonymizing program, but there will always be risks and somebody might still be watching... just like walking around you neighborhood in a ski mask, it makes people wonder why you need to be anonymous so badly and might draw increased attention to your activities.
I'm all for privacy, and for the ability to go "off the record" sometimes. We all need to be able to vent and not worry that whatever we said is going to be thrown in our faces during a job interview or something.
Unfortunately, secure identification is crucial not only to Google's commercial success but also to the future of the internet as a viable governance mechanism that will one day replace our current violence prone and provincial political institutions. I believe that Google (or at least some elements of the company) have been flirting with that possibility for a long time. To me that is actually a hopeful rather than a frightening prospect... though they are human and the influence of power is still morally corrosive no matter how not evil they intended to be.
Either way it will be interesting to watch it unfold.
