What does Google know about you?
Google, the largest and most powerful search engine in the world, was requested by the US Department of Justice last August to hand over all the searches made through it in one random week. The reason the US government made this request was to produce a reasonable estimate of how many pornography sites are cataloged by search engines, and what fraction of those sites are careful about excluding minors. The same demand was apparently made of Google's competitors Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL, who complied without a fight. Google resisted the move, therefore prompting the US attorney general to ask the Federal District Court in San Jose, California, to compel Google to comply.
The subpoena is part of an effort to rescue the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) – a law that was defeated by the Supreme Court two years ago after it was judged contrary to the First Amendment. The government maintains that it needs a week’s worth of Internet searches in order to figure how possible it is for children are to find pornography online.
Google will not say the number of searches that are made on it. It claimed more than 250,000,000 searches were made a day in the spring of 2003, which giving us a sense that that number possibly doubled by now.
Google tracks these searches by its users on the web using "cookies," small files downloaded to a user's computer which make it recognizable to the site, used by most commercial sites. Google's cookie gives them complete, identifiable record of everything your computer asks for online. This can't be tied into your personal information automatically, unless you sign up to Google’s other services. These free services consist of downloadable software applications for Microsoft Windows, even though Google’s services adhere to a privacy policy. Unfortunately, the Google desktop will index all the documents on your hard disk that gives them free range to find anything ever put into your computer.
The Chinese government aspires to pressure Google, or Yahoo!, or MSN, to try to get hold of this knowledge, as the case of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, recently sentenced to ten years in jail by the Chinese authorities on the strength of evidence provided by Yahoo!
Google is really in the media business, delivering readers to advertisers. It offers advertisers extraordinarily detailed, knowledge about the reading preferences of their customers. Google can guarantee significance in its ad targeting for its advertisers because it knows what you're interested in. You tell it with every query and the ads are freshly served up for every question.
I am afraid that Google albeit a great search engine could eventually lead us to be spied on by our own government. Our trust and lack of knowledge in these search engines makes us easily susceptible to be targeted by anyone whether it is advertisers, government and quite possibly terrorists if they had the right technology or price.
Google, the largest and most powerful search engine in the world, was requested by the US Department of Justice last August to hand over all the searches made through it in one random week. The reason the US government made this request was to produce a reasonable estimate of how many pornography sites are cataloged by search engines, and what fraction of those sites are careful about excluding minors. The same demand was apparently made of Google's competitors Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL, who complied without a fight. Google resisted the move, therefore prompting the US attorney general to ask the Federal District Court in San Jose, California, to compel Google to comply.
The subpoena is part of an effort to rescue the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) – a law that was defeated by the Supreme Court two years ago after it was judged contrary to the First Amendment. The government maintains that it needs a week’s worth of Internet searches in order to figure how possible it is for children are to find pornography online.
Google will not say the number of searches that are made on it. It claimed more than 250,000,000 searches were made a day in the spring of 2003, which giving us a sense that that number possibly doubled by now.
Google tracks these searches by its users on the web using "cookies," small files downloaded to a user's computer which make it recognizable to the site, used by most commercial sites. Google's cookie gives them complete, identifiable record of everything your computer asks for online. This can't be tied into your personal information automatically, unless you sign up to Google’s other services. These free services consist of downloadable software applications for Microsoft Windows, even though Google’s services adhere to a privacy policy. Unfortunately, the Google desktop will index all the documents on your hard disk that gives them free range to find anything ever put into your computer.
The Chinese government aspires to pressure Google, or Yahoo!, or MSN, to try to get hold of this knowledge, as the case of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, recently sentenced to ten years in jail by the Chinese authorities on the strength of evidence provided by Yahoo!
Google is really in the media business, delivering readers to advertisers. It offers advertisers extraordinarily detailed, knowledge about the reading preferences of their customers. Google can guarantee significance in its ad targeting for its advertisers because it knows what you're interested in. You tell it with every query and the ads are freshly served up for every question.
I am afraid that Google albeit a great search engine could eventually lead us to be spied on by our own government. Our trust and lack of knowledge in these search engines makes us easily susceptible to be targeted by anyone whether it is advertisers, government and quite possibly terrorists if they had the right technology or price.
posted by Buddha at 8:05 AM
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