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more on BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK -- Google Launches Personal History Feature
From: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 11:54:36 -0500
------- Original message ------- From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Sent: 21/4/'05, 8:24
------ Forwarded Message From: "W.B. McNamara" <whitney () absono us> Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 09:37:45 -0400 (EDT) To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
...
Could you provide a little more detail on what elements you feel are a bad idea? With Amazon/A9, AskJeeves, and Yahoo all offering a search history feature, I'd argue that Google has no choice but to offer something similar.
When it comes to general purpose searching, Google is the 800-pound (or 8000-pound) gorilla. What they do has an enormous impact on the direction of the search engine industry. Google continues to rely on a "trust us" philosophy to convince the world that the vast amount of user search data that they've collected won't be abused. Even if we choose to trust Google at present (as I choose to do), their cavalier attitude in this regard leaves them and their users vulnerable to future changes in business philosophies (perhaps as a result of mergers), civil and criminal probes seeking broad access to retrospective usage data, and other potentially highly privacy-invasive outcomes. I wrote on this briefly back in December in my blog at: http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000108.html I also recommend the article "Google Eyes" for a much more in-depth look at the related issues: http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2005%2D02%2D02/feature.asp --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () eepi org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, EEPI - Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK -- Google Launches Personal History Feature Dave Farber (Apr 21)
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- more on BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK -- Google Launches Personal History Feature Dave Farber (Apr 21)
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