Google: Beast or Buddy?

:confusedSo Google has a new privacy policy. What is the feeling in the Geekdom about it? Should we stop using Chrome, Picasa, Panoramio, Gmail, and change to a different search engine? Or is it just an innocuous ratcheting up of the constant tracking of online activity?

 

Sorry, I should have searched better for that already existing discussion. I remember when it was all text terminals using Compuserve over 1200 baud modems. No ads there. Hahahahah

 

Yep, it's like the telephone, T.V.; your letter box, even your front door and being accosted personally. Everyone wants your $$$ and information, (so they can get your $$$).
The i-net is the same X(10,000). It's a VERY public medium, and we can make ourselves partly private and harder than most to track/get info from by various methods, but it snooping/info-gathering advertising con-jobs, etc. WILL happen.
I'm an older Geek, too. Gone are the days of the 'Net being some obscure, awkward thing that hardly anyone knows about, much less uses, with consequently little interest from commercial Co's.
I don't particularly like this aspect either, but more commercialization and control can and will happen. That's life in the 21st century, I'm afraid. Google is simply a part of this whole scene. As Laura said, the Co's aren't doing this for fun and making bucks is what it's all about.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17205754 hmm wonder who's going to win Google or the EU?

The question is if one company has collected data about its users via two different product lines can they share the data to increase market share and revenue.

It could be like two government agencies sharing information or about their customers, e.g., Tax man and custom's officials. Both are government/public funded departments and could use the shared data for mutual benefit or even determine if benefits are legal or eligible via social services.

 

Google will win, they have more money :-D

 

Beast:-D

The issue for me isn't that google tracks data about users,the problem for me with Google is that its expanding into area's other than search engines.

The poor old consumer doesn't have much chance when one company owns the phonebook,the advertising board and the service...

 

Well, it's like the parable of the magic chicken. A guy is hungry, so he goes to market and gets given a 'special' chicken for free, from an an apparently kindly old Wizard dude, (yeah, okay it's a parable, so bear with me LOL).
The chicken is great and gives him eggs for free and only asks to scratch around in his yard in return, which cost him nothing. The magic chicken gets bigger and gives him bigger eggs, which he thinks is very cool. But he notices it's starting to eat his garden and stuff.
So to prevent this, he works out he'd better start buying chicken food to feed his bird. The chicken grows bigger than he is, (well it is magical, remember?). He now finds that his veggie garden is gone, and he has to keep buying chicken feed or the bird might eat him as well! The chicken now is bigger than ever and wants even more food. So now he is totally dependent on big chicken, and fears for his life.
He now wonders if it was even a good idea to buy that stupid chicken and trusted the magician guy in the pointy hat in the first place. Too late - such is life.
His fowl buddy has become the beast of doom.:cry
(I haven't been smoking anything funny, honest! roflmao)

 

I agree,Google is a bit of an overfed chicken:-D

I think I'm going back to Yahoo search,not finding anything useful is sometimes preferable than being told what I'm supposed to be searching for.

'That's a joke Google,your still my homepage,don't take me away to the app re-education camp again':-D

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/k12.html

 

Well, I've switched my preliminary web searches over to DuckDuckGo recently. The others are still easily accessible from within it anyway.

I don't mind coughing up a few quid to help pay bills, but when my total turnover for the last 12 months wouldn't buy a mainstream gaming rig ... so, I've allowed a few more ads to be shown in my browsers of late, heck, I might even click on one sometimes .

Trackers don't get much of a look in though (I hope!) :major < closest to a tinfoil hatted smilie here!

 

Here's one for you Phantom,I put Eisenhower's farewell address in the context of Google.:-D

Me too:-D

 

I gotta go with beast as well. Not so much for expanding into other areas besides the search engine realm . . . but Rikky's second point that the consumer has little choice when one company has all the marbles. Couple that with Google's admitted practice of favoring search results that reinforce their founders world-views and it starts sounding like monopolistic censorship to me.