TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Google Eyes / The Company Everyone Loves Knows More About You

Google Eyes / The Company Everyone Loves Knows More About You

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Mon, 2 May 2005 23:22:11 -0400

Google Eyes
The company everyone loves knows more about you than you might realize.

BY DAN KENNEDY

Is there a company anywhere within these United States with a better
public image than Google has? We love it. We need it. We use it --
more than 200 million times a day, by some accounts. The unofficial
slogan - "Don't Be Evil" - epitomizes everything we want in a
business relationship. And more often than not, Google lives up to
those words.

But there is another side to Google, and it's one that the company
would just as soon you not think about. It's what happens each and
every time you look up a piece of information. Maybe an old
boyfriend. A political organization you heard mentioned on television
the night before. A possible vacation spot. Perhaps you're a student
trying to track down a terrorist group's web site for a paper you're
writing. Or a church elder who likes to look at hard-core pornography.
You might be seeking information on how to grow your own marijuana.
Who knows?

Google knows. According to Lauren Weinstein, an internet activist and
privacy expert based in southern California, Google keeps track of
every search that's made, as well as the internet location of the
computer from which the search is taking place -- and then it stores
that information for possible future use. Moreover, he said, it would
not be terribly difficult to trace those searches to the person who
made them. That's you and me.

http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2005-02-02/feature.asp

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