p2pnet - rss feed: ‘Big Brother’ Google
p2pnet.net news:- Google already wields a frightening amount of control online, and now it appears to want to influence what you do offline as well.
“In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world’s information,” says The Independent.
According to the story, Google ceo Eric Schmidt said, during a visit to Britain, “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take’? We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms [software] will get better and we will get better at personalisation.”
“Total information”. That means everything, doesn’t it?
Privacy protection campaigners are afraid Google’s sophisticated tracking and the collating abilities offer, “a real threat, by stealth, to civil liberties,” the story says, going on:
“That concern has been reinforced by Google’s $3.1 billion ($4.26 billion) bid for DoubleClick, a company that helps build a detailed picture of someone’s behaviour by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick’s ‘cookies’, software it places on users’ machines to track sites they visit.
“The Independent has now learned that the body representing Europe’s data protection watchdogs has written to Google requesting more information about its information-retention policy.”
Concerns about what Google might (could) do with its mind-boggling database of personal information have been rightly worrying people since it first went public. It once had ‘Do no evil’ as its slogan. But those days are long gone. Like any other organisation that’s grown beyond the ability of a few dedicated people to oversee and control, it’s become a virtual organism unto itself directly and indirectly answerable to, and fearful of, many powerful outside concerns with vested interests, with all that implies.
“Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years, the latest example of a United States technology giant whose practices face a collision with European standards,” says The New York Times.
“An advisory panel of data-protection chiefs from the 27 countries in the European Union sent a letter last week to Google asking it to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits,” it has Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Union’s justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, stating.
“Privacy experts said the letter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in Europe, where the 400 million consumers outnumber those in the United States.”
Privacy issues, “are also a focus of regulatory reviews in the U.S. over the DoubleClick takeover,” says Bloomberg News. “The New York State Consumer Protection Board on May 9 urged federal regulators to delay Google’s takeover until the company gives consumers the right to prevent tracking and storing of information about Web sites they visit.”
Google is buying DoubleClick which, thanks to brilliant spin doctoring, has almost overcome its well-deserved reputation of being one of the most reprehensible companies in cyberspace.
Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London-based advocacy group, said that Google was a leading target of complaints received by his organization last year, states the New York Times.
“Of the 10,000 complaints made to the group in 2006, 2,000 involved Internet-related activities. And of those, 96 percent were about Google and its practice of retaining customer data, Mr. Davies said.
“The EU’s action is the first shot in a long, potentially bloody battle with Google,” he says in the story. “There is definitely a perception that something is amiss with Google.”
In the background is Google’s new Web History ’service’ under which Google users can sign up to have the company keep detailed records of every site they visit, “so they can easily find them again later,” says the Los Angeles Times.
Web browsers do much the same thing, but there’s between this and the Google plan.
Data are stored on Google’s servers instead of users’ computers.
“Web History’s quiet debut this week came as privacy advocates continued to raise alarms about the prospect of Google combining its collection of information on individuals with that of DoubleClick,” says the story.
Also See:
The Independent - Search engine plans to tell you how to run your life, May 25, 2007
The New York Times - E.U. Probes Google Over Data Retention Policy, May 26, 2007
Bloomberg News - Google Data on Users May Break EU Law, Watchdog Says, May 25, 2007
Los Angeles Times - Google’s data-storing feature fuels privacy fears, April 21, 2007
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