p2pnet - rss feed: Google Desktop Search
p2pnet.net News:- Ill-conceived and ill-considered.
You could probably apply both phrases to Google’s Desktop Search without fear of too much contradiction.
"If you lined people and said, ‘Stick your hand up if you want Google to know what pictures you have, and what MP3 files you have,’ I don’t think many would," said Copernic ceo David Burns, recently.
Now read AchilleCB’s /. post:
"Cnn and many other sources are jumping on the Google-privacy-bash bandwagon, they are carrying stories warning of more privacy implications regarding Google’s Desktop Search, ‘if it’s installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they’ve exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed Web pages detailing online purchases.’ … Type in ‘hotmail.com’ and you’ll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type ‘password’ and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail."
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See:-
recently - Google Desktop Search: Spyware?, p2pnet, October 16, 2004
privacy-bash - Google Desktop Search Under Fire, slashdot, October 21, 2004
October 22nd, 2004 at 8:20 am
These privacy issues are overblown. The real problem with Google Desktop Search is that it doesn’t work. In the sense that it effectively only indexes MS products and can’t work out that something is a text file unless it ends in .txt As a programmer I’ve got a huge number of text files with extensions like .php, .inc and so on. even README. Google ignores all of them.
But then this market wouldn’t even exist if Microsoft’s search in XP worked. It’s quite unbelievable the hoops you have to go though to find the buried settings that let it work properly.