How Can You Say That Google Is Going On The Right Track?

[OpaQue 15]

How can YOU say that Google is going on the RIGHT Track?I have a NETWORK setup and I do research with my friends here in my office. Why is it that I see ads about topics that my friends are researching while I m browsing my forums? I have wondered about this.Do you think they invade privacy?

[iGuest 3]

Ya.. Ya.. Watever. This is a TEST POST anyway.

[comp2 1]

Thats a very good question. This issue really came to light when Google launched Gmail.Com, and the ads inside were content relevant. I personally dont have a problem with this, however it is when government agencies require companies like google to hand over the information. Even some grocery stores use a similar technique like when your purchase a can of soup and the register prints out a coupon for brand name soup. I have come to terms with the fact that nothing is totally private anymore. Big brother is always watching! However on the other side by doing this business like KS or xisto can now make a revenue off of the advertising world. But you can always unplug your internet and live like a hermit crab.

[Little Asterisk 1]

I don't know, to be honest...They DO invade privacy to some extent, that is certain. Only by knowing our location, and the content we search for, they already have a LOT of information about us.On the other hand, how do they generate Google ads? By using a script which they made. Does that invade our privacy, and do they collect the data (about the actual content of the e-mail messages), I do not know. But I still like to believe that a company like Google wouldn't allow itself to be exposed to the public about collecting private information on their users.It would bring them a lot of negative publicity and, trust me, no company wants that. However, I'd be really interested to hear (read ) what others have to say on this matter. Nice topic, OpaQue!

[rpgsearcherz 5]

We know for sure that they are invading privacy. If you use a gmail account and you go to google.com, look in your account settings (at the top right) and you will see that by default you are letting them track every search you make, every link you view, and where you go to after you click on those links.To me, that makes it pretty obvious that they are also tracing everyone's search habits via IP. I've heard of people who went to jail because the government used their Google information (from Google's database) to verify that they were in fact researching illegal things.

[sheepdog 10]

But you can always unplug your internet and live like a hermit crab.

Sorry, not even that will work anymore, thanks to dear old Google. Unless you are in a very deep cave somewhere. Google has those satalites that can spy on you every time you step out your door. Google gives me great concerns about our rights to privacy and where all this is going to end. It does not make me happy one little bit.

[Harlot 2]

How can YOU say that Google is going on the RIGHT Track?
I have a NETWORK setup and I do research with my friends here in my office. Why is it that I see ads about topics that my friends are researching while I m browsing my forums? I have wondered about this.

Do you think they invade privacy?

I can not believe that you just stated this OpaQue, it has been in the back of my mine for the last few days. Recently, I went on Google to look for some hair clippers. I spent quite a while looking for some and I eventually found some that I liked. My intentions were to find them online, and buy them from the store due to the fact that I don't have any money in my paypal account. Come to find out, none were available in the store, therefore I just simply decided to do without them.

Believe it or not, I keep seeing those clippers on Google Ads. Not only that, but I also continue to see the 1 or 2 advertisements that always appear on my blog, on other people website whose niche does not even relate to those advertisements. I definitely believe that Google is violating privacy. It appears that they are making ads appear to people based on what they previously searched for on Google.

[Little Asterisk 1]

Hey, this is an interesting video which shows what sites exactly send data to Google, and it turns out pretty much every site sends some kind - at least from services like Google Adsense and Google Analytics.[media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ there is a vimeo video, so I don't know exactly will it work. Anyway, the plug-in can be downloaded either for Google Chrome ( http://www.jamiedubs.com/ ), or for Firefox ( http://www.jamiedubs.com/ ). These links are direct links to plugin download, the "real" site is http://www.jamiedubs.com/ .

[missy2205 0]

I always wondered the same thing. Why i get adds for things my work collegue googles earlier on. I guess google gets a IPs address and associates it with all the serches in that IP then probably based on the relevance of the seacrhed things will then send adverts to that ip address as per the previous searched. In terms of privacy, this is a breach but surely one would be stupid to serch naked girls in my town on google while at work on a shared network. or a suicide bomber searching for 1 tonne of bombmaking fertiliser serves them right. If you know what you are searching for is private and confidential shouldnt you do that on a private network eg on a home pc. Not in an internet cafe??

[ChristianJames 0]

At the end of the day, Google can only access information that you have. They scan the emails you receive or browser history to display content that would be relevant to you, which can be seen as good or bad depending on how you look at it. If you don't want anyone to access certain information, then you'd have to avoid revealing that information online.

[Harlot 2]

At the end of the day, Google can only access information that you have. They scan the emails you receive or browser history to display content that would be relevant to you, which can be seen as good or bad depending on how you look at it. If you don't want anyone to access certain information, then you'd have to avoid revealing that information online.

I don't believe its a good thing because that is exploiting people in order to increase the mass within their pockets or bank accounts. Perhaps if it was clearly pointed out that Google would be scanning emails and browser history to display those ads in exchange for their service, then perhaps it would be fine and many of us who disagree with it could have the knowledge required to make a decision on whether we should fine a new search engine or email service or not. We could also have the information available to determine if we would like to take Google Ads off of our website and fine another service.

[Okara KAmi 0]

Exploiting information about people to achieve higher financial success is a bad thing? This kind of stuff went on wayyy before Google.com, and Facebook would definitely fall into the same category of information leeching for business gains. If something like this happened for a small group of people, such that the data on that small group of people is of a manageable size, then yes, I would feel a bit nervous for that small group of people that now have to do their every day searches, emails, and documents on Google's open source cloud software. But that's not the case.

 

Google's information isn't based on a small number of people. Billions of people are doing hundreds of thousands of searches. I find solace in the fact that unless I could Google any ludicrous phrase I want, like "Nuclear North Korea attack" and the query probably matches thousands of its like before me. There's just too much data for manipulate maliciously. The best Google can do, given its human resources, is to dedicate computing devices to decide what our interests are and try to buy us over with the magic of relevance. What else can it do? There are billions of us with trillions of different bits and pieces of data about us floating around somewhere waiting to be garbage-collected.

 

Keep in mind Google is free. It needs to be two steps ahead of the game in terms of effective advertisement, to stay in the green zone with its business model. And sadly enough, my noScript Firefox add-on is the death of most js based Google Ads I would ever see. Information is power, same way a sword is power. But a hugely obese amount of information is like a mile-long sword. Not very useful.

 

Bit I digress. Google does have fascinating amounts of information on all of us. So do the Food companies, and the CIA, but all of that information never really becomes relevant for 99.9999999999999% of users.