CCCToad on 17/1/2011 at 04:15
Quote Posted by demagogue
I'm much more worried about business as usual where people are just trying to do their job respectably and don't have a real sense of what's happening on a larger scale out of anybody's control. Most everything we worry about in regulatory law is never the back-room conspiracy (though you get that too, like with cartels), but more or less fine-looking behavior at a local level that adds up to terrible results on the global level. .
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http://tva.maripo.com/images/logo_Enron.jpgdemagogue on 17/1/2011 at 06:15
Well there was definitely a conspiracy there, the execs fucking over their own stock holders and getting all their accountants, lawyers, and even Arthur Anderson to go along, and nobody had the balls to protect the company. Sort of a perverse case though since it's not supposed to be rational for a company to actually conspire to run itself into the ground. Conspiring to dump toxic shit into a river to lower costs, okay if they think they won't get caught; but bleeding your own stock holders until the patient dies? That's a business plan that's lost touch with reality.
The thing about Google though, like someone was saying above, is that for them, beyond just the money, they really have this astronomical ambition -- things like being able to search every book ever written, being seamlessly omnipresent in every electronic medium... I can't see them letting the whole thing come crashing down because they want a short term cash-in. That's what this whole thread has been about I guess though. You tend to want to trust a company when the stakes get so high and its ambition so much because you think it can't be stupid enough to torpedo its own future. But I guess you could have said the same thing about Enron and all these financial companies and banks.
the_grip on 17/1/2011 at 15:18
Does it really matter if searches are stored somewhere? If people want to push their personal info onto social networking websites? In my mind, if you're using something like Google that owns all the technology, etc., then they are perfectly legit in storing what you do with it.
Besides, targeting advertising has quite a few benefits... otherwise you just get useless shit that you could care less about.
Thief13x on 18/1/2011 at 01:27
The way I see it is there's a big difference between storing an IP and a search query for statistical analysis and criminal investigations, and cataloging someone's name and information for targeted advertising purposes.
I still see no info in your source on:
Quote Posted by CCCToad
they have access to quite a bit of info in your gmail account which they used to deliver targeted advertising
and if you think Google is out of line for keeping IP/Activity logs, I would like to introduce you to the world of the Internet.
Every web server you use or come in contact with on the net, even in transition, does exactly that. And they know where you came from and exactly what you're accessing.
demagogue on 18/1/2011 at 02:30
If I were doing serious research on this, I think I'd start with the claims of abuse on the ground first and then work my way up to see where the source or threat is coming from, rather than starting at the top-down.
I think it's right that targeted ads by themselves aren't much to worry about, and the abstract philosophical worry about "I want mah privacy on the internet!" by itself sort of rings hollow if nothing concretely actually comes of it. Are there people actually getting abused or screwed somewhere, or Google is leveraging its info in unfair ways, as if preying on people's dependence on it in seemingly private matters (if that's even a legitimate thing to worry about)? I thought there might be something there, but it's not clear to me yet.
Kolya on 18/1/2011 at 03:19
Getting back to Chrome: Apart from a vaguely uncomfortable feeling with putting all my eggs in Google's basket, one of the things that are keeping me from using their browser, is the lack of a master password.
There are some long threads over at the Google support forums, where people keep on demanding this, but according to Google's employees it's been left out intentionally. :p
Kolya on 18/1/2011 at 20:47
It's nice that he takes a positive stance on "his" algorithm instead of feeling intruded. This also reflects what a bunch of people have said to me, eg when I set up their computers and offered to remove the ads in Gmail (via GreaseMonkey script): "No, let them be, they're quite funny and from time to time even interesting."
So yeah, less "war of the machines" and more "we and our robots", eh?
