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My Google search results are looking too familiar. Looking for something new on the web for a topic of continuing interest, I enter some familiar terms. The same old sites keep turning up. OK, so Google is returning the most relevant results, based on the Google algorithm. Why do they seem so stale?
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Last Tuesday in this space, I opted out of Google’s “interest-based advertising.” Later the same day, Google unveiled an opt-out tool for another personal information collection agent – Google Analytics.
Website owners can use Google Analytics to track visitors on their sites and Google collects the data from all the visits for its own use.
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Google has opened its own trading desk to manage its $26.5 billion in cash and short-term investments, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Heading the team is company treasurer Brent Callinicos, who joined Google from Microsoft in…
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Google’s Economic Impact 2009 report (see Consumer Watchdog’s statement) released online and at a series of press events around the country on Tuesday, shows an off-key bias about our nation’s citizens.
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A great “smart paranoid’s guide to using Google” at Computerworld today takes you step by step through “down-and-dirty details on how to maintain your privacy while using Google’s myriad services.” It’s chock full of precautions,…
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As the WiSpy scandal unfolded last week CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking in England, tried to calm the furor by claiming “no harm, no foul.” This week it’s clear that despite the fondest hopes of those in the Googleplex, the firestorm won’t go away.
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Google has announced that it is now offering privacy-friendly SSL encryption on its search engine, becoming the first major company to offer the protection. The company deserves credit and others who want to do more than pay lip service to privacy should immediately follow Google’s lead.
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James Fallows’s cover story in the Atlantic is titled “Inside Google: The Company’s Daring Plan to Save the News (and itself)”. On the web it’s just “How to Save the News.” I thought the article was a big wet kiss.
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In the latest revelation in a seemingly never ending stream of privacy breaches by online companies, we now know that Facebook and MySpace have been sending consumers’ personal information to advertisers despite promises that they don’t share such data without consent.
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Outrage continues to rise over Google’s “WiSpy” efforts that saw its Street View cars snoop on private WiFi networks as they roamed the streets of 30 countries over the last three years. Europeans contemplated criminal charges; U.S. lawmakers asked the Federal Trade Commission what it’s doing and a class action suit was filed in Oregon.
