EU Examines Search Engines and Privacy Issues European data protection officials are expanding their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy.
pcworld cache BBC Google ranked 'worst' on privacy BBC Google privacy policy 'is vague'
Nagypálya
Menjünk tovább. Van még felsőbb szint is: a Google. Az első dolog ami kevés emberben tudatosul, az a Google mérete. Még a hazai szakemberek is hajlamosak arra -- amikor az itteni online médiapiacot elemezgetik --, hogy a Google-lel ne számoljanak. Pedig kell, hisz becslések szerint a Google több magyar netezőt érhet el, mint bármelyik hazai portál. A Google-t mindenki használja, nem csak itthon, mindenhol. S mit is lát a Google? Előbb-utóbb mindent.
Első körben látja, hogy milyen szavakra keresel, milyen oldalról jöttél, milyen oldalra mész tovább. Ez sem rossz, hiszen csak az általad keresett kulcsszavak alapján elég jól definiálható vagy -- a keresők szerint Britney-függő. Ennél azonban többre lesz képes. Az utóbbi időben a Google számos olyan szolgáltatás vásárolt fel illetve készített, melyek hozzásegíthetik őt a "totális hálózati kontrollhoz".
"It's data that's practically a printout of what's going on in your brain: What you are thinking of buying, who you talk to, what you talk about." --Kevin Bankston, staff attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
More about the Google Zeitgeist
Pulling together interesting search trends and patterns requires Google’s human and computing power together. Search statistics are automatically generated based on the millions of searches conducted on Google over a given period of time - weekly, monthly, and annually. With some help from humans, and a pigeon or two when they have time, these statistics and trends make their way from the depths of Google's hard drives to become the Google Zeitgeist report.
We should note that in compiling the Zeitgeist, no individual searcher's information is available or accessible to us. What you see here is a cumulative snapshot of interesting queries people are asking – some over time, some within country domains, and some on Google.com – that perhaps reveal a bit of the human condition. We appreciate the contribution all Google users make to these fascinating bits of information.
Zeitgeist is originally a German expression, which means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.
It is a term that refers to the ethos of a cohort of people, that spans one or more subsequent generations, who despite their diverse age and socio-economic background experience a certain worldview, which is prevalent at a particular period of socio-cultural progression. Zeitgeist is the experience of a dominant cultural climate that defines, particularly in Hegelian thinking, an era in the dialectical progression of a people or the world at large.
If search history, e-mail and registration information were combined, a company could see intimate details about a person's health, sex life, religion, financial status and buying preferences.
It's "data that's practically a printout of what's going on in your brain: What you are thinking of buying, who you talk to, what you talk about," Bankston said. "It is an unprecedented amount of personal information, and these third parties (such as Google) have carte blanche control over that information."
October, 2004: Google acquires CIA-linked company
Google has acquired Keyhole, Inc., which has a database of 3-D spy-in-the-sky images from all over the globe. Their software provides a virtual fly-over and zoom-in with one-foot resolution. Keyhole is supported by In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm funded by the CIA, in an effort to "identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests."
In 2003, Keyhole's CEO John Hanke was quoted in an In-Q-Tel press release: "Keyhole's strategic relationship with In-Q-Tel means that the Intelligence Community can now benefit from the massive scalability and high performance of the Keyhole enterprise solution."
But the biggest benefit to the spooks in Washington is that one year later they have yet another hook into Google, Inc. If ten years from now it suddenly becomes illegal to use an umbrella on a sunny day, you'll know why.
Bayes-szűrő gépi fordításra ENSZ korpusszal
Google has expanded from searching webpages to searching videos, books, places and even files on your own desktop. This expansion is made possible though Google's understanding and classification of information, facilitated by the application of algorithms in the domains of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence. Google has also made use of innovative technologies such as AJAX to improve the accessibility of web interfaces.
Some of the products that have come out of the Google Labs experiment are Google Suggest which autocompletes queries as they're typed. Google Sets is another feature where you can specify two or more keywords and generate a whole set depending on the commonality and relationship between the two objects. Personalised search varies the results returned depending upon your profile and preferences. Google Maps allows users to explore territories by dragging the map in the direction they are interested in.
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail453.html
But ironically, says Mr Cutts, he does not have an extensive personal web presence that can take advantage of this insider knowledge Inside the Google search machine
Chinese authorities - not known for their liberal attitudes - are believed to have taken the action because Google seemingly provides a window to porn and could also compromise national security.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/02/china_blocks_google_allegedly/
The company that prides itself on "Doing No Evil" isn't taking any chances with its latest executive appointment. Dan Senor, the company's new Global Communications and Strategy VP, has a CV guaranteed to have Register columnist Otto Z Stern firing a celebratory fusillade skywards from his compound in New Mexico.
A former Senior Associate at the Carlyle Group, Senor was briefly Scott McLellan's deputy as White House spokesman before becoming head of the the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq's information department. The White House web site bills him as Senior Advisor to Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III. Fox News hired Senor as a panelist in February. While in Iraq Senor showed his loyalty by going jogging in a Bush-Cheney '04 tracksuit.
Not everyone is impressed.
"I have come to associate his triangular, brush-cut head with an unceasing stream of bullshit. He's Ari Fleischer without the charm," writes one grump. "Hiring this guy is a repulsive move."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/24/google_neocon/
Also unresolved is the issue of why Google needs to retain your email after you've closed your account. We don't think it's because a company with dozens of PhDs can't find the rm command.
Big Brother nominated for Google Award http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/07/eu_foul_gmail/
http://www.bigbrotherawards.hu/
The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid. Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound.
Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies NYT Power - /. Comment
Google Goes Las Vegas An AdWords Experiment Shows Why at Google, the House Always Win
"It's like Vegas," said my friend. "They want you to lose. Try to game the system and they cut off one of your legs." Cringley Taguchi
Google: An Apology
Google has decided that search engines should not be used to collate data. We wish to say sorry for believing otherwise ZDNET UK
Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't reveal much about himself on his home page. CNET
The fund-raiser, at the [then] home of Novell Corp. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, raised $3.25 million for the Democratic National Committee. CNN
Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised.
But let's get back to Flash for a moment, because I really do believe it is the key to this deal. What's key about Flash is not just that it is installed on nearly every computer in the world, and that its influence is extending now into mobile phones. What's key is that we all upgrade to the latest version of Flash as a matter of course, making it the ideal Trojan horse program of all time.