Reply: "Are you naive?"

I guess, though the issue isn't completely new even for me ("Orwell was wrong, we don't need surveillance patrols, we all deliver all our privacy willingly..." Blah blah blah.)

I thought, oh well, as long as it is just a monopolist... so is my electricity company, and many of our brands just look like many of our brands too...

But an individual user cookie that not just saves settings, but gives an individual number to your browser that gets deleted by the company after 30 years, probably to save individuals' search entries and see patterns?

A prog by the same company that reads all my emails?

And Google kindly "offers" me a health profile on Google Health, a calendar, a "private" weblog, and so on? And is going to own 90% of the market in Europe if they fuse with Yahoo (whereas of now, it's 85%)?

A company that is able to perform "behavioral targeting" (since buying "Doubleclick") and recreate users' movements throughout the entire net? (That cookie not only collects which pages you visit via Goole, oh no.)

That collects the data of every site and every route you check via Google Maps?

Not to talk of "Street View", where many persons were found to be perfectly recognizable on detailed pictures showing them leaving a sex shop, or taking a pee, or holding a beer, for the world to see en detail.

Or that Firmware-Update for PSP (Playstation Portable) by Sony that supports a direct connection to Google if you connect via WLAN - rumour has it Google is going to try to profile their users via their gaming behaviour in online game worlds as World of Warcraft. Why should that rumour be paranoid, if the technic is there?

Or Google boss Eric Schmidt enthusiastically telling journalists Google was indeed planning to collect as much data of individual users as possible - so they could, in the future, answer search queries like "What job should I take?" Or: "I am bored, what can I do now?" (And how many users are going to get the answer, "Masturbate to these splatter porn clips on XXX.com - should we enter your credit card data for you? Of course we should.")



The Google Trap




Now.. what search angine but Google could I use? I mean, we even call it "to google". ANd where do I put my mailing lists? Don't say Yahoo...

(Actually I "know" a few alternatives, but this post has become awfully long...)