Google = Evil Microsoft = Good....?
Moderator: General Moderators
-
Stewsburntmonkey
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:09 pm
A computer algorithm scans your email. . . No one at Google should ever see it. All email programs scan your message to some degree. Just to display the message means a program scans the email. Specialized algorithms scan email to try and filter out spam. HTML parsers deal with HTML email, etc. So Google scans it to makes some money so they can offer you a free email account. I for one have no problem with a program scanning my email.
Indeed.
But we will never really know if they infact have a personal database of things that are relevant to people that goes along with a Google Account.
Think about it, their main source of revenue is advertising and the more they perform, the more people will come back and spend more on it. And to increase performance, you need to increase relevancy. And the *ultimate* way to do this is to build a "relevancy profile" for a Google user so they can serve them things they are interested in. So if a person was a tech junkie and was searching for fishing poles, they might still see ads for MCSE/Cisco certs and etc because they know they are interested in them.
It is indeed far fetched to accuse them of this now, because there is no evidence and it's mearly a theory but the potential is there so I don't blame people for avoiding Google services.
But we will never really know if they infact have a personal database of things that are relevant to people that goes along with a Google Account.
Think about it, their main source of revenue is advertising and the more they perform, the more people will come back and spend more on it. And to increase performance, you need to increase relevancy. And the *ultimate* way to do this is to build a "relevancy profile" for a Google user so they can serve them things they are interested in. So if a person was a tech junkie and was searching for fishing poles, they might still see ads for MCSE/Cisco certs and etc because they know they are interested in them.
It is indeed far fetched to accuse them of this now, because there is no evidence and it's mearly a theory but the potential is there so I don't blame people for avoiding Google services.
-
Stewsburntmonkey
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:09 pm
I don't blame people for being concerned about their privacy, although I find it funny that I know people who don't use Gmail because they think it might keep track of something yet use those members cards at bookstores and supermarkets which do in fact keep track of buying habits. There seems to be a wierd anti-internet/computer attitude that a lot of people have. They don't worry about having personal information being tacked in the "real world" but are scared to death of it happening on the internet. These are also the people who don't mind handing their credit card to a waiter at a restaraunt who then takes it somewhere out of sight for several minutes (where he could easily copy all the card information), but don't trust their credit card information to be safe over an encrypted connection to a website like Amazon. It just amuses me. 
I'm aware of how e-mail is being parsed/scanned all the time. Eg: First assignment ever at uni (that was before y2k) was to write a script that scanned through ~/mbox
I'm not avoiding google services completely. I do have a gmail account that people can use to bug me with whatever funny pps/wma files they want
And i don't care that google would build a "mental profile" of me either based on those e-mails. It's an excellent service for that type of e-mails;) But i also have a more suitable address for more formal contacts.
I admit that there are people with 2 different mindsets internet/real-world if it concerns privacy. I don't think i'm part of them. In the real world i usually use someone elses membership card (i don't want to keep all those cards for each shop in my wallet). Thus yes, there are 80-year olds that buy condoms very often (Well, that's what the generated profile for my grandma's shopping card would say :p).
I have a hard time understanding the hype around google. It's just another company. In that way i don't really understand the local media made a newsitem about google maps (As it doesn't really work for Belgium :p)
After a bit of thinking i had the following thought: We're heading towards the generation G. But after a first websearch (with Google) i discovered that term was already invented...
I'm not avoiding google services completely. I do have a gmail account that people can use to bug me with whatever funny pps/wma files they want
I admit that there are people with 2 different mindsets internet/real-world if it concerns privacy. I don't think i'm part of them. In the real world i usually use someone elses membership card (i don't want to keep all those cards for each shop in my wallet). Thus yes, there are 80-year olds that buy condoms very often (Well, that's what the generated profile for my grandma's shopping card would say :p).
I have a hard time understanding the hype around google. It's just another company. In that way i don't really understand the local media made a newsitem about google maps (As it doesn't really work for Belgium :p)
After a bit of thinking i had the following thought: We're heading towards the generation G. But after a first websearch (with Google) i discovered that term was already invented...
-
Stewsburntmonkey
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:09 pm
I would tend to agree. I have had a Gmail account a long time, but it has maybe 20 messages in it. I'm still prefer using my yahoo account as my public account (aka spam magnet) and have a variety of other more formal addresses for formal business. I definitely think there are too many Google worshipers out there. While Google's search engine was pretty revolutionary and still works very well for most things, many of their other products aren't all that great. I tend to like their general mindset, but they are certainly not the computer gods some people make them out to be. 
Actually there's personalized search for those with Google Accounts: http://www.google.com/psearch/help.htmlSami wrote: It is indeed far fetched to accuse them of this now, because there is no evidence and it's mearly a theory but the potential is there so I don't blame people for avoiding Google services.
Indeed.
But what I was referring to was more along the lines of Google deliverying Ads around the internet based on things you search for on their site, e-mail content and things you say on their messenger.
So if you were searching for camping supplies for a few days in a row, and you checked an e-mail that had little keywords to scan, it might delivery you ads for camping supplies since it knows what you were searching for and how often and how long ago since your last one.
That is the type of thing that I think privacy groups will lobby against. And they definately got my support for that.
But what I was referring to was more along the lines of Google deliverying Ads around the internet based on things you search for on their site, e-mail content and things you say on their messenger.
So if you were searching for camping supplies for a few days in a row, and you checked an e-mail that had little keywords to scan, it might delivery you ads for camping supplies since it knows what you were searching for and how often and how long ago since your last one.
That is the type of thing that I think privacy groups will lobby against. And they definately got my support for that.