I must say that I am a little concerned with the new Terms of Service by Google. The idea that they can send (and store) your information - both search and personal - to anywhere within the Google empire is disturbing. I'm sure that most of the information will be used to target advertising which better relates to your interests, but could this mass of data be used for other purposes?
I can imagine that one day, Google will have more information on any one single person than any agency in the world. That information could be quite boring and innocuous, or could be quite damaging.
For instance, I have a Facebook page, but the information I share on there is bugger all. The stuff on my page would only be interesting (I hope) to my friends, and thats about it. There is no contact information, phone numbers, addresses etc at all. Basically I keep it to a minimum. But there will be people who either don't give a damn, don't know any better and will just throw any personal information on their Facebook page.
Will Google be able to trawl all this data and capture it? It has already been reported that Google software bypasses settings in certain mobile phones to capture text messages, possibly record your conversations and maybe even capture information on your calendar?
In addition, if you use GPS a lot, most people probably leave the GPS Satellite function connected on their mobiles, so the GPS app functions straight up once called. Now Google can track your movements. This in itself is probably nothing major, but what if law enforcement agencies call upon Google to divulge this information, and you just happen to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time? I can see a time, maybe not so far in the future, when information data mined by Google could be used in a court room to push a prosecutions case.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not screaming "1984" Orson Welles and all that stuff, but I think this is a wrong move by Google. 10 or so years ago, Google started out by being a great little search engine that did a great job, but the large corporation "greed" has taken over. It appears (to me anyway) that advertising and the almighty dollar drive this Google giant, and its humble beginnings have been long forgotten. It reminds me a little, or a lot actually, of Australia's darling Telco - Telstra. They grew so big and arrogant, they started to lose sight of the real purpose of their being - to provide a telecommunications service to the Australian people. They became so difficult to deal with, and in the end, everybody basically just hated dealing with Telstra.
Anyway, I'm going off subject. I don't like the idea of being tracked and scritinised to such a degree as what will happen with Google. So much so, that I have, after so many years, switched my search engine page from Google to Bing. This wont save my blog, Facebook page and other online stuff I do being recorded by Google, but at least it cuts it down and to me, shows my disapproval to Google. I'm only a single person - a mere drop in the internet ocean - but I wouldn't be surprised to see more people doing the same. They may change to any number of different search engines other than Bing, but that was my choice for the moment. This even surprised me given the dislike I have for another corporate giant .. Microsoft! I've even turned off the GPS function on my phone, so it can't be tracked by Google.
At the end of the day, I'm an honest person and I have nothing to hide, but in saying that, I still don't want to be tracked and data scrutinised to the degree to what I already am, and so I'm taking steps to keep my internet "footprint" as light as I can.
I can imagine that one day, Google will have more information on any one single person than any agency in the world. That information could be quite boring and innocuous, or could be quite damaging.
For instance, I have a Facebook page, but the information I share on there is bugger all. The stuff on my page would only be interesting (I hope) to my friends, and thats about it. There is no contact information, phone numbers, addresses etc at all. Basically I keep it to a minimum. But there will be people who either don't give a damn, don't know any better and will just throw any personal information on their Facebook page.
Will Google be able to trawl all this data and capture it? It has already been reported that Google software bypasses settings in certain mobile phones to capture text messages, possibly record your conversations and maybe even capture information on your calendar?
In addition, if you use GPS a lot, most people probably leave the GPS Satellite function connected on their mobiles, so the GPS app functions straight up once called. Now Google can track your movements. This in itself is probably nothing major, but what if law enforcement agencies call upon Google to divulge this information, and you just happen to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time? I can see a time, maybe not so far in the future, when information data mined by Google could be used in a court room to push a prosecutions case.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not screaming "1984" Orson Welles and all that stuff, but I think this is a wrong move by Google. 10 or so years ago, Google started out by being a great little search engine that did a great job, but the large corporation "greed" has taken over. It appears (to me anyway) that advertising and the almighty dollar drive this Google giant, and its humble beginnings have been long forgotten. It reminds me a little, or a lot actually, of Australia's darling Telco - Telstra. They grew so big and arrogant, they started to lose sight of the real purpose of their being - to provide a telecommunications service to the Australian people. They became so difficult to deal with, and in the end, everybody basically just hated dealing with Telstra.
Anyway, I'm going off subject. I don't like the idea of being tracked and scritinised to such a degree as what will happen with Google. So much so, that I have, after so many years, switched my search engine page from Google to Bing. This wont save my blog, Facebook page and other online stuff I do being recorded by Google, but at least it cuts it down and to me, shows my disapproval to Google. I'm only a single person - a mere drop in the internet ocean - but I wouldn't be surprised to see more people doing the same. They may change to any number of different search engines other than Bing, but that was my choice for the moment. This even surprised me given the dislike I have for another corporate giant .. Microsoft! I've even turned off the GPS function on my phone, so it can't be tracked by Google.
At the end of the day, I'm an honest person and I have nothing to hide, but in saying that, I still don't want to be tracked and data scrutinised to the degree to what I already am, and so I'm taking steps to keep my internet "footprint" as light as I can.
