Google freaks me out sometimes

[bascule]

I'm on my way to a party. I went to one at the same place last year, but didn't know the address. I have a flaky friend who was going to give me the address again, but uhh, yeah, flaked.

So I went to Google History, and... found it. That's great!

However, it freaks me out Google knows all that...

[xor]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

I'm on my way to a party. I went to one at the same place last year, but didn't know the address. I have a flaky friend who was going to give me the address again, but uhh, yeah, flaked.

So I went to Google History, and... found it. That's great!

However, it freaks me out Google knows all that...

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
Better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Google is taking over your life.
Google is making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who's naughty and nice.
Google is taking over your life.

Google knows when you're offline.
Google knows when you're online.
Google knows if you've been looking at pr0n or god,
So be good for goodness sake!
Oh, you better watch out!
You better not cry.
Better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Google is taking over your life.
Google is taking over your life.

Just in time for the season too.

xor

[Thorn]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

This is exactly why my searches are done on a number of different engines. Google keeping that kind of information is BAD. The whole "do no evil" thing is a large crock. So far but their actions seem to be nothing but evil. People bitch about the NSA doing "illegal" information collection, but then turn around and voluntarily dump all sorts of information into Google. Who needs Echelon when you have Google?

I don't trust them.

[noid]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

I say, sometimes daily, that if Microsoft or the US Government tried to do half of what Google does on a daily basis, people would be in the streets like howler monkeys screaming aboutt Big Brother and police states. But when your buddy Google does it, people say 'oh, its for Google? Well then heres my SSN and bank account PIN, I mean how can a company POSSIBLY be evil if its against their charter'. This is also why I spend a good chunk of my day telling people to shut the fuck up. Just dont forget the old punk rock adage, convenience will kill us

[xor]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

Google = Big Buddy.

xor

[Gadsden]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

For the folks that don't believe Google can be evil, take a look at Steve Rambam's talk from The Last Hope... interesting stuff.

On the same note.. does anyone have any company policies about using gmail/Google Calendar, or any of the other Google apps for company data?

[boredsilly]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

On the same note.. does anyone have any company policies about using gmail/Google Calendar, or any of the other Google apps for company data?

The hospital I work for has the policy but we may be an anomaly in the health care industry. I know of other hospitals that wrote a similar policy but then blocked any technological means to enforce it. They reasoned, “Why should we have to spend money on a proxy when we can have our managers police the policies? How could an end user ever be savvy enough to circumvent the rock solid DLP measure of managerial cubicle wandering?”

[YenTheFirst]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

To use the google history 'feature', you have to be logged into a google account while doing searches. I avoid that and log out first, and have turned off the feature anyway.

The thing with google and the data collection is it's opt-outable, to an extent. If you don't like it (and I don't), then opt out.

on a related note:
At the moment I use gmail because it's convenient, until I either buy some webhosting, or preferably, convince cox to let me run my own server without upgrading to a 'business' account. Any advice on doing that without using a modified cable modem? (I wish I had actually gone to that talk now, instead of reading the slides later. :P)

[Gadsden]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

To use the google history 'feature', you have to be logged into a google account while doing searches. I avoid that and log out first, and have turned off the feature anyway.

The thing with google and the data collection is it's opt-outable, to an extent. If you don't like it (and I don't), then opt out.

on a related note:
At the moment I use gmail because it's convenient, until I either buy some webhosting, or preferably, convince cox to let me run my own server without upgrading to a 'business' account. Any advice on doing that without using a modified cable modem? (I wish I had actually gone to that talk now, instead of reading the slides later. :P)

Get a Xen VM account, they can be pretty cheap. Then you can run about anything you want on it such as httpd, email, proxy, etc.

[bascule]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

The thing with google and the data collection is it's opt-outable, to an extent. If you don't like it (and I don't), then opt out.

My first inclination was to opt-out, but I decided I'd try leaving it on and see how that went.

It was great I was able to find an address I searched for last year. I imagine there's all sorts of interesting data mining you could do, which is both scary and exhilarating. I wonder if Google will ever digest your search history and spit out a complete personality profile, or perhaps start recommending you web sites you might be interested in.

That said, the enormous downside of it, beyond Google knowing that much about you, is if anyone ever got illicit access to it and used it maliciously. I know I've done many searches I would consider "sensitive", although it's not like I've ever typed my credit card into Google, heh.

[YenTheFirst]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

I wonder if Google will ever digest your search history and spit out a complete personality profile,

http://www.google.com/history/trends

or perhaps start recommending you web sites you might be interested in.

http://www.google.com/psearch

not quite exactly what you were saying, but pretty close.

That said, the enormous downside of it, beyond Google knowing that much about you, is if anyone ever got illicit access to it and used it maliciously.

The fundamental problem with databases in our society, in general. I remember reading once, one guy had a theory that up until now, society had a certain 'forgetfulness' of details and past wrongdoings and a certain degree of forgetfulness is requisite for society to function. Obviously, a database that can last a lifetime has very little 'forgetfulness'.

On the other hand, I think I remember Google announcing that they would begin anonymizing their records after 18 months or so...?

[Greyhatter]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

Map Quest is freaky too. To locate a school buddy living so far out in the sticks I had to use Map Quest. His directions were good but too many veer left, veer right 60 ft past the red barn and tall maple. I just plugged in his mailing address and Map Quest outputs distance, time, direction, feet and miles to next turn and of course the fastest direct route right to his driveway.

My sticks buddy was in shock when I showed him the MQ printouts and right on the spot he said "That's scary.. I don't want people to be able to find me that easily". Ain't dat the case!

[bascule]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

http://www.google.com/psearch

not quite exactly what you were saying, but pretty close.

This looks like what I was looking for:

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?u...ting_items.xml

[streaker69]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

Map Quest is freaky too. To locate a school buddy living so far out in the sticks I had to use Map Quest. His directions were good but too many veer left, veer right 60 ft past the red barn and tall maple. I just plugged in his mailing address and Map Quest outputs distance, time, direction, feet and miles to next turn and of course the fastest direct route right to his driveway.

My sticks buddy was in shock when I showed him the MQ printouts and right on the spot he said "That's scary.. I don't want people to be able to find me that easily". Ain't dat the case!

You mean Mapquest actually got directions correct? I have yet to actually see that. Every single time I've seen directions from them they've had at least 1 turn wrong, and that 1 turn is normally so far from your start point that there's no way you'd know it was wrong.

[Greyhatter]

Re: Google freaks me out sometimes

You mean Mapquest actually got directions correct? I have yet to actually see that. Every single time I've seen directions from them they've had at least 1 turn wrong, and that 1 turn is normally so far from your start point that there's no way you'd know it was wrong.

I've done well with it but I've only used it for the hard ones. Most of the time a regular map suffices. I was using Map Quest last year in the mid summer when the usual map could not approach the detail I needed to get to my destination in a real dead man's land. I wonder if they have upgraded to GPS mapping on searches which may explain improvements?