Mozilla Exec Urges Switch From Google To Bing 527
Andorin writes "Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, has published a brief blog post in which he recommends that Firefox users move from using Google as their main search engine to Bing, citing privacy issues. Disregarding the existence of alternative search engines such as Ask and Yahoo, Dotzler asserts that Bing's privacy policy is better than Google's. Dotzler explains the recommendation with a quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time...' Ars Technica also covers the story."
Privacy fears (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because Google will give your search history to every two-bit company director out there.
As a two-bit company director, I am shocked and appalled at the suggestion that Google might not give me access to everything!
Joking aside, knowledge (information) is power; there are well known implications of private data being publicly accessible on the internet (like prospective employers searching, etc etc) but when highly personal or sensitive information is in the hands of a small number of people (e.g on a government system, or at Google etc etc) there is a real potential there for blackmail or othe
Re:Privacy fears (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively we come to a more honest world where everyone realises that pretty much everyone looks at porn.
And if he tries to pull that on you in the interview you whip out your phone and google him and fine he's a fan of MILFs and you then both compare favourite websites. You then look up who else he has looked up and find that they had far more dodgy tastes than you do and use this to your advantage in the salary negotiation phase of the interview.
Power and knowledge are only scary when the few have them, as soon as everyone has them then that's a lot less worrysome...
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
It might suck until you found another job, but at least you didn't end up working for some religious tight ass.
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are more important privacy concerns then someone's enjoyment of porn, which no one is likely to discover anyway.
How about political or religious views which people are far more likely to express on social sites? Perhaps some atheist will decide they don't want you working for them because you're a devout Christian. Or a conservative manager wont hire because they've read up on your liberal views. The discrimination doesn't only go one way. And then there's the bigger danger of people have access to your medical records. Imagine the difficulty you might face if employees know you have a persistent medical condition that might necessitate some time off.
Two Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
There are only two problems there.
1. Exactly who is "your generation"? You make it sound like it's some uniform Borg collective, where everyone does the same things and realizes the same things. In reality, for every suburban white kid who grew with Facebook and with doing this or that thing, there'll be at least two who grew with fundamentally different experiences. The guy judging you may not be the guy who grew up with porn, college toga parties, and SW like you did, but some guy who grew up sleeping with his arms crossed out of fear that otherwise he might touch himself accidentally at night and JESUS SEES HIM. And who thinks that SW is the work of the devil because it teaches people a different religion. (As opposed to, of course, those of us who think only the prequels and the wookies are the work of the devil because they ruin the whole setup and moral underpinnings of the original trilogy;)
2. Don't underestimate hypocrisy and group-think. People who grew up doing X, and even people who do X every night, might want to see you hanged, drawn and quartered for doing X too.
Preachers who watch gay porn at night (or in a few cases even got caught actually having gay sex), didn't go, "meh, I did it too, and it doesn't affect my work." They then went to the pullpit and preached that gays are an abomination, and the Lord sent us aids as punishment.
Communities who buy far kinkier porn, asked that some porn producer or sex shop owner be jailed for it. They didn't go, "meh, I watch worse stuff at home and it hasn't affected my work or relationships yet", they went more like, "OMG, lock him up for spreading that sin and corruption."
People who did pot in college, and sometimes a long time after it too, push to have others drug tested and fired if they as much as ever were within a mile of someone smoking pot. Or push for tougher drug laws if they're politicians.
Basically the way people react to X has _very_ little to do with "I did X too and didn't affect me", and a lot more with "do I want to be seen as supporting X, or as the guy who's tough on X?" The same guy who might actually chug more beer in a week than you do in a month, may well fire you for appearing on Facebook or youtube drunk in a pool of your vomit once, because that's the company image he wants, and/or that's the kind of guy he wants to be seen as.
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think Google is any different from any company, to be honest, and I don't tell them anything they don't need to know about me. I still think Schmidt's quote was turned from a fairly mild statement (if it had been communicated properly) into a fearmongering rampage, but if it made somebody wake up and start being smart about what they post, I'm all for it.
Re:Privacy fears (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Privacy fears (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, but that stops collaboration in the cloud dead, doesn't it? You want privacy for more than protecting yourself against law enforcement or looking good in the eyes of potential employers. You want privacy for protecting your work-in-progress from competitors. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Okay, then, that means no product development discussion on Wave. Whatever.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because there's nothing wrong with what you do today, doesn't mean someone won't decide it was wrong tomorrow.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally speaking, I have far less reason to fear Google than Microsoft. Microsoft has repeatedly broken the law for its own end. As far as I know, Google has no record of similar transgressions.
I hate how everyone politicizes everything, but honestly, Schmidt is right. I don't google for how to make bombs, so I don't worry about someone thinking I'm some kind of nutjob.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally speaking, I have far less reason to fear Google than Microsoft. Microsoft has repeatedly broken the law for its own end. As far as I know, Google has no record of similar transgressions.
Google doesn't seem to have a problem with selling the information they gather to every other single evil company out there that has or hasn't broken the law. They don't need to do evil if they can profit off of those who do. I don't think it's that conspiratorial. I just want to point out that the moral black and white of large tech companies and the IT industry in general is a lot more shades of gray than some clear good and evil division.
[consiparacy_theory_on]
I think the blog's reference to Schmidt
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh...you're very right about this. I don't know if you've ever heard of PostSecret, an art project where people send in postcards of their deepest, darkest secrets to be published. Well, while this is fairly anonymous, there is also a PostSecret Facebook site. So, I jumped on their one time and every freaken teenager from here to Timbuktu was posting secrets up on the message board. These secrets were attached to their name. There one a few that particularly scared me, and some I couldn't decide wheth
Choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Choices, choices.... Do I hand over the care for my personal privacy to Beelzebub or Ba'al?
My tip would be to take some personal responsibility for what you tell others about yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Choices, choices.... Do I hand over the care for my personal privacy to Beelzebub or Ba'al?
My tip would be to take some personal responsibility for what you tell others about yourself.
This is good advice. But many people don't know who is figuratively in the room when things are 'said' that ought to remain private. It's sometimes not obvious that the devious but perfectly legal thing you're doing is being logged. What's worse, your friends might be the ones who spill the private beans.
If you would ask your average Facebook user about who can and can't see/find the horribly embarrassing picture of them wearing a pixie outfit, submerged in a bathtub, drinking from a gallon-pitcher of Oat S
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Better response would have been... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google has been pissing me off recently with their toolbar updates that change the behaviour of the browser. If I wanted the new window/tab functionality of Firefox to behave like Safari, I'd be using Safari. Why do I want the sidewiki thing, or whatever it's called? Etc, etc. Piss off: I got the google toolbar as better way of searching for things, along with find in page option when I have the results. So it gets uninstalled.
Toolbar the official spyware from good guys. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every feature you hate somehow leaks your personal data to Google if you aren't careful. Interesting co-incidence eh?
Also does Adobe and Apple really need couple of cents from Google? Adobe Flash which has way bigger market share than Google comes with toolbar option selected by DEFAULT. You know the deal with impossible to change Google search on Safari/OS X.
Re:Better response would have been... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better response would have been... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, Google's biggest threat right now is Microsoft with Bing and they know it. This is why Google recently accepted to allow media outlets to limit the number of articles that could be viewed on Google news before being confronted with a paywall- because some outlets were threatening to delist from Google and only list from Bing, presumably Google felt the threat was big enough that Google news would lose enough content to matter.
This Mozilla guy is playing the same game- he recommended Bing because he knows that word is enough to make Google stand up, take notice and hopefully take action, not because he seriously advocates a search engine switch unless Google really do continue this attitude. A search engine comparison doesn't catch the headlines quite like a high profile mention of a switch to Google's main search threat.
The Blog Page (Score:5, Interesting)
Whoa, that page has some crazy background. Reminds me of something out of the 1990s.
Anyway, before all the conspiracy theorist posts pop up, this looks like it's just a post on his personal blog, which includes posts about his beard and other random things. Even if Mozilla was officially endorsing and getting paid for Bing searches, Google already has the same deal so there's no issue there.
Of course, this could just be a member of the Mozilla community jumping at the first chance to get back at Google for making Chrome... hmm...
One word: LOL (Score:5, Funny)
Switch from Google to MS, because of PRIVACY issues?
Re:Three words: LOL (Score:4, Funny)
Fixed.
Re:One word: LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Switch from Google to MS, because of PRIVACY issues?
I would like to point out, that Microsoft has come under horrendous fire because of their business practices and privacy and other things as you all know. Now because they realize that they are in fact losing (although slowly) market share to F/OSS because of these issues - the EU has been really hammering Microsoft, MS has been becoming more sensitive to the privacy issue. It seems like whenever I do anything with a MS product these days message boxes pop up stating what data and where they are sending it and whether I would like to opt out, decrease certain parts of the data, or just send it all. Why even with my Visual Studio Beta 2, there were all these statements regarding what they'll be collecting.
What I'm saying is, when it come to my privacy, I'd trust Microsoft before Google - but that's as far as I trust any organization.
I would also like to point out that while all of you are fretting about your searching habits and what porn site you guys re visiting may be tracked by Google or whoever, the credit bureaus and your bank is sending your: SSN, dob, name, address, past addresses, spouse's name, mother's maiden name and other very sensitive information all over the World. I had an issue with a credit report and I settled it with a very nice woman in India - I think - her accent was muddled. She refused to give me her location because of "security reasons". That was Trans Union. Banks offshore quite a bit of their back office processing.
MS and Google are far far off of my radar as far as privacy issues and for "evil" business practices.
Respecting Your Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Respecting Your Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well Google has a track record of mining every bit of data about you. Even to the point of hiring contractors to take pictures of your house (from the "street" of course). They have a phone OS, and they are pushing cloud services.
Microsoft has a track record of being the last one to enter a market, and doing a mediocre job within that market.
So the question becomes "Do you want your privacy invaded by a company who's developed the technology and are really good at it, or by a company which is not so good
Re:Respecting Your Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Even to the point of hiring contractors to take pictures of your house (from the "street" of course).
I wish I had mod points to mark you flamebait for this just for how you stated this.
Creating maps where you can actually view the street that you are going to be going to is only a natural extension of what had already existed. I remember wanting a feature like this the first time I heard about MapQuest. I'm glad Google went ahead and did it. It's not like Google is saying, "Bill_the_Engineer LIVES HERE!" Your comment is akin to someone from the 1700's saying, "Mapmaker John is violating your privacy by creating a MAP where he marks ROADS that lead right to your house!!!"
Give me a break.
Re:Respecting Your Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
When I saw that "funny" mockup of Google and the phrase "where are my fucking keys" - and google returns "on the fridge, where you left them dipshit" - I honestly thought this is where it is headed.
Google has made no secret of wanting to control the entire Internet experience for a user from content down to how you access that content. They have both sides of the market cornered, from a user and a webmaster's perspective.
They control most of the advertising, and they control (directly through analytics, or indirectly through adsense tracking) your website statistics. They know where a user goes to, and from, they know which sites. They know what you search for. If you've actually read the adsense terms, you'll know they tell you they use all the information they have on you to target advertisements...ON ANY SITE.
If you search for "buy a cadillac" and you then go to another website, if the cadillac ads are permitted to run on that site, it is likely you'll see them, or other ads Google has specifically targeted to you. It is no longer the job of the webmaster to do this.
I like Google, but the amount of information they have, if they DID decide to be evil, they would be the WORST company, because Microsoft holds absolutely nothing compared to what Google has on you.
Switch from Google? (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh... why does it read like (Score:5, Funny)
Dear customers. We noticed that it's not healthy to eat heavy doses of arsenic. Please switch to hydrogen cyanide.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Clusty (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Clusty (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Clusty (Score:5, Funny)
Clusty is by far the best search engine.
So is Clusty the crown of search?
something shiny here (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like fear of Chrome
Re:something shiny here (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it April 1st Already? (Score:4, Funny)
I seriously had to stop and read this twice. Apparently hell froze over.
Like Mozilla switching to Bing will ever end well. I can see Ballmer on the edge of the chair (he was about to throw), trying to keep a poker face and not burst out in evil laughter.
How about Cuil (Score:3, Informative)
It surprises me that when there are discussions about search engine privacy, Cuil never seems to be mentioned. Or at least I do not see it.
On Cuil's privacy page it says:
"When you search with Cuil, we do not keep any personally identifiable information, period. Your search history is your business."
So is there some reason Cuil is not brought up more? Maybe there are resons not to use it that I do not know about. Or perhaps it is just not well known.
problems with bing (Score:3, Interesting)
i'd be glad to make a switch, but there are some problems i have with bing:
Somehow looking at bing gives me the same feeling as looking at a typical domain-squatting site.
Why can't they just get it right?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most people will like the design elements of Bing.
shopping - so does Google
links to other products - so does Google
I just pulled up Google and Bing search results side by side, some font on my monitor.
I noticed a direct link to a PDF in my results
Have you actually tried Bing?
I just did a couple of searches in Bing and compared the results to Google, got almost the exact same sites.
Never underestimate Microsoft. The worst thing Google can do is get cocky and think MS is not a competitor.
Okay! (Score:3)
You've prompted a switch, Mozilla.... /Closing out my tabs while chrome downloads in the background
Bitter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, firefox needs to get its act together and remember what their original purpose was because I've noticed a lot of average users complaining about the last couple Mozilla releases being buggy and slow across all platforms. On the windows side, quite a few have already flocked to Chrome an a few to Opera. OSX, a lot of folks have gone back to Safari.
Schmidt is just being honest (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who worries about privacy on the Internet shouldn't be on the Internet. I admire Schmidt for his honesty. I worry more about those who talk about keeping privacy while at the same time profit from it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone should be concerned about privacy. Only a fool thinks they have nothing to hide. Would you honestly trust this bat shit crazy society to judge you correctly or to not abuse their power?
Switch to CUIL (Score:3, Informative)
Or you can use CUIL (http://www.cuil.com). It's a great search engine
As they say: Cuil analyzes the Web, not its users
Way to miss the point Dotzler (Score:5, Insightful)
Schmidt was warning users about the risks inherit in using ANY search engine "including Google" and that governments can access data kept by search engines in the future. Dotzler's reaction is truly cringe worthy.
He then goes on to say "There is no ambiguity, no "out of context" here." right after COMPLETELY taking the quote out of context. This is ugly.
Mozilla did not *recommend* it... (Score:3, Insightful)
This post puts words in Mozilla's mouth. While this was a high-profile Mozilla figure (Asa Dotzler), it is his personal blog, so keep in mind it's just what he thinks, not any recommendation on behalf of Mozilla.
In any case, his exact words [mozillazine.org] were, "And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing. (Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google.)" That's not exactly a whole-hearted recommendation; it's saying, "Here's something bad, but this is how you can switch it to something better." And again, of course, it's just his opinion based on the respective privacy policies--but, if someone appeals to the PATRIOT Act like Google was talking about, I'm not convinced it matters either way. (Just because it's not tied to your account doesn't mean they can't figure it out.)
Google is officially a big company now (Score:4, Interesting)
Then Bill Gates contributed $40bn to the world in history's single biggest act of charity, Microsoft's domination looked for a while like it really was slipping, and Google simply became too big.
Google has simply become everybody's competitor.
Example: the Chrome browser competes directly with Mozilla's Firefox. Not that this was the reason for that blog post, of course
Another example: Google is so big that its people don't talk to each other, to the extent that they are building two incompatible operating systems (Android and Chrome OS).
Another example: the publishing industry has set its sights on Google, for the crime of taking away too much of their Ad revenue. They are contemplating de-indexing Google.
So Microsoft, once the "evil empire", is now champion of Liberty. Well, that is good; because they never were that evil, so some redress is in order.
And Bill Gates did contribute $40bn to the world. When Sergei Brin, Larry page and Eric Schmidt do the same with their personal fortunes, we can all go back to normal.
Bottom line: businesses are for-profit affairs. The best restraint on them is competition. We the people should keep Microsoft and Google both on their toes, for our own best interest.
And we should remember that people like Gates, Brin, Schmidt & Page are good good people at heart. They are creative. They contribute. Just like everyone, we need to set them straight from time to time.
That really bugs me. (Score:3, Interesting)
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
One of the stupidest arguments that is made all the time.
"Hey if you got nuthin' to hide you won't mind if we violate your rights!"
I would love to see a privacy war, competition at its finest...
Bing might just get a new user today.
Hmnn (Score:3, Funny)
Mozilla versus Chrome (Score:3, Interesting)
No doubt the privacy concerns are real, although I honestly don't know how bad MS will get with data mining. I suspect this statement from Mozilla was motivated by Google becoming a viable competitor in the browser market. Making this statement certainly attempts to sow the seeds of doubt about Google invading your privacy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
my thought was, "Well, the check has cleared"
I hope that he is up on the IRS privacy policy when he reports it on his income tax...
IRS privacy policy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lousy reference, there. The IRS takes privacy more seriously than just about anybody. [irs.gov]
After Richard Nixon misused the agency, Congress slapped the IRS with certain restrictions. To de-politicize the agency, the executive structure was purged of political appointees. All other agencies have a myriad (literally dozens, even at small agencies) of political appointees floating around whose jobs they got because they kissed some politicians ass. The IRS has only two.
There is a "Taxpayer Advocate" office t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$1,000,000 anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Idk, do you really expect any internet service to hold to their stated privacy policy? Yes, they may, or when the feds come a knockin', they might have not and the logs are chock full of stuff. Without a paying customer relationship, it's my understanding that it's pretty hard to have any enforceable reconcilation if they breach their word.
Considering that most browsers have a search bar, it would be nice if the browser could somehow implement anonymizing techniques independent of the specific search engine. Hell, charge money for it as a value-added service to route the search requests through their anonymizing server, which they promise not to log, for the paranoid user. I'd feel a lot better doing that than using some dubious Tor node.
Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)
A point the article makes is that Microsoft, as a corporation that has dealt heavily with many things outside of just search, is very much grounded in privacy concerns and legal matters related to it. They are likely to uphold their privacy policy very strictly on their internet services.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's CEO was point out that simple fact that when the government wants information, NO ONE is going to deny them. So your best course of action is not to engage in activities that can get you into trouble because businesses are not going to protect you.
twit!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't.
I need a license to get married and a license to open a business. I need a license to drive on the roads I pay for and a license for my dog to keep his nuts in my county. I need a license for my gun and a license for my trailer. The list goes on. Free society? Where?
And anyone who really believes they live in a free society, please let me know so I can either remind you that you're a naive asshat or start working on expatriating if it turns out you do, indeed, know your ass from a hole in the groun
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or startpage.com / ixquick.com which meta searches multiple search facilities and keeps no private information.
http://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html [startpage.com]
Startpage is powered by Ixquick. The only search engine that does not record your IP address. Your privacy is under attack ! Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data are recorded. Your search terms, the time of your visit, the links you ch
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Given how absurdly permissive their stated privacy policies usually are, they had damn well better hold to it.
I mean, it's a company. If they want to claim that there's some sort of legally binding contract that shows up just because I viewed their website, at the bare minimum they ought to be fulfilling their obligations. Does that mean they will? In many cases no, but those sites are guilty of a breach of contract, by a contract they unilaterally imposed.
Is it possibly fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has said it will stop paying that money, eventually. Or maybe Microsoft has offered more. Any statements from anyone at Mozilla about search engines must be considered to be possibly about money.
Eric Schmidt's choice of words showed an amazing lack of social awareness. However, remember that he also has a point. The U.S. government has decided it can force executives to give information, and can also force them to keep silent about giving that information. The U.S. government calling the law the "Patriot Act" was an attempt to intimidate by implying that someone who is against the complete loss of privacy in the U.S. is not a patriot. That's not correct, of course.
Maybe the underlying point of Mr. Schmidt's statement was that the U.S. government has been forcing Google to help conduct surveillance, and he feels uncomfortable about that. However, it was a foolish choice of words.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, charge money for it as a value-added service to route the search requests through their anonymizing server, which they promise not to log, for the paranoid user. I'd feel a lot better doing that than using some dubious Tor node.
The problem with a pay-based anonymizing server is that they have to get money from you somehow. That alone leaves a bit-trail which can be traced by the government, and in many countries the governments are actually mandating that commercial service providers keep logs. So, for the truly paranoid, I don't see how a fee-based anonymizer is superior to Tor. With Tor, if you're willing to use multiple nodes (and accept the resulting huge performance hit) then it seems to me you get better security than using a single commercial anonymizer.
Re: (Score:3)
I, for one, pay for high-quality Tor exit nodes. :-)
Scroogle.org (Score:3, Informative)
I use scroogle.org .. it's a proxy between me and google.. and they claim to erase all logs within 48 hours. (I understand it's just a claim.. still it's another entity sitting between me and google). I've always hated the way when search results in google make you think they go straight to link (the hover URL is the site abc.com), but when you click on the item, some javascript converts it to google.com?redirectsomething=abc.com. That is just plain devious in my eyes.
You can also find the search addon at
Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Two things to consider:
1 - When Bush stated publicly that the federal government should have all search data tied to IP addresses, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft handed it over without any official government mandate or court order. They just volunteered your private information. Google refused.
2 - At the same time several of these issues were coming to a head at once (Bush's statement, Yahoo turning in a Chinese blogger, Google being forced by Brazil to give out details on a child pornography ring on Orkut) Google announced they were changing their policies and anonymizing logs sooner to protect people's privacy. They said their new anonymization policy was better than anyone else out there. I haven't read them all, so I can't say for certain.
So one company has shown they will fight to protect your privacy until they are absolutely forced (Google didn't even hand information over to Brazil when a judge ordered them to do so initially), and they anonymize their logs sooner.
So why in the world is Bing better for privacy?
Re:Google (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow - so you think privacy only applies to people you like? Or people not being accused of crimes you detest?
I agree that child pornographers are scum. I certainly approve of legal action against such despicable low-lifes. But privacy applies to everyone under the law otherwise child pornography becomes a convenient weapon to level against your enemy without any care for justice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
informationweek.com... [informationweek.com]
searchenginewatch.com [searchenginewatch.com]
Yeah... it happened.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Responding to a Subpoena [wikipedia.org] is not "volunteering".
Quite right, but while that fact makes Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft look less bad in that situation, it makes Google look better. From one of the cited articles:
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," Nicole Wong, Google associate general counsel, said in a statement. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
I'd say fighting a government subpoena issued on dubious grounds is a lot more respectable than simply not volunteering information.
Re:Make privacy easy (Score:4, Informative)
Don't you understand the concept of asymmetric encryption? I don't have to send my key via a secure channel. I can post my public key in this post for anyone to see.
Anyone who wants to send me a message, will encrypt it with my publicly available key and it will only be possible to decrypt it using my private key. That's the "magic" my web-browser/email software/etc has that the hacker's programs don't have.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple of things....
First, encryption doesn't guarantee privacy - it just makes it more difficult to read the contents of something. It's a constant one-upping as we use better encryption techniques and get better technology.
The best encryption will probably be laughable in 20 years. Probably less. Look at WEP. Less than 10 years for that to be considered worthless.
From wikipedia....
"...no public-key encryption scheme has been shown to be secure against eavesdroppers with unlimited computational power
Re:Google (Score:5, Informative)
I actually applaud Firefox for this change.
What change? They didn't change anything.
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
You know Microsoft's privacy policy isn't all that better. They still associate your search with your name and ip address for 18 months after you searched. 'Fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain' is a bit of a hyperbole, wouldn't you say?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually applaud Firefox for this change. Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
I guess for the general public this type of statement makes sense. Most people probably have no fucking clue what Google stores about you and what they plan to store (e.g. Chrome has your browser history travel with you as well as extensions which means they have all that data on you on their servers too). But for the rest of us who know that they are doing this and really don't give a
Re:Google (Score:4, Informative)
I find that Bing falls for marketing scams and SEO much worse than Firefox. Random download sites and outright scams show up in Bing first with lots of searches, while Google is much more successful at ignoring marketingese and just giving you the site you want.
For example, searching for Wii homebrew [bing-vs-google.com] gives:
Google:
Bing:
So basically, people looking for Wii homebrew and using Bing are at a much higher chance of getting scammed. Seriously, Wiibrew isn't even in the first page of results.
Going the other way, searching for the name of the scam (homebreware) yields (antiscam = site that explains that homebreware is a scam): ...
Google: antiscam, antiscam, antiscam, scam, scam, antiscam, scam,
Bing: scam, scam, scam, scam, scam, scam, scam...
Someone using Bing and doublechecking on what they're about to buy isn't going to remotely realize they're being scammed.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure Google's traffic will nose dive immediately and they'll mend their ways once me(*) and thee switch to Bing.
* Disclaimer: me and thee excludes me.
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
...and who listens to some exec when he says, "Use another company because I say so!" and doesn't think for themselves.
There are privacy concerns with Google. Understandable.
There are also privacy concerns with Bing.
Eric Schmidt's quote not only said, "perhaps you shouldn't be doing [bad things]" but also "privacy with search engines in general [is a farce]." This is nothing new! People just want to warhgrhable over it so they have something to talk about during the day. There really is nothing all that new here. Do you think you're not already tracked around the internet in the first place? Thinking anything different would only be fooling yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And here we see Google falling because they think they're "too big" and "dont-be-evil" to take their users privacy seriously...
I actually applaud Firefox for this change. Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
Google certainly doesn't have a great track record for privacy, but is MS any better?
I'm all for discussion and criticism of Schmidt's statement, but I'm not sure I want to punish a company because their CEO was actually honest about their beliefs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for discussion and criticism of Schmidt's statement, but I'm not sure I want to punish a company because their CEO was actually honest about their beliefs.
What more do you want? Confirmation from Netcraft? These sort of PR slips aren't allowed very often, and for good reason.
If you don't agree with the CEO's attitude, why shouldn't you stop using their services?
I'd rather go by the actions of the company.
In Google's case their actions show they don't respect your privacy, but they're pretty open about their lack of respect.
For MS I honestly don't know a lot about their actions on privacy, but I doubt they'd be any better than Google and I don't want to reward them for hiding their intentions.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For MS I honestly don't know a lot about their actions on privacy, but I doubt they'd be any better than Google and I don't want to reward them for hiding their intentions.
You don't know about Microsoft's actions on privacy and you have no idea what they say about it. Did you know that both Bing and Google have their (very extensive) privacy policies linked on the bottom of their search pages?
Microsoft have got quite good at listing privacy policies and asking for permission before having their Windows software call back to home base. Generally speaking you can opt out of sending info back to their servers with the obvious exceptions like Genuine Windows Advantage and the annoying exception of Microsoft Security Essentials - where you have to choose either basic or advanced membership of Microsoft SpyNet (which collects info about discovered malware). I'm sure that previously you could opt out of that system.
I've read some of Google's privacy policies, as for MS I haven't read their policies and don't use any of their products.
Using Windows as the basis for comparison isn't the best thing since it's a different business model. Google's ad based model relies on a certain lack of privacy, and unless MS plans to lose money on Bing they'll have to look at the same trade-offs.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
Isn't that their job?
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Two items. One, Schmidt's quote was taken out of context. He was referring to "do"-ing a search something you'd rather not be known, because ALL the search engines keep records and ALL of them are subject to subpoena.
Two, "Firefox" isn't making a change - this is one person expressing an opinion. If the organization was that concerned, they'd drop Google as the default browser.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Google does and always has taken user privacy seriously. But the fact is, and Schmidt is being quite frank, here, they don't have the right to deny requests from law enforcement agencies, and as long as that's true, no company will fail to communicate everything you've ever done to the feds whenever they want to know about it.
Look at it this way: would you expect Balmer to point out that giving Microsoft any information about you would ultimately lead to it being in the hands of the Federal government? No, of course not. Microsoft will quite happily hide that fact from you and make you feel more secure. Google will warn you about it up-front, but they ALREADY LOST THAT CASE IN COURT (yep, Google tried to refuse to hand over search histories [npr.org]).
So, you get to ask yourself: who do you want to do business with: the company that warns you about risks to your privacy so that you can moderate your behavior accordingly or the company that tells you that everything is just fine. Schmidt made me uncomfortable, and that's a good thing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> they don't have the right to deny requests from law enforcement agencies
This is true, if the government comes to them while they still have the information or before they gather it. The difference is, Google will keep your information around a lot longer than Microsoft will, and they put it to all kinds of marketing purposes that may be pushing the "don't-be-evil" envelope.
See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2282232,00.asp [pcmag.com]
Re:Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies like Google may be legally required to retain logging data. It may not be by their own choice alone that they do it.
But I'm also sure the company will also try to squeeze any advantage they can get out of the data for themselves. In this regard, I find Schmidt's apparent lack of respect for users' privacy rather concerning. It may be that everyone knows governments will have access to the data, and that in that sense you perhaps shouldn't do (without some kind of external anonymization) what you don't want them to know, but Schmidt's statement also suggests that Google itself will be willing to do just about anything they can with your data (within the boundaries of law), and particularly that he thinks it's normal and acceptable for everybody else as well to gather all the data about you that they want and retain it for any purposes they see fit.
Google of course uses the data also to its users' benefit to some extent (improving search results), but certainly not all companies in all fields do. Think about insurance companies, for instance, where the benefit of the company and the customer are much more clearly at odds with each other (the optimal point where the customer pays the most and receives the least is pretty much just probability and statistics, and the companies use all available information to determine that optimal setting). Will Google eventually come to cooperate with them? "Oh, but you searched for this and that... it puts you in a risk group for foobar, so we can't give you anything."
Yes, I know that kind of thing is probably illegal. However, laws do change and when the data is out there and there's clearly the willingness to use it for anything (and the companies don't seem to need to worry that customers will leave them because of it), it almost becomes a matter of lobbying. And that's just an example -- the dynamics with that kind of a mineable mass of data are something that we can't even predict in the long run. We don't know who's going to want to use it and for what.
That makers the lack of respect for privacy more disturbing than stating the fact that the government is likely to get their hands on data if they want to.
Re:Bing (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, theres that search everyone does once in a great while where they go "oops, definitely shouldn't have googled that", (my recent one was the audio/video app "g-spot")
but for the other 99% of the time the results are incredibly relevant. other spam sure, (like when i search for an electronic component and just get tons of keyword hits at greymarket sites), but viagra/porn?
It is a wake up call for Google (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone like Asa suggests using a Microsoft technology because your company currently looks more evil than "satan himself" (remember?), you should look to mirror and ask what is wrong.