Concerns Over Google Modifying SSL Behavior 130
Lauren Weinstein writes "Google is handling SSL search queries on https://www.google.com/ in a manner significantly different than the standard, expected SSL end-to-end behavior — specifically relating to referer query data. These changes give the potential appearance of favoring sites that buy ads from Google. Regardless of the actual intentions, I do not believe that this appearance is in the best interests of Google in the long run."
Re:Bad meme (Score:2, Funny)
Trollpost is trollpost.
A search company that sells ads has a fundamental conflict of interest:
Provide better search results to get more users.
vs.
Inject more ads into search results to get more money, and sell more user information to get more money.
There is no getting around this.
When Google started out, their product was the search results.
When Google got big, they switched to being an ad company.
The only company with more fanboy zealots than Google is Apple. Google will never have to pay the piper after screwing users over because the zealots will blindly defend them, and they'll be louder than any opponents. People who get fed up with Google's shit won't rage about it - they'll quietly stop using Google's services.
Remember Google Buzz? Me either. But apparently some people were mad about it, and there were even the usual bullshit stories about "I got caught cheating on my husband because of Buzz!", just like how there's always a bullshit story of someone getting tracked when a location service is turned on (like the recent "Find my iPhone" shit, or a story of someone getting nerd justice against a laptop thief a week after an Apple iMac conference, etc.).
So what did Google lose? A few people disabled Buzz. Well not really, they hid the Buzz tab. Because the language for the option to truly disable Buzz says it will delete your Google profile. What's that? Does that include your Gmail address? Your calendar? What about your youtube account that they forced you to link? Picasa? Who knows, better not click it, just hide all the Buzz notifications and sharing options.
And now they're killing off Buzz because they have Google Plus. And Google Plus has far more users than Buzz ever did. Nobody got mad enough to stop using Google. Everyone got kind of annoyed and said no to Buzz. Then Plus came out, invite-only as usual, (to create a false sense of scarcity / exclusivity, thus increasing demand) and nobody learned anything.