Archive for category privacy

Google Desktop for Linux? Ummm… no thanks.

Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Google, Open Source, privacy on July 3rd, 2007

Well, it took a while, but Google has finally released their desktop search program Google Desktop for Linux. While this sounds like great news, I get the feeling that Google might be in the wrong market with this product. Don’t get me wrong: I love that Google is no longer ignoring Linux. I love that they have native versions of Google Earth and Google Desktop. But I just don’t think that Google Desktop fits in well with the Linux crowd.

I see at least a few problems with Google Desktop for Linux:

  1. It’s not open source. Everything doesn’t need to be, of course. But there are enough good open-source alternatives (metatracker, recoll, even that piece of crap beagle) that do the same thing at least as effectively.
  2. Google has an image problem that isn’t getting any better. The former “do-no-evil” folks are doing a lot of things that seem evil lately, including taking pictures of people on the street for Street View and trying to snatch up Doubleclick. I wrote a lot about this in a recent entry on my blog (http://apt-get.us).
  3. The installation and interface are tied to having an active ‘net connection. Will this run when a user is offline? And what kind of data is being transferred back to Google?

There are a couple of positives, though:

  1. Google Desktop is a relatively tight piece of code. It’s memory footprint is about 75% smaller than beagle’s bloat, for example. And even though the initial indexing takes forever, it doesn’t impact system performance (as opposed to beagle, which brings system performance to a crawl).
  2. Google Desktop integrates with Google’s web search and GMail. For those who keep their email on Gmail, this can be a lifesaver. And it does save a step for those who realize, “hey, I should search for this on the web, too!”

As for me, I’m sticking with recoll. All of my email is stored (and backed up) on my computers. ALT+TAB over to Firefox is no skin off my nose. And I don’t know that I trust Google anymore. So I’m staying away.

I think that a lot of people will, too. Maybe Google is looking to corner the market on Windows users switching to Linux because of Vista/Dell’s new Ubuntu machines?

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Google: Do no evil?

Posted by Biffster in Google, privacy on June 26th, 2007

Hmmm… Apparently I’ve been hanging on to an article that I wanted to link to here. The article is “Suddenly, the Paranoids Don’t Seem So Paranoid Anymore by Tony Long (via Wired). Long is writing about Google’s Street View team and their willingness to take photos of anyone, anywhere:

But just to be safe, Google makes it clear that it’s on firm legal footing; that you have no legal guarantee to privacy on a public street. So if you turn up on Street View as you’re ducking into the local porn emporium, that’s your tough luck. Maybe it is legal. Probably it is. So what? Being legal doesn’t mean being right.Let’s call a spade a spade here, lay all our cards on the table and use all the clichés necessary to make one thing perfectly clear: Google is invading your privacy for the same reason (and only reason) it does anything. It smells a chance to make money and it’s going to make money, and to hell with you and your privacy. Do no evil? Balls.

Greed, unfortunately, is another American characteristic. One that will eventually destroy us. [Emphasis mine.]

Long’s main point is that Google has abandoned their “Do no evil” stance in pursuit of the all-mighty dollar. I am willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt, but I am not certain why. On the surface, it definitely seems like Google has abandoned all pretenses of caring about their user’s privacy. Why am I willing to believe that they haven’t?

Google makes their money by collecting data. It doesn’t matter what that data is about.  It can be the contents of web pages, books, journals, online photo collections, email and more. Collecting data on individual users never seemed to be important to Google. They make money on aggregated, anonymized data about their users. There seemed to be no real need for Google to collect individual or identifying information. This seems harmless, so I really didn’t give it much thought.

Now, though, I am not so certain. What really got me back to thinking about this is Google’s attempted purchase of Doubleclick. Doubleclick is a truly evil company. They make their money by collecting indentifying information about individuals. Doubleclick wants to track everything that an individual person does on the ‘net, and then feed that back to their clients. That is EVIL!

So now, I am not so certain that Google’s intentions are altruistic. I’ll see how this story unfolds.

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