"We are Google, resistance is fultile"
Well, what once started as a couple of students who didn't know how to spell the title of their project, Googol (the highest number bracket, million, billion, trillion...googol), is now a huge company.
It gave us a great search engine that changed the net, then came an email service that changed storage limits from 1 megabyte, to 1000 megabytes, even Yahoo and Microsoft had to follow suit. It gave us news that we can customize to better suit our interests. Hell, it even owns this blog!
The main marketing and financial factor of Google, was advertising. More importantly, relavent advertising. If I get an email from a friend about a weekend trip involving remote controled cars, on the side of my web page, will be 5 ads from various places selling remote controlled cars. Yes, it's a privacy issue, the last thing I need is my girlfriend telling me that lastnight's slightly drunken performance wasn't all that bad and then a Viagra ad pops up onto my screen. Google has been really good with privacy though. The US Supreme court subpoenad Googles search info to see how many people were looking for porn, Google refused. After a year, a compromise of only search words were given, but no user information.
Now, they have a scary new idea, using your pc microphone to constantly scan the ambient noise in your home to see what's on tv. If you're watching CSI, maybe your web browser will start advertising for forensics courses at your local university, or if you are watching a cooking channel, Safeway now has a great special on roast beef. You can even buy the same clothes and fashion accesories as the TV star your are watching. Supposidly, the program will filter out the non TV noise before it's sent to Google for analysing what you're watching... good. Maybe the filter screws up when you're arguing with your wife and Viagra ads pop up, followed by divorce lawyer ads and handgun ads. Anyways, in the wrong hands, this is scary. However, I would trust Google, over anyone else. If the NSA/FBI/CIA/??? wanted to get in on this, they could probably just have microsoft put something into Windows. As Windows isn;t open source, meaning the programming code can't bee looked at, no one really knows what Windows is really doing anyways. Microsoft hasn't exactly been a moral pillar in the business environment, bending to the government wouldn't exactly be a new thing for them.
Anyways, I think the idea is great, but in the wrong hands, it would save the NSA a lot of trouble with setting wire taps, if they can just tune in on a microphone in your living room, wouldn't that make their lives easier, they can know EVERYTHING about the criminals, and they don't even need to wait for them to use a phone.
Click on the title of this blog entry to see the article about the new Google idea, read the comments at the bottom of the article's page, some are interesting, many are repetitive.
It gave us a great search engine that changed the net, then came an email service that changed storage limits from 1 megabyte, to 1000 megabytes, even Yahoo and Microsoft had to follow suit. It gave us news that we can customize to better suit our interests. Hell, it even owns this blog!
The main marketing and financial factor of Google, was advertising. More importantly, relavent advertising. If I get an email from a friend about a weekend trip involving remote controled cars, on the side of my web page, will be 5 ads from various places selling remote controlled cars. Yes, it's a privacy issue, the last thing I need is my girlfriend telling me that lastnight's slightly drunken performance wasn't all that bad and then a Viagra ad pops up onto my screen. Google has been really good with privacy though. The US Supreme court subpoenad Googles search info to see how many people were looking for porn, Google refused. After a year, a compromise of only search words were given, but no user information.
Now, they have a scary new idea, using your pc microphone to constantly scan the ambient noise in your home to see what's on tv. If you're watching CSI, maybe your web browser will start advertising for forensics courses at your local university, or if you are watching a cooking channel, Safeway now has a great special on roast beef. You can even buy the same clothes and fashion accesories as the TV star your are watching. Supposidly, the program will filter out the non TV noise before it's sent to Google for analysing what you're watching... good. Maybe the filter screws up when you're arguing with your wife and Viagra ads pop up, followed by divorce lawyer ads and handgun ads. Anyways, in the wrong hands, this is scary. However, I would trust Google, over anyone else. If the NSA/FBI/CIA/??? wanted to get in on this, they could probably just have microsoft put something into Windows. As Windows isn;t open source, meaning the programming code can't bee looked at, no one really knows what Windows is really doing anyways. Microsoft hasn't exactly been a moral pillar in the business environment, bending to the government wouldn't exactly be a new thing for them.
Anyways, I think the idea is great, but in the wrong hands, it would save the NSA a lot of trouble with setting wire taps, if they can just tune in on a microphone in your living room, wouldn't that make their lives easier, they can know EVERYTHING about the criminals, and they don't even need to wait for them to use a phone.
Click on the title of this blog entry to see the article about the new Google idea, read the comments at the bottom of the article's page, some are interesting, many are repetitive.
posted by Colin at 10:46 PM
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