Googles New Feature - Privacy Concerns Anyone?

[Lee]

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

I dont know, this just reaks of privacy invasion although i guess it isnt if a person chooses to use the service.

Still, it opens up a whole new can of worms for web surfers concerned with their privacy.

Regards,

Lee

[Fister]

Certainly those who want privacy would not sign up for this service.

Just how useful is this service? I installed Google desktop search which sure seems to have already many of the features of Google history. And I rarely find the Google desktop search useful...it's probably not worth the huge storage and extra RAM it consumes.

[phil64]

I wouldn't be the one using this service but I think a few companies might use use it to track what they search for to keep a record of it. Specially if there are more than one employee working on a same project.

$0.02

[attis]

When Google was new I was very keen to use it because I thought they were different than the other when it comes to collecting personal information. While I think this was true in the very beginnings, it has becoming nothing more than a spybot now. I think it's more than time to move on. Any recommendable alternatives out there?

[Dzinerbear]

I'm certainly over Google when it comes to getting traffic and rankings. They have made it so difficult to get organic rankings that I really question the validity of their results. I would love an new engine to emerge and bite them in the ass, but I fear they're so entrenched in our culture that this isn't possible. Still, I remember when everyone talked about Alta Vista, and they died almost over night.

Michael

[mgillis]

I wouldn't discount Google just yet.

Remember, when the US Gov decided to crack down on porn, they went to the SEs and demanded their search information to track down (supposedly) child porn, but I don't believe that for a moment. They wanted the info so they could do as they damn well pleased with it.

Yahoo and MSN ponied up immediately, but Google adamantly refused, citing the privacy of their users.

This is just one of their nutty tools - it certainly has a "big brother" look and feel, but at the end of the day if you don't implement it then your search patterns won't be tracked, by you. They are all still tracked by Google - they collect reams of data on every search we all do using their engine to find out what people are looking for and, ideally, how to improve their results and their tools. This just gives YOU access to what THEY are already doing.