It sounds like a good idea on the surface, but Google PowerMeter [click to read] which shows consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget. The president mentioned it in his internet "town hall." Rush Limbaugh was quick to point out the potential for abuse.
Already Google Neighborhoods is considered an invasion of privacy by some and I've Documented How Tax Assessors Use Google Earth [click to read]. It's kind of like Orwell's 1984 with the Big Brother eye in your house. Also they collect preference keywords from your gmail. That's how they target the ads to you. This article: Google is Big Brother [click to read] will get you thinking.
In 2003 Google Watch expressed the following concerns:
1. Google's immortal cookie: Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.
2. Google records everything they can: For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
3. Google retains all data indefinitely: Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
4. Google won't say why they need this data: Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.
5. Google hires spooks: Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware: With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal: Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
8. Google is not your friend: By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.
9. Google is a privacy time bomb: With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
Now consider how PowerMeter could be used [or abused] by an overreaching government attempt to ration power consumption. I'll stick with the old electric meter, thank you!
California's 'Black Car Ban'
Also in the works in California is a Proposal [cick to read] to ban dark paint on cars. The agency proposing the ban justifies this action because black paint is less reflective and your air conditioner will probably run more.
Update: From American Thinker:
Google Blocks Conservative Websites [click to read]. Unbiased search results. Sara for America reports: Here's more evidence that our fears about Google aren't unfounded. I plugged in these keywords "sarah for america 2009", and the Google search engine returned a website definition that included the words "brainless diet soda guzzlers". I wondered where in the world that came from --- browsed my site and found it was an anti-Sarah Palin post way deep in my blog. OF ALL THE THINGS (an unbiased?) Google could have used to define/summarize my website, that is what it came up with.
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Sara for America Sara for America, Member of the Resistance. Boston Tea Party Member 2009. ... Brainless DIET-SODA GUZZLERS - January 8th, 2009 at 1:59 am ... www.sarahforamerica.org/ - 111k - Cached - Similar pages
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Happenstance? Computer Models? Human "Error"? You decide. I am convinced that Google is our enemy, and it is winning.
Sara continues: During the past election, I "invested" $1,000 into Google ad-words.The game that Google plays is sickening. I was told, at first, that my site sold "an unacceptable product" and my keywords were rejected. I sold no product at all, zilch. It was simply pro-Sarah Palin. I tried again after requesting info regarding the rejection. This timeI was informed that the site was rejected because it made "personal attacks" on Obama. These supposedly personal attacks were videos of Obama and Michelle speaking - their own words. I hadn't even added my own thoughts.In the meantime, people who were searching for Sarah Palin were getting anti-Palin websites all dressed up as pro-Palin (until the reader got into the gist of the site.) Funny how that all worked out, complements of Mr. Google.
To be fair, the website blockage American Thinker initially mentions could indeed be the result of 'human error.' It happens. The question then becomes one of responsiveness to customer concerns.
Google's products and services are good. I use Blogger and Gmail although I wouldn't transmit really sensitive information through a gmail account. Google Earth and Sketchup are great too.
Eric Schmidt is free to be one of the biggest donors to Barack Obama because all of us are free to put our support behind our candidate. The problem is similar to the one that led to regulation of the railroads in the Nineteenth century. When a large business entity operates in a discriminatory manner, it invites some sort of outside oversight with all of its unintended [mostly bad] consequences. One reason Google should want to play fair is that in the future it is a very real possibility, given the nature of economies, that sometime in the far future controlling interest in the company might be acquired by someone interested in surpressing the liberal perspective. A neutral standard really serves everybody's interests better in the long run.
You can bet that if someone like Newsmax.com acquired controlling interest in Google there would be a hue and cry for some sort of "internet fairness doctrine." There is a bit of reasoning behind my use of Yahoo based Goodsearch as my primary search engine. A competitive marketplace is a healthy influence on corporate behavior. Also I like being able to designate myself who get's the 'charitable contribution' from my search activity advertising revenues.
In a competitive marketplace, customer service inevitably improves. Google is great at product development and leads the industry here but anyone who has had to bring a complaint to the search giant knows the hard truth; Google doesn't answer their mail. If you are China and they want to do business in your country they'll acknowledge yourwishes but if you are a small web developer and can't get the help you need, "don't bother to write."
Google's corporate motto is often misquoted as "don't be evil." The exact quote is "you don't have to be evil to make money." Parse that statement as spoken by a bunch of very young guys who found success right out of college. They still think most money is accumulated by a bunch of old guys who stole it [if they were paying attention in class], and they think, having stumbled onto American entreprenuership, that they've invented it. That changes everything, doesn't it?In the long run Google could really build trust by similarly "inventing" customer service. In the end it really pays to serve the little guy with a problem because he or she becomes your best advertisement.
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