All You Bases Are Now Belong To Us
Ok, I really needed to get that subject line out my system. Ever since I read the news that Google's launching a service called Google Base, its been doing the rounds in my head. Anyway, about Google base. Its a service where in you can upload stuff to Google and tag it so it becomes searchable via...you guessed it...Google. So its kind of like Yahoo! Briefcase but searchable. Why would you want to upload all your stuff to Google? I don't know, but looking at the examples of the site there's probably a few lazy people out there who can't even be bothered to put their information/data on a decent web site. So Google does it for them.
Does this mean the Internet will soon be inundated with useless junk? I think that one's happened already and as long as you use Google to search through the junk to get to the useful bits, the ad words machine keeps churning and old Goog is a happy corpy. I don't know how they're going to deal with helpful company employees who choose to upload their company documents to THE_BASE so that they become searchable. I can already see men in black business suits hovering overhead. Oh, and what about people who use the service to upload and tag software and mp3s (otherwise known as piracy)? Don't know. But ol' Goog'll fix it.
Aside from this, I am beginning to become a little paranoid of all the dirt Google has on me. Lets list the ways Google knows me shall we:
1. This blog, hosted on a Google server. Holds my thoughts, ramblings and other stuff I don't mind having in the public domain.
2. Gmail, which I really don't use at all. But if I did, and many of you do, they know me by my email. Somehow, since the Sony's rootkit fiasco, my trust in big corporations has gone down.
3. Google desktop search, which knows almost everything there is to know my hard drive and tracks all my internet usage (by sitting on top of winsock). Oh, you didn't know that? Read the EULA.
4. Google search, which tracks my usage using anonymous cookies. This includes Google local search, which now knows the post code of the London apartment I put up in while I'm there.
5. Google talk.
...and I wonder what else. So there, thats my State of the Google address for you. Not necessarily bad, just very paranoia inducing.
Does this mean the Internet will soon be inundated with useless junk? I think that one's happened already and as long as you use Google to search through the junk to get to the useful bits, the ad words machine keeps churning and old Goog is a happy corpy. I don't know how they're going to deal with helpful company employees who choose to upload their company documents to THE_BASE so that they become searchable. I can already see men in black business suits hovering overhead. Oh, and what about people who use the service to upload and tag software and mp3s (otherwise known as piracy)? Don't know. But ol' Goog'll fix it.
Aside from this, I am beginning to become a little paranoid of all the dirt Google has on me. Lets list the ways Google knows me shall we:
1. This blog, hosted on a Google server. Holds my thoughts, ramblings and other stuff I don't mind having in the public domain.
2. Gmail, which I really don't use at all. But if I did, and many of you do, they know me by my email. Somehow, since the Sony's rootkit fiasco, my trust in big corporations has gone down.
3. Google desktop search, which knows almost everything there is to know my hard drive and tracks all my internet usage (by sitting on top of winsock). Oh, you didn't know that? Read the EULA.
4. Google search, which tracks my usage using anonymous cookies. This includes Google local search, which now knows the post code of the London apartment I put up in while I'm there.
5. Google talk.
...and I wonder what else. So there, thats my State of the Google address for you. Not necessarily bad, just very paranoia inducing.
posted by Arun at 6:42 AM
2 Comments:
google is evil. their is no doubt about that. but i am indeed putting my brother's motorcycle for sale on it :D
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
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