I am not happy.
This is of course a touchy privacy subject, but the ability to search from a remote computer will be very welcome by some users.
The point of contention is the new “Search Across Computers” feature which horrifed me. Until now, the Desktop Search explicitly declared that all your results would be stored locally, and locally only.
I haven’t been much of a fan of the Desktop Search anyway, but this release is just too mind-whacking not to report about. Compare this, the older versions of the Google Desktop Search (Link probably expires soon) :
These combined results can be seen only from your own computer; your computer’s content is never sent to Google (or anyone else).
with this, the new answers by Google:
Search Across Computers enables you to search your documents and viewed web pages across all your computers. For example, you could find files you edited on your desktop from your laptop. To activate this feature, you will need a Google Account (the same login you use for Gmail, Orkut, or other Google services). Remember, to search your other computers you must also install Google Desktop on them as well as enable the Search Across Computers preference using the same Google Account on each one.
My “other” computers? Heck, If I had two computers in different places I would be using some CMS or a Collaboration tool or some other Sync software. Why should I Search Across Computers?
A touchy privacy subject, eh? Well Mike, you are damned right on that one!
Oh but wait, I had given up my privacy the day I accepted the Gmail, Orkut, etc. and all those ever-forever-’beta’s… Have you read their privacy policies? Actually, all of the Google ‘Programs’ have only one standard privacy policy.
So, I shouldn’t be complaining at all…
Moreover, ain’t I forgetting something??
“We’re not Evil!!”
Oh yeah! Right!! Hmm… Let’s see:
Here is a short version of the Google ‘We’re-not-evil’ Policy over the years:
(with subsequent ramifications-due-to-ambitions)
- We’re not evil.
- We’re not evil, we just want to access all the data in the world so that we can give you better results.
- We’re not evil. After all, we’re offering you 2000MB to store your mails. But you’ll have to let us read them? Why? Ads, of course!! Somebody’s gotta pay for that right??
- We’re not evil, we just want to access your data so that we can give you better searches on your desktop.
- We are not evil. We are just keeping an eye on you if you are doing anything illegal so that we can sell it to the world and thus, earn our ‘pious’ money .
- We’re not evil, but we don’t want to show you the truth. So what if the world calls them slants? WE slant towards ‘other’ things – World Domination, for example…
- We’re not evil, but we will refuse you entry into our living room if you do evil things. Yes, Optimising your site for our Search Algorithm is an evil thing. Why? Because only we are allowed to do that!!!
Excuse me, I have to go throw up.
loooong time shrinki...
Entries (RSS)
very well-written!
Oh, so you’re saying:
We’re evil, we want to effectively manage and distribute all the information on the web to everyone.
We’re evil, we want to give you two gigabytes of storage and an email address for free.
We’re evil, we want to give reliable service to Chinese people, and are willing to make compromises with the Chinese government to do so.
We’re evil, but we will openly defy the US government to protect our user’s rights of privacy.
Wow. You’ve convinced me. We’re pure evil, us Google guys.
Hey hey, I didn’t mean to offend you. You don’t have to get all angry- I just want to show you that there are other points of view.
Google gives us all this stuff for free- if you don’t like it, no cost to you.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, if you will.
Nubers-wise, yes, corporate entities like Google, with huge amounts of money to spend on free storage, take away from business for smaller email providers.
But really, if the smaller provider don’t have the features to compete, what are they trying to prove? That’s what it’s about- features. Innovation.
Google doesn’t stop other companies from getting great ideas and using them in their products- heck, if a great idea struck me, I could code it alone, no problem.
Yes. Of course, I agree with your privacy stuff. GDS 3 caused quite a stir, though I would not be objected to using it (if only they ported GDS to Linux…!)
Search across computers, as you mentioned, must be enabled before it works, so it’s just a neat feature Google threw in. If I had multiple computers, I might enable it.
As you said- if you don’t like the idea of your information stored outside of your hard drive, you should go find another company for email, desktop search, and even searching itself.
Hell, even if everyone knew my password, I don’t know what they would get out of looking at my stuff anyway. Obviously, I wouldn’t want them to, but it’s not like I’m in the Mafia or something.
Obviously, paranoid privacy activists like to shoot Google down for storing so much information on their servers. But if I was Google, I would do the same thing- give people an option. Is that so bad after all?
At any rate, my apologies if my reply sounded like a rant.
BTW, I would like to know your honest opinion about Google’s China policy. I think Google is doing the right thing- providing reliable organization of data (minus a few key terms) to an enormous amount of people. IHMO, of course- but don’t you think that does more good than harm?
Hello, I’m with Colin on this one.
Seriously, if you’re upset with Google’s policy on a certain just don’t use it. You can even turn off the feature to search across computers on GDS 3.
Some people would find this a useful feature if they have multiple computers. I have one, so I have it off (and I’m running Linux most of the time, which GDS doesn’t run on).
I think the search across computers feature is even disabled by default. You’d have to be a real idiot to “accidentally” turn it on.
Colin, Michael:
Here’s something.
And here’s something more.
Hope you will forgive me.
Overall, i think Google still offer some good service… hopefully, somedays they will have more liberal police to benefit everyone…
http://www.b2b-guide.org
Business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B) typically takes the form of automated processes between
trading partners and is performed in much higher volumes than business-to-consumer (B2C) applications