Google Wants To Run Your Entire Life

Ever since Google started gmail with all those privacy issues involved with it, I've grown suspicious of them. I like some of their services and use them daily, but I stay vigilant and try to minimize their exposure to my private information.

People should be suspicious of Google. They try to portray themselves as a cool company, and no doubt their search engine is the finest, but 95% of their revenue comes from online advertising. They give Android away. If you have the right software you can see the beacons and code they embed on your computer, and what info they are "phoning home" with. It's insidious.

Don't forget that these are the people that "accidently" sniffed private home networks ("Gosh. How did that happen? Must have been one of the rascally Engineers.")

They are also going to hold on to your search info indefinitely under the new guidelines. That means "forever".

There's nothing wrong with making money, but Google is a greater threat to your privacy than any government agency ever was, and it's in the name of cash. Not people first. Cash. The government isn't interested in our little lives... but Google is. They've got a file on you already.

For a company whose motto used to be: "Don't be evil," Google sure has some explaining to do about why it seems to have deliberately bypassed user privacy protections built into web browsers, first in Safari, and now reportedly in Internet Explorer, as well.

You can easily research this issue yourself, but I will mention that one alternative I have seen recommended is the DuckDuckGo search engine, whose privacy policy emphasizes that they do not engage in any kind of tracking.

For everyone's consideration. Here are some quotes from then-CEO Eric Schmidt regarding Google:



"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about."

"There's such an overwhelming amount of information now, we can search where you are, see what you're looking at if you take a picture with your camera. One way to think about this is, we're trying to make people better people, literally give them better ideas—augmenting their experience. Think of it as augmented humanity."

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."



So, yes, with leadership like that; with group-think like that; with a corporate culture like that... Yes, I'm very suspicious of Google.