Michael Zimmer.org

It was confirmed last week that Google is acquiring Like.com, a visual search engine that focuses on helping people shop for clothing and accessories online. While most stories are spinning this as Google’s attempt to improve its product search engine and make inroads into the e-commerce marketplace, I see this acquisition differently.
It is important to realize that before Like.com was helping people find shoes and watches online, its technology was the core of Riya, a photo sharing and search site that allowed users to upload, tag and search images based …

Recently we learned that Google’s Street View vehicles gathered people’s private communications on their home WiFi networks as they drove by snapping photos. Initially, Google denied it was collecting or storing any payload data, but later admitted that it had, in fact, collected private information that it should not have, information clearly beyond what any reasonable person who expect a street mapping service to collect.
Google’s explanation was that this privacy invasion was a mistake, and happened because some code inadvertently made its way into the Street View …

Starting today, users visiting Google.cn will be redirected to Google.com.hk, Google’s Hong Kong search portal, where search results will be provided free from the filtering Google had previously been performing on Google.cn. Google is touting this as ending censorship in China, but, as Siva Vaidhyanathan has pointed out, that really isn’t the case. It’s an end-around. A slight-of-hand.

While Google is trying to do the right thing here, and it hopes it can deliver unfiltered results to China from Google.com.hk (or force China to take some kind of action against the Hong Kong site). But I fear this move will instead result in further failure to serve the interests of Chinese Internet users, and another lost opportunity to fight oppressive online censorship.

Special Topics in Information Science – The Search Engine Society:

Search engines have become the center of gravity of our contemporary information society, providing a powerful interface for accessing the vast amount of information available on the World Wide Web and beyond. The audacious mission of Google, for example, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Attaining such a goal necessarily results in significant changes to the ways in which information is created, stored, retrieved, and used. This course will critically examine the nature of search engines and their role in our information society, and reveal the unique challenges they bring to bear on information institutions, information policy, and information ethics.

To celebrate Data Privacy Day, Google has published its 5 guiding privacy principles. The principles are something every organization should commit to and strive for. The problem is, Google hasn’t adhered to them quite as closely as they’d want you to believe….

Microsoft has fired a new salvo into the search privacy wars, announcing it will delete IP addresses from the Bing search engine logs after 6 months.

Microsoft has decided to take the lead in search privacy and agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. Previously, Microsoft de-identified its search logs immediately, but didn’t purge the IP address until 18 months. Now, de-identification still takes place immediately, and the IP addresses are completely removed in 6 months.

[UPDATE: As of Jan 7, 2010, Google has now changed its homepage so the Nexus One ad fades in with the other content -- more below]
Remember how hard we gad to fight to convince Google to include a link to its privacy policy on the Google.com homepage?
Remember how Google argued “we do believe that having very limited text on our home page is important” and that it was pitched as some great sacrifice to include the word “privacy” and disrupt the homepage’s aesthetics?
Remember how, just a month ago, Google argued …

Perhaps the greatest ethos surrounding Google’s success is its — and users’ — faith in the algorithm. Users trust Google, and have faith that the results provided are accurate and helpful.
Sometimes, however, that trust can be misplaced.
Recently, a student in one of my classes gave a presentation on Google, and proceeded to explain how Google ranks search results using an algorithm called…..PigeonRank:
Why Google’s patented PigeonRank™ works so well
PigeonRank’s success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of …

Google has announced a new “feature” to its homepage: upon loading, only the Google logo, the search box and the search buttons are visible. The links to additional products, advanced search function, and the privacy policy, only fade in if the user moves the mouse. This video shows it in action.

Aesthetically, this isn’t without its charm, and we all know how anal Google can be regarding the minimalist design of its homepage.
But it took so much effort to get Google to finally add a mere 7-letter hyperlink to its privacy …

When Google launched Google Latitude 9 months ago, they took steps to ensure users’ locational privacy was protected. Among the most important privacy-protecting features was the fact that Google didn’t keep a log of user locations on its servers; only the most recent locational ping was stored. Not even law enforcement could gain access to a user’s location history. This design decision, apparently made in consultation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was a very positive step for Google, who I have taken issue in the past with regard to its …

Yesterday I posted that Cuil, the supposed “Google-killer” search engine that once took pride in not keeping any logs of its users’ activities, had dramatically altered its privacy policy, effectively stripping it of the strong privacy-protecting language it originally contained. Since then, I’ve received 3 communications from Cuil.
The first was a tweet promising an email (not yet received) as well as the assertion that “For the record, we still don’t keep logs or store personal info”. It is kind of them to tell me this via Twitter, but unless their …

Remember the hard battle fought to convince Google to include a link to its privacy policy on the Google.com homepage?
Remember how Google argued “we do believe that having very limited text on our home page is important” and that it was pitched as some great sacrifice to include the word “privacy” and disrupt the homepage’s aesthetics?
Apparently providing users easy access to information about their privacy is much more burdensome for Google than providing a link to where people can buy Verizon’s Droid mobile phone.
Today, Google.com features an advertising message that …

Remember Cuil, the search engine launched in 2008 that was supposed to be a Google-killer? Didn’t think so.
Anyway, one of Cuil’s touted competitive advantages was that it didn’t track user search queries. Its original privacy policy (dated July 27, 2008) went to great lengths to make users feel comfortable about the privacy of their search activities, opening with this impressive declaration:
Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, …

For quite some time now, I’ve been writing about how “search” has become the center of gravity of our informational ecosystem, and that a primary externality of our dependence on search has been the threat to privacy. On numerous occasions I’ve called on Google to engage in value-conscious design in order to protect user privacy, and specifically argued for the creation of a Google Data Privacy center where users can see exactly what data Google has collected about them from their expansive infrastructure of dataveillance, edit or remove this data …

Speaking of conferences in November that I am unable to attend, Geert Lovink and Shirley Niemans at the Institute of Network Cultures have organized the Society of the Query conference, November 13-14 in Amsterdam. With the tagline “Stop Searching, Start Questioning!”, this event hopes to critically reflect on the information society and the dominant role of the search engine in our culture:
This two-day Query conference aims to examine the key issues that are emerging around web search, and to contextualize developments within the fields of knowledge organization and information design. …