About a year ago Google posted interesting research on technology enabling your computer to listen to the ambient sounds emitted from your TV, automatically determine what is being watched (recognizing the theme song to "Seinfeld" or the sounds of a…
Tag: Google
Web-search privacy efforts move to forefront
The title of this post is the headline from a story in today's Wall Street Journal (non-firewall version here), detailing how the largest web search engines are starting to make changes to how they handle the data collected from their…
Google’s Chief Privacy Counsel: “Don’t trust fat businessmen”
I'm paraphrasing from this odd letter Peter Fleischer sent to the Financial Times in response to a fashion article about men's suits & ties. The key passage: Men should lose their "business attire" and wear T-shirts to work. Wouldn't you…
Read More Google’s Chief Privacy Counsel: “Don’t trust fat businessmen”
Google’s Cookie to have 2 Year Expiration (Because it is of little value after that time)
Google announced today they are changing the expiration date of their cookie from 2038 (the latest possible date) to a rolling 2 year period. Once put into action, users who visit Google today, for example, will receive a cookie that…
Read More Google’s Cookie to have 2 Year Expiration (Because it is of little value after that time)
More of Peter Fleischer Misleading on Google Data Retention
Google's Peter Fleischer is (again) trying to provide justifications for Google's retention of users' search activities. He (again) is misleading. I don't have a lot of free time right now for an in-depth response, (my analysis is here) which is…
Read More More of Peter Fleischer Misleading on Google Data Retention
Map of Google Products
Philipp Lenssen points to this amazing visualization of the interconnections among Google's diverse products and services. I think the connections are meant to denote how various products interact (you can create Google Alerts from within Google News) or otherwise support…
With SmartAds, Yahoo Finally Joins Google…as a Threat to Privacy
In my dissertation I outline the quest for the “perfect search engine” – a search engine capable of indexing all available information and providing fast and relevant results. The perfect search engine will have to have “perfect reach” to deliver…
Read More With SmartAds, Yahoo Finally Joins Google…as a Threat to Privacy
Google: “Why we’re buying DoubleClick” (sans “privacy”)
Google has posted a lengthy explanation as to why they're buying Double Click. Feel free to read it, but here's my thumbnail analysis: Total word count = 2,279 Number of times "consumer" appears = 8 Number of times "money" or…
Read More Google: “Why we’re buying DoubleClick” (sans “privacy”)
Is Google just the tip of the iceberg?
Seth Finkelstein has a thoughtful piece on Google and privacy in the Guardian, which includes this insight: The lack of substantive knowledge about Google's actions, combined with general concerns regarding how its logs could be abused, makes it difficult to…
Following up on Google Street View
There continues to be quite a bit of buzz and concern about Google's “Street View” enhancement for Google Maps. A couple of comments on recent developments: ::: I don't want to be picky, but given all the (necessary) attention given…
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