Google Is Opening Up Your Info - To You
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To make things more transparent from Google’s point of view, it is providing a Dashboard to allow us to manage the data it collects.
Sadly all I found was just how easy it is to get yourself totally lost in its services. Don’t get me wrong; it did a nice job with the Dashboard. But the fact of the matter is there is really too much going to effectively manage any of it. This is especially true when you consider how many different Google services most of us are likely using these days at one level or another. Even if you do nothing but watch YouTube videos and use Google for searching, you have data out there.
I have found myself using Google Dashboard to help me keep track of the various services offered by Google. After all, it does not take too much to overwhelm most people with information overload. So to a degree, I guess Dashboard is helpful there.
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One Comment
Bob Greene
November 6th, 2009
at 5:19pm
This is timely information. Those of us who cast a suspicious eye at Microsoft for its prior history of abuses would do well to consider the possibility Google and its power can morph overnight into something truly abusive to our privacy and civil rights.
Consider the warning attributed to Lord Acton, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Regarding Google, here is a case in point. A few years back, when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) opened its gates (after a fashion) to foreign internet search firms, Google included, the speculation was that Google (”Do No Evil”) would stay out of the PRC– even at the cost of losing access to what is a captive market in China, captive in every sense of the term.
Because the PRC is a dictatorship. And the PRC happens to be the latest imperialist power to oppress the region of South and East Asia. China invaded Tibet in 1950, for example, and has occupied the country ever since. Han Chinese are forcibly repopulating Tibet, so native Tibetans will be essentially overrun and their country will be paved over with Chinese and asphalt highways.
And so Google had a dilemma– should it “do no evil”, or obey Chinese dictators who order Google to censor its services to PRC citizens, in return for right to do business in China?
Google chose to do business, and bowed the knee to Beijing, rather than lose market share to Microsoft (which already had agreed to Chinese demands). Essentially, Google did evil, taking its place with enthusiasm alongside Microsoft (and others).
So, even the slogan, “Do No Evil”, however “sacred” it might have been, is now completely compromised. Those interested in further information about the power and potential power of Google over our lives will be interested in Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled”. See–
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_1_7?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=auletta+ken&sprefix=auletta