Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation

Electronic Frontier Foundation ^ | February 9, 2006

[snarks_when_bored]

Google (and 'friends') to Google Desktop users:

"Your files are our files...get over it!"

Maybe I need to short some more GOOG at tomorrow's open...

[snarks_when_bored]

"Google loves you" ping...

[Anti-Bubba182]

"EFF urges consumers not to use this feature.."

Sound like good advise to me.

[Hank Rearden]

If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers.

That's gotta be the dumbest "feature" ever invented. Or that ever will be invented.

Who's stupid enough to do that? democRats?

[snarks_when_bored]

Absolutely.

[snarks_when_bored]

It would be nice, though, if Hillary's laptop had that feature enabled, wouldn't it?

[Hank Rearden]

It would be nice, though, if Hillary's laptop had that feature enabled, wouldn't it?

I'm sure Marty can scare up some of "her" photos with his current resources.

[technomage]

Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.

That should be enough to convince anyone not to use this feature.

[snarks_when_bored]

There's an internet sucker born every nanosecond, I fear...

[adamsjas]

I noticed you picked your time frame very carefully in your graph.

Try this one http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GOOG&t=2y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

[snarks_when_bored]

Of course I picked my time frame carefully! If you ever intend to short a stock, you'd better do so, too! (grin)

[snarks_when_bored]

In truth, though, I'm not shorting Google now; the time to short would've been last week...

[endthematrix]

I remember some comedy skit (SNL?) that had the "Linda Tripp" recorder. The gag is when you wanted to recall something just said, "Oh, Linda..." and she'd run from the side of the stage to re-tell the conversation. I used this on my wife a couple of times, "Oh Linda..." My wife would have this funny look...gotta love politics.

[adamsjas]

That's gotta be the dumbest "feature" ever invented. Or that ever will be invented.

Actually your statement reflects a sever short sightedness and lack of understanding of the huge need for something like this.

Imagine a company that has several field offices. Imagine trying to find that lost order for 4 million dollars worth of whatever you sell. I arrived in the Denver office, was scanned to pdf and Emailed somewhere and that's the last anyone ever saw it. OR Imagine trying to find that second set of books that your thieving accountant is keeping somewere on your computers.

There IS NO COMPETING technology for corporate wide indexing. None.

If Google could either encrypt the data with keys stored only on YOUR computer, or/and index only the words in the document (like it does with web pages) it could get around this objection and have another killer product.

[Hexenhammer]

EFF = Electronic ACLU

[adamsjas]

In truth, though, I'm not shorting Google now; the time to short would've been last week...

I bailed at 442.37. Not looking to get back in for a while. (Got in last time at 257.)

[neutrality]

Nothing wrong with this feature as long as you know what you are doing. The vast majority do not, however.

[snarks_when_bored]

Good ride...

[snarks_when_bored]

If a position is sound, I support it; if not, I don't.

[snarks_when_bored]

It's a question of how much control one has over what's indexed and what's stored on Google's servers. Most users will have neither the sophistication nor the inclination to try to deal with this question, I suspect.