Google - the monster of the internet

Have any of you ever stopped to think about how amazing something like google really is? Think about it. The internet. Think about how huge the internet really is. All of those sites. ALL of the information. From all over the world. Think about how huge MySpace alone is. Now think about this. When you go to Google and run a search, within a second or two it finds whatever you typed in. GOOGLE JUST SEARCHED THE ENTIRE WOLRD WIDE WEB AND BROUGHT UP 100'S OF SEARCH RESULTS!! That is really impressive when you think about it. Now what is stopping Google (the company and site) from searching billions of peoples computers for what ever info they need. If the people at Google, who are more than likely working with "them" , want to find a terrorist all they would have to do is type in their home pc search engine "Allah is the greatest" and BAM!, all the pc's in the world containing that phrase just came up. They could search whatever they felt like. "They" could look at your Blockbuster rental record automaticaly if "They" wanted. Doesn't this bother any of you. You know that just such technology isn't being used for homeland security alone. Oh no. They could see what you are doing any time they want. This is pretty creepy when you think about it.

tell me what you guys think.

Tis the truth. Even if it is commonplace for companies to do that these days, there is no reason we should bend over and take it. Recently, I began a process of degooglization after the Youtube-Viacom fiasco's latest twist.

I knew Google were hypocrites in themselves, hoarding data and tailoring ads to generate massive profits, then refusing to part with it on their sites. I've also heard the rumors about the massive amounts they have aggregated - several petabytes- of data, and their origins having close connections with the CIA.

But this one really hit close to home. Specially when you discover the depth to which they really record your every move. For people that don't think this is overreacting and actually value their privacy:

www.gevil.org...

It doesn't work that way. If you are not running a server (like the computer this forum is on, is ATS's server), Google search engines can not access your computer.

Now what is stopping Google (the company and site) from searching billions of peoples computers for what ever info they need.

The fact that information published on the Internet is public and the information on your computer can not be accessed from the outside unless you publish it?

even if they had the capabilities to search inside pc's it would be considered a massive hack job that would land an even more massive array of lawsuites on them

Yep, and more than just a few petabytes of data, too:

Today Google rules a total database of hundreds of petabytes, swelled every 24 hours by terabytes of Gmails, MySpace pages, and dancing-doggy videos – a relentless march of daily deltas, each larger than the whole Web of a decade ago. Source

But, if not them, then another. And even with them, probably others (less public), too.

The whole "do no evil" thing is amusing. I admire the sentiment. Google seems to be confronting ethical issues head-on, so to speak. Reminds me of a discussion I had years ago with a friend (Google employee). I said "remember, they're not officially evil until the IPO." Well, that IPO was years ago now, and, all-in-all, Google's not doing too badly. From a public perception point of view, at least.

it wouldn't be all that difficult for anybody to get any information they wanted off of your computer. I used to work at Circuit City, and we were able to access customers computers straight from the store, all they had to do was install a program on their computer and we had instant access to everything on their computer...it was quite obvious we were using it because the pointed would move and applications would open when the user wasn't touching their computer, but i'm sure there would be a way to prevent that from happening if worked at hard enough.

How would the program be installed you ask? Has anybody that has a Windows OS ever used Windows Update? I guarantee all of you have. Do you actually know whats being installed when you update Windows? No. How about the numerous amounts of toolbars that just randomly appear in Internet Explorer, such as the Google Toolbar? This program could be slipped into any of these things. A program is just a line of code, it could be right in the middle of anything and run in the background without anybody even knowing about it.

Privacy is dead

Google does not have access to your local computer files.

However, Google is trying to sell and get people using an online operating system that would store your files on Google servers. In that case, they would have access.

The search technology is nothing special. It is just a large clustered database of millions of static links, tags and indexes. Spiders update the info on a semi-daily basis.

A novice programmer could write his/her own search engine within a day, but lack the capacity to do the spider searching which takes alot of computers. Google started with Yahoo's search database so they had a good running start.