NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Google Now Personalizing Signed-Out Search -- and a Quick Note on the CNBC Google Report
Google Now Personalizing Signed-Out Search
-- and a Quick Note on the CNBC Google Report
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000647.html
Greetings. For quite a while, Google has offered a search
personalization system tied to the history of your Google Searches
when logged-in to Google.
Today Google announced the expansion of personalized search, and what
could be termed a form of search history, for logged out users as
well ( http://bit.ly/736LpT [Official Google Blog] ).
Rather than try explain the various ramifications of this here, I'll
refer you to an excellent and detailed article over on "Search Engine
Land" that really gets into the nitty-gritty, including privacy
issues, data retention periods, etc.
( http://bit.ly/87MuYL [Search Engine Land] )
I'll just offer a couple of quick points for now. These personalized
Google services are all tied to cookies held by individual Web
browsers. If you block future Google cookies and delete any current
Google cookies, search history correlations will no longer take place.
Or, you can simply (with Google cookies accepted) opt-out of this
logged-out personalization service -- which will note your choice via
an "opt-out"-indicating Google cookie.
So whether or not you wish to participate in personalized Google
Search is up to you, whether you're logged-in to Google or logged-out.
Various people have asked me how I broadly handle cookies in my
routine Web browsing. My current (suboptimal) "solution" is to use
different browsers for various purposes.
Firefox has the most fine-grained site-based cookie controls, so I
tend to default to using Firefox for many (but not all!) purposes.
I block cookies from many sites, and accept cookies from other sites
(typically ones where login is required). I pretty much make these
determinations on what amounts to a "need to know" sort of basis -- or
rather a "need to accept a cookie" basis.
I avoid using Internet Explorer for a variety of reasons, but
sometimes do employ it for "alternate account" login situations. IE
has fair per-site cookie controls, though not as cleanly implemented
as Firefox in my opinion.
When dealing with particular Google services where I always want to be
logged-in anyway, such as Gmail, Google Voice, or Google Wave, I use
Google's Chrome browser. Chrome is rather blindingly fast when
dealing with JavaScript-intensive Google services and is the obvious
choice when using these products. However, at this time, Chrome's
cookie-handling options are comparatively sparse -- no per-site cookie
controls are available. So I typically don't use Chrome in situations
where I don't want to accept cookies. Actually, Chrome is so powerful
and user-friendly in most respects that the single factor preventing
me from switching to Chrome as my primary browser is the lack of
better cookie controls -- a situation that I hope will improve soon.
Finally, a quick segue into another Google-related topic. Last night
(with various repeats scheduled going forward) CNBC ran what I would
characterize as a rather overall "aggressive" hour report called
"Inside the Mind of Google." Piles of folks have been sending me
notes today asking my opinion of a particular sound bite by Google CEO
Eric Schmidt, where he said, "If you have something that you don't
want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
place."
That line seems to have been bouncing around the Net and some
mainstream media all day.
So in answer to the many people asking me ... yes, I saw the program
and heard the quote. Yes, I probably did a Spock-like single eyebrow
raise at the time. And no, I don't think that Schmidt was actually
suggesting that everything anyone would want to be private is somehow
automatically illicit or something that you shouldn't do.
Given what I believe to be a reasonable understanding of the
sensibilities involved, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the
intent of the statement was actually limited to -- for example --
posting evidence of your own illegal activities. When a bunch of kids
beat up another child then merrily post a video of the crime on
YouTube along with graphic comments, complaining about getting caught
as a result likely won't elicit much sympathy.
It's really pretty amazing the sorts of information regarding just
plain illegal activities that some people will publicly post, then get
all bent out of shape when public searches reveal their actions.
Schmidt's specific statement on that CNBC report may have been rather
poorly worded, but trying to play "gotcha" on the basis of that single
line, given the wealth of evidence that suggests this is not really
representative of Schmidt's (or even more importantly, "Google
Policy") attitudes in this regard, seems at the very least to be
unfair.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein