Googley Woogeley

[lists-Gb8Tj4xcA4YgsBAKwltoeQ at public.gmane.org]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, William Park wrote:
> Why do they have to?  When you cross over on port 80, you are entering
> someone else's property (ie. computers, cpu, harddisks) and using
> someone else's service (ie. bandwidth, programmer's payrolls).  What
> Google do with the infos is totally Google's discretion.

Imagine walking into a store, having somebody slap an ID number on your
jacket, then having somebody follow you about the store recording every
item you look at.  I doubt that many people would return to such a
store.

That being said, you have the same discretion over your machine as
Google has over their machines.  You can refuse to accept or provide
anything you want.  You can even modify information, as long as you are
not being malicious.

There is plenty of software to do this under Linux, it is free (you do
not have to steal it), and you can verify that it does what it claims to
(if you are the paranoid type) from the source code or various network
utilities.

It would be nice if it turned out otherwise, but the price is going to
be your time and access to certain materials.  It has been long since
decided that the Internet should be a free, but commercial, entity.
This means that it is supported by advertising, and advertisers love
targeting particular demographics.  In all likelyhood, Google is
gathering information for that purpose (rather than supporting some
grand government conspiracy).

Byron.

The price is going to be your time.  It would be nice if it turned out
otherwise, but the people have long since decided that they want a free
and commercial internet.  The thing had to pay itself off somehow, and
that is through advertising revenues (not government conspiracies).
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