Officially removing myself from Google...

[jdog]

Seriously, here is another: http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/06/technol ... /index.htm

Google announced Friday that it has agreed to purchase social networking app maker Slide for an undisclosed amount.

The deal marks the latest try for the search giant to make some headway into the world of social networking. So far, Google has mostly failed in its attempts, including the poorly received Orkut and Google Buzz. Though the terms weren't disclosed, various new reports have put the value at between $180 million and $230 million.

Google's announcement comes several weeks after Google also made an investment in social app leader Zynga, reportedly worth $150 million. Zynga has a user base of 268 million, five times the nearest competitor.

At the Techonomy conference in Tahoe, Calif., on Wednesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained generally what the search site is trying to do improve its social networking strategy.

It's like they are trying to take over the planet.

[jdog]

I never had Gmail account so I just switched my default search engine form Google to Bing

Google = Skynet

The G-600 is coming. Come with me if you want to live.

Corrected image...

[Habib]

Those cookies help track wherever you go! You don't care about someone outside of your home tracking your web use?

I wish I cared. I mean, look it at this way brother: there are m(b)illions of people using Google affiliated products all around the world. I doubt they would really care what Habib or jdog or DL is/was doing on the internet. I doubt they have time for that. To hell with them if they are storing cookies (God I never even knew what that meant).

You probably should be worried only if watching porn is illegal where you live. ;)

[jdog]

Porn? I'm 32 years old and live in the US. That's the least of my worries. Although as you can see on this website, a lot of porn is distributed "illegally". You are partaking in it. But by all means, enjoy the links we provide you. :silly:

You should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft's CEO), Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch and the editors of Google Watch believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements.

Google collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of public WiFi stations (which are not owned by Google) during 2006-2010, including snippets of emails. No disclosures nor privacy policy was given to those affected, nor to the owners of the WiFi stations, in more than 30 countries. A Google representative claimed that they were not aware of their own data collection activities until an inquiry from German regulators was received, and that none of this data was used in Google's search engine or other services. A representative of Consumer Watchdog replied, "Once again, Google has demonstrated a lack of concern for privacy. Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar."

[¡ñ±£¿®∆L Ф¶†ïς@п]

Google's data on a per month basis is not even a tenth of what the American CIA data influx accumulates on a daily basis.
What's the harm with Google gathering analytics on you, if they don't have a face/name to tie it with; worst case scenario:

[Habib]

You should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

Haha, pretty damn interesting. I honestly never knew that Google was capable of all this. I will not say it is a good thing per se, however, I still do not care for some reason.

Ignoring all the privacy crap aside though, will you admit that Gmail is amazing or not? :)

[jdog]

Haha, pretty damn interesting. I honestly never knew that Google was capable of all this. I will not say it is a good thing per se, however, I still do not care for some reason.

Ignoring all the privacy crap aside though, will you admit that Gmail is amazing or not? :)

To me, amazing would be if you purchased a new car you'd get a stripper and unlimited blow jobs from her included with the deal.

I rarely used the webmail interface of Gmail. I simply used POP3 access and Gmail was the e-mail provider. I use MS Office Outlook 2007 for my client and I can tell you that it kicks the ass of anything Google can crap out. ;)

I do find it unique that someone doesn't really care about their privacy.

[Habib]

I do find it unique that someone doesn't really care about their privacy.

I do care about my privacy. It is just that in this instance, I doubt anybody cares about what I am doing due to the billions of people that are using Google products.

[jdog]

I do care about my privacy. It is just that in this instance, I doubt anybody cares about what I am doing due to the billions of people that are using Google products.

The point is THEY have your personal information, almost everything about you, and they DO NOT care about YOUR privacy one bit.

[5829]

I do care about security, but I also realize that everyone is collecting information about you.
Probably the worst is your own ISP, because everything goes through them. And I would say that they know more about you than even Google. They already have all your personal information that you gave them when you signed up for the service and know which IP address is assigned to you.
Even if you use some sort of service to hide your IP from other sites you still have to go through your ISP to connect to those.
I find that the best way to limit the information is not to give it out unless it is necessary. Which to me is only for financial transactions, and no free ad sponsored email address for those. I have logins for this site, Facebook, Myspace and some other sites, but none of them contain any personal information and the email address that I use for these sites also do not contain personal information.
I frequently clear my 'private browsing data', sometimes having more than one browser open visiting different sites and use Linux and Opera, which due to the fact that they are less popular are not as vulnerable to attack, is probably the best that I can hope for at this time.