Google Desktop 3.0: Privacy is Dead(er)

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1. Zoli Erdos
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

   Little-known Copernic has so far proven better than Google, Yahoo or MSN in desktop search… we’ll have to see this one.

2. John Walker
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 9:58 pm

   Mike,

   I would include MSN Desktop Search as well. I’ve found it pretty darn good.

3. Hexxenn
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 10:22 pm

   I’m sure there are plenty of people who have no problem giving Google access to a list of their hard drive’s contents.

4. Michael Arrington
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 10:38 pm

   Hexxenn, I agree. I don’t think I will be though.

5. Hexxenn
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 10:49 pm

   @ Michael: Me either. Other than the fact that I find Google Desktop to be a rather useless piece of software, I don’t intend on letting Google know what’s on my hard drive.

6. Xavier Casanova
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 11:29 pm

   I do not believe Google’s primary motivation is to make a better Desktop search for users, rather, it is to leverage user indexes to serve more relevant ads - and make money (which is ok).

   There is (almost) always a small catch with every new feature or service Google offer. Lately it’s been more ads and less privacy, which is starting to get noticed.

7. Alan
   

   February 8th, 2006 at 11:54 pm

   Thanks for the news on that. I think this is part of the development of a internet-based OS, as per my post here. I’m looking forward to how things develop.

   Regarding violations of privacy… I don’t have a problem having files and stuff accessible via the internet. I mean, we already do it! Look at our usage of Hotmail and Gmail, etc, and how we store attachments (important documents, etc) on those web servers. Look at the credit card information and personal details we hand over to various internet companies in exchange for various services.

   We’re all aware of the potential for privacy violations, but we put our faith in those online businesses to do the right thing by us. I don’t see any problems with extending online services in this way. It’s how the internet is evolving, along with the society that uses it.

8. Paul Watson
   

   February 9th, 2006 at 1:51 am

   I’ll be installing 3.0 if it offers that feature. Fantastic idea.

9. Shrikant Joshi
   

   February 9th, 2006 at 1:57 am

   Requesting your opinion on this one:

   http://corporatespices.blogspo.....-baby.html

   Do you really believe keeping a Privacy Policy makes any sense now?

10. kevin leversee
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 2:27 am

    as the bullet enters my brain…

    “I LOVE BIG BROTHER”

11. Light42
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 2:34 am

    Google should just let us turn the permission on and off as we like. Best to elave such decisions as transactional or as time period or as ‘certain files’. We find Customers love this approach as WE dont decide.

12. pt
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 3:29 am

    What’s the over/under on the number of months before someone’s personal documents are subpoenaed from Google’s servers in a trial and the party had no idea Google had copied their data.

    I’ll set it at 16 months… June of 2007. place your bets.

13. Ed Dunn
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 3:58 am

    So it is revealed in the Wall Street Journal Mr. Arrington receives stock in some of the startup companies he writes about on Techcrunch and advises them.

    I remember an Crunchnote entry complaining someone offered him $100 to write an entry. I didn’t realize the price of getting written up was equity.

    Hey, at least I know what I already suspected….

14. Luca Mearelli
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 4:37 am

    It should be noticed that a practice of sending personal data abroad, potentially without any warning to the data owner, is something that might be illegal in most european countries (I’m pretty sure it is so in Italy) due to privacy regulations.

    It will be interesting to view how Google has solved such problems on a global base.

15. Jack
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 5:45 am

    So theoretically files I’ve created on my ‘google desktop enabled’ PC could one day start turning up on Google search results?

    I know that there are privacy laws, but Google does seem keen on pushing the envelope to see just what it can get away with in this department.

16. Fortino
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 6:27 am

    why not simply use Msft’s Remote Desktop or some other remote login tool and run the Google desktop on your main PC?

    this would ellimiate the privacy concerns.

17. wil
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 7:35 am

    Obvious next step for Google desktop search.

    I can see myself using this (not). Problem with idea first/top down approach (myself including) are that we see it through the hole.

    I like to share my stuff but not everything. You may not thing this is sharing your data but it is.

    Sharing tools and public data is one thing, now private data is another.

18. eric prebys
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    This privacy thing cuts two ways.

    I think a revolution is around the corner regarding ownership of work related information. It has become increasingly easy to leave a job and take with you all the electronic documents that you read/wrote/ignored. Soon, it will be hard *not to* take this information with you when you leave a job.

    For salespeople, there has always been the battle over the rolodex. But this new battle involves every piece of digital information any employee comes in contact with. It is (arguably) in the companies interest to erase every employee before they walk out the door. But an employee’s future worth is highly correlated with how much knowledge they *retain*.

    At the very least, I should be able to consider my email/desktop docs/browsing history as an extended memory store. I should be able to search those things and refresh my memory on things i’ve previously known. And I shouldn’t have to dump out the contents of my brain when i leave a job. I think this is different than an IP discussion. Depending on what i *do* with the recalled information, I may not be violating any basic property right.

    Having the information puts the control in the hand of the ex-employee. With access the individual has the choice as to whether to violate any IP regulation.

19. Fred Hanz
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:23 am

    The web centric approach to personal computing is totally wrong. I’ve got a huge hard drive, tons of always on bandwidth and lots of computing power on my home system. I simply need secure access to my machine from anywhere (remote machine, mobile phone, portable device, etc.).

    In some instances, I may want to share documents with the world that’s where google, photo sharing sites can come into play.

    In most other instances, I’ll want to make personal documents, photos, etc. available only to family and friends from my machine not on the web viewable and searchable by anyone (whether password protected or not).

    Microsoft, I think seems to be getting this concept. Hopefully, we’ll start seeing more of this in Vista.

20. Biff
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:28 am

    People…

    Simple solution: Don’t use it if you don’t like the privacy implications.

21. Martin Lortie
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:44 am

    “automatically delete older flies”

    Wow it will even remove those older “flies” that are dead on my floor, great!

22. wil
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:45 am

    >>Simple solution: Don’t use it if you don’t like the privacy implications.

    I hate this comment everytime I see it. It’s like see no evil. I am not saying Google Desktop search is evil. I just think that kind of comment is simple and annoying.

23. jaywood
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 8:51 am

    What does this do to consumer hosted storage business (xdrive, omnipod, etc.)?

24. Sid Steward
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 9:55 am

    Behold! Google the darknet/p2p search engine!

    I wonder if Google will provide p2p downloading a’la FolderShare, next?

    I think Microsoft (or Apple) has much to gain as the Internet begins to include ‘peers’ more closely in its web. As it does, then it will all come back to the desktop. Assuming Google doesn’t own the desktop by then.

    Also see: hello.com.

25. Matt
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 10:02 am

    The only way I would ever use this was if an independent third party, like Phil Zimmerman, wrote a free, on-the-fly, one-way encryption feature that integrated directly with the search, so only I could actually read the contents of my files (not Google). However, I’m sure the way it’s designed, that is not possible.

    So let’s see, Google has access to your search history, shopping history, whats news you read, email, chat, voice chat, general internet usage (Google secure wifi), and now all the files on your hard drive. And, they’re being allowed to copy entire books and make money from them. I think this is this will be used in psych classes as the single biggest brainwash success in history :).

26. Julien Couvreur
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 10:44 am

    I’m not sure that corporations will love to have the indexes for their internal Word documents outside of the company’s network…

27. Will W.
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 10:46 am

    >>Simple solution: Don’t use it if you don’t like the privacy implications.

    >>>>I hate this comment everytime I see it. It’s like see no evil. I am not saying Google Desktop search is evil. I just think that kind of comment is simple and annoying.

    I agree.. That and “I don’t have anything to hide so why should I care.” I think the point can be with privacy concerns that someday you may care, and will it be too late when that day comes? It’s come for every other major civilation in history, who are we to think it won’t come for us. Privacy should be protected if for no other reason than respect for the possibility that we may want it back someday.

28. Vaibhav Domkundwar - iNods.com
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 12:42 pm

    Mike, I won’t feel comfortable either. Google has so far built their “trust us more than anyone else” brand very well but they are as prone to hacks as other highly secure databases. And we have seen a lot of examples. If Google has even a single incidence of any of their services being hacked into or any of their/user data compromised that would be the end of that trust, I think.

    But in general consumers have come to trust Google more than any other company and that is a great asset.

29. Jonny R.
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 1:02 pm

    When I heard about this, my first thought was that the last thing in the world I would do is think “I’m going to upload my desktop to Google.” I think Google sucks. Post public offering they’ve become as popular as Microsoft is in the software industry. I use their products as a “user” and as an entrepreneur, and I’m completely tired of it. It’s marginal.

    Why do search returns look like that still? I want something puffy and fun. My connection is pretty fast so wow me with some pictures and other interesting things that a web 2.0 company would figure out. Let free tags rule in my book.

    I’ve learned enough about SEO over the years to know that they rules that they play by are not the rules I want to play by. I want communities of people that I participate in that are fair, secure and private, not driven by paid sponsors in the Google network. Some inane “Google Dance” update because some dweeb thought tweaking their algo would be more “fair” for the users. What if instead of responding that and doing silly things on our sites and blogs we just focused on our viewpoint and delivering a good membership experience? Instead of doing contrived updates just because they said so.

    Ever used gmail? Ok, so I admit I receive some email from social networks at my gmail account. I don’t like it but I want to know what’s going on over there, the same that I do with Yahoo! beta’s email (much better with some soul). So how many ads do I have to see for building networks while reading my email from LinkedIn or OpenBC?

    I feel like there is some annoying person over my shoulder careening me off in an irrelevant direction. Leave me alone unless you have something interesting to say.

30. Russell Limprecht
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 5:52 pm

    Forty eight comments. Now that is buzz.

31. John
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    a) This is an opt-in which is not enabled by default.
    b) People do use lots of services to back up their data. This seems like the same thing. Obviously there are privacy implications but its not like people are being forced to back up their data. So if you want to backup your data on any service, you have to also realize the other implications.

32. dave
    

    February 9th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    Unbelievable how some people feel they are entitled to software/services that are completely free and to their exact specifications.

33. SM Guy
    

    February 10th, 2006 at 8:10 am

    Mike,

    Ed Dunn is way out of line. To me, he’s exactly like the guys who call a woman a bitch because she doesn’t like them. Oh wait, I guess that makes me a racist, right, because I criticized him? Sure that’s just me marginalizing him and keeping him down. Puh-lease.

    Don’t let the jerk pull the “white guilt” card amd make you feel rotten. It’s a shamful game he’s playing. Silicon Valley is one place where you can make it on merit. Anyone that’s spent any time there and seen at all the different races and ethnic backgrounds, would know that.

    Ed Dunn shoud apologize.

34. sylvain
    

    February 10th, 2006 at 9:14 am

    “Privacy is dead” did you mean they ‘ve lived before ?
    I think Google has always been access to our privacy document…

35. Biff
    

    February 12th, 2006 at 1:21 pm

    People, who complained about my initial post…

    ————-
    >>>>I agree.. That and “I don’t have anything to hide so why should I care.” I think the point can be with privacy concerns that someday you may care, and will it be too late when that day comes?

    ————-

    Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I am all about privacy. Of course I don’t want the gov’t or anyone else ‘in my house’. However, this is a product that is offered (for free). You are not forced to use it… So if you don’t like it, don’t use it. Keep your freakin’ desktop in order or use the OS provided search.

36. vroom
    

    February 13th, 2006 at 1:39 pm

    Folks - Help me out on this one. A short while back, Michael Arrington wrote up about the “online storage gang”. This involves placing personal information on the internet as well…but I was surprised that there was no mention of any privacy concerns in the post by Michael or in the discussion that followed.

    Is all the hoopla here largely bcos this is Google (and they happen to make money out of letting people search data…plus they are in the midst of this govt subpoena)??

37. Radu
    

    February 22nd, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    How disappointing.
    When I read the news (as well as finding this site on Google) I was under the impression that I could store *files* on Google’s servers. Privacy be damned, I’ve been fighting WebFolders for over a year now, and it’s not that good (or I can’t find a decent WebDav server that implements ALL the features). I would even be willing to pay to have a reliable place to store data and be able to access it from anywhere.

38. lamictal
    

    May 12th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

    Spoon’s Chez Spoon (formerly SpankMeWithASpoon)

39. lamisil
    

    May 13th, 2006 at 12:01 am

    then i looked around me, and down at the shag pile rug i was sinking into, and realised that maybe, for him, they’d never been away.

40. ALIDAD
    

    August 22nd, 2006 at 8:57 am

    ALIDAD

41. Lugano Annunci
    

    October 27th, 2006 at 5:43 am

    I agree.. That and “I don’t have anything to hide so why should I care

42. Karaoke Kev
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am

    Very, very worrying. As if Google don’t have enough information about every person surfing the web already. Only a fool would allow Google access to their hard drive.

    Karaoke Kev
    http://youtubekaraoke.blogspot.com

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    January 10th, 2007 at 9:38 am

    I’ve just been staying at home waiting for something to happen. I’ve just been letting everything wash over me. I can’t be bothered with anything recently.

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