Comfy Computing Ltd

Google: a mixed blessing?

A couple of press reports recently have emphasised that Google, which is after all a major US commercial enterprise -- and a very successful one too that -- is not 100% perfect.

The Daily Mail (not my preferred reading) reported that stolen credit card details for some 19,000 UK cardholders were until recently available through Google. Google routinely indexes and stores in its memory the contents of many millions of web pages including pages from a server in Vietnam which been discovered and taken down by the authorities

No such action was taken by Google.

For further details click on

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1165447/19-000-UK-credit-card-details-posted-Net--accessible-Google.html#

In the USA, Google has recently introduced a similar facility to Skype. This is not the same facility as Google talk which is available in the UK for users of googlemail to chat in real time to each other. The US facility is called GoogleVoice (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/27/google_voice/) and amongst other interesting features, the facility automatically uses voice recognition software to store details of conversations, so that the adverts shown to the user are " targeted"

I think that this is just a little bit too much like big brother, although I'm still an ardent advocate of Google's benefits.

A bit of cynicism never did any harm.
Do let me know if you have any similar issues and, as they say, be careful out there.