SubJeff on 16/1/2011 at 23:11
H.264 is only free if its distributed in free packages and besides, afaik, it's only loyalty free for a few years. I don't really care what Google or anyone does as long as my browser works so don't think I'm championing them as a fanboy, but you can see that if H.264 is adopted by everyone it's possible that one day it will be "Knock, knock, where the money?"
Mind you it's so far away that the standards will likely have changed by then anyway.
demagogue on 17/1/2011 at 00:03
Quote Posted by Thief13x
Google does not actually store information on anyone (at least not in the way a lot of people think).
I thought it stored your (or your IP address's) search history.
And whatever it needs for targeted ads.
Oh well, either way the idea of personal identity and privacy was getting passé anyway.
SubJeff on 17/1/2011 at 00:27
but apparently tin foil hattery isn't?
sorry, I'm in one of those moods and it's after midnight :p
Thief13x on 17/1/2011 at 01:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
I thought it stored your (or your IP address's) search history.
And whatever it needs for targeted ads.
Oh well, either way the idea of personal identity and privacy was getting passé anyway.
I don't think so, I believe the ads are populated based on the results page of any given search rather than previous searches (at least that's the way it always appeared to me). I do know sites like Myspace and Facebook screenscrape your profile to target ads though.
SubJeff on 17/1/2011 at 02:15
"that's the way it always appeared to me" isn't really a meaningful statement in this context, no?
CCCToad on 17/1/2011 at 02:25
Quote Posted by Thief13x
Google does not actually store information on anyone (at least not in the way a lot of people think). Google simply retrieves information that's already been stored on a webserver somewhere and can be usually accessed by anyone with or without Google.
It seems like most people blame Google, but to me, search results are just a symptom of a bigger problem. The real problem is that your information is
out there (usually because you put it there).
and Facebook's not helping!I beg to differ: you give them quite a bit of information. For example, they have access to quite a bit of info in your gmail account which they used to deliver targeted advertising. They also store record of your search data, by IP, for six months. The NSA also has a data-sharing partnership with Google: (
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/189060/aclu_objects_to_reported_google_partnership_with_nsa.html) . The exact details are obviously unknown, but gives lend to speculation.
edited to actually be helpful for once:
I suggest using (
www.startpage.com), that search engine doesn't log searches.
Phatose on 17/1/2011 at 02:42
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
H.264 is only free if its distributed in free packages and besides, afaik, it's only loyalty free for a few years. I don't really care what Google or anyone does as long as my browser works so don't think I'm championing them as a fanboy, but you can see that if H.264 is adopted by everyone it's possible that one day it will be "Knock, knock, where the money?"
Mind you it's so far away that the standards will likely have changed by then anyway.
And if I really thought WebM had any chance of getting through the patent thicket unimpaired, I'd give those concerns a good bit more weight. But I don't think it can, which puts us back at square one.
demagogue on 17/1/2011 at 02:44
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
but apparently tin foil hattery isn't?
sorry, I'm in one of those moods and it's after midnight :p
I must have been in one of those moods too to make a crack about personal identity of all things.
The thing is, I'm almost never seriously worried about actual conspiracies where people set out to do evil and all get together to conspire wicked things and agree to hide their tracks. If someone gives me a conspiracy story my gut instinct is to reject it for that reason alone (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence).
I'm much more worried about business as usual where people are just trying to do their job respectably and don't have a real sense of what's happening on a larger scale out of anybody's control. Most everything we worry about in regulatory law is never the back-room conspiracy (though you get that too, like with cartels), but more or less fine-looking behavior at a local level that adds up to terrible results on the global level.
This has something to do with Google ... I think.
Thief13x on 17/1/2011 at 03:48
Quote Posted by CCCToad
they have access to quite a bit of info in your gmail account which they used to deliver targeted advertising. They also store record of your search data, by IP, for six months.
Source please
CCCToad on 17/1/2011 at 04:14
I was actually wrong. Its nine months by IP, 18 by cookies.
Source? Google itself: (
http://www.google.com/privacy/faq.html#toc-anonymize)
Quote:
We strike a reasonable balance between the competing pressures we face, such as the privacy of our users, the security of our systems and the need for innovation. We believe anonymizing IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in our search engine logs after 18 months strikes the right balance.
