“Don’t be evil!” Yeah, sure . . .

“Don’t be evil!” That’s google’s slogan. Apparently, it sounded better than “Be good!”, and there’s something to it.

• Today, something like 75% of all external referrals to websites come via Google.
• With Gmail, which offers 1 Gb of storage space, it is hard to come up with a better alternative to a free mail provider.
• They have bought Blogger, which offers one of the better blog services. Free even that.
• Googlenews provides a computer-generated synthesis of the best from 4,500 news sources from all over the world.
• Google recently made an arrangment with the New York Public Library and the libraries of Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan, to scan their collections of books and make them available to the public.
• Their new Desktop search is a very handy tool which allows you to search your own hard disk in the same way that you search the Internet.

Who can be without Google? And why should one?

In the beginning, everything about google seemed nice. I switched from AltaVista mainly because of the many ads that started to show up as the first hits there (as far as I remember). Then everybody said the results were better at google — it was something of a Harry Potter effect. Word of mouth can be a very efficient seller, when it works. And when it does, it’s usually a sign of quality.
So what is wrong?
For one, Google uses a cookie which registers the ip number, search terms, and other session information (“browser type, browser language, the date and time of your query and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browse”, quoted from Google’s Privacy Centre) for every search that is performed. These results are stored, for an indefinite period of time. The cookie itself expires in 2038, which makes this an unprecedented life-span for a delicious delicacy.
Gmail explicitly encourages users not to delete anything. And “even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time.” quoted from Gmail’s privacy policy page.
There is not automatically anything wrong in this. They do so, so they say, to provide a better service: to be able to target advertisement, sell a better product at a higher price, which in the end is to the benefit of the users. Fine. No humans are involved in handling the information in the emails, and no personal information is disclosed to advertisers or anyone else. Fine.
There are exceptions, though. They can and will disclose such information:

when Google is required by law to do so; and when we are compelled to disclose personal information because we reasonably believe it’s necessary in order to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.

Then consider this: In the USA, email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act after 180 days. For the first 180 days, a warrant is needed, but after that, a subpoena is enough to get that information out. What was that you wrote about this file-sharing site to your friend at johndoe@gmail.com?
The google-watch website has more information on this, for whoever is interested.

The privacy problems are grave enough, but they don’t bother me that much. After all, anyone who communicates on the Internet should be aware that it may not be “safe”; lines are tapped, hacked, or monitored, and there are things you may whisper in your lover’s ear on a mountain top without a soul in sight, that you should perhaps not disclose in a chat session.
What disturbs me more is the following scenario: Already now, webmasters who want traffic to their sites, need Google. So they send in the link to their site and hope for the best, i.e. that Google will register it, add it to their database, and start generating hits. Wouldn’t it be much easier if Google provided space for the website directly? Surely, they could do that for free as well. The site would get on Google immediately, no more crawling the net to find it, no more hassle — a win-win situation, but in the end google would sit with the internet in the palm of their hands.
Or this: through detailed information about the search preferences of the whole world, both collectively and individually, and good algorithms to interpret it, google can streamline the information they channel out (which today is mostly advertisement, but to an increasing degree also news and whole library collections of books), to fit each individual user’s needs. With the personal informations available through Gmail, Blogger, and the the search engine combined, the possibilities to personalize information are overwhelming. Again, we have what looks lik a win-win situation: in the bewildering mass of information available, each individual gets Google’s help to find the needle in the haystack, the news that are relevant to someone interested in gardening, the Cure, Thai cooking, and calculus.
But what happens to the free press, the instigation to search and aquire new information, information one didn’t know on beforehand would be necessary or interesting, but which widens one’s horizon and therefore alters one’s life?
Do yourselves the favour of considering this scenario, spelt out in this video from the Museum of Media History in the year 2014

I’m not saying that Google is evil, nor that they are good but carry the seeds of evil and that the bleak scenario will come true. What I’m saying is that “with great power comes great responsibility”. I hope that Google is as responsible as they claim, but there is a huge greyzone between “Don’t be evil!” and “Be good!” Most of all, I urge anyone who uses the Internet not to take anything for granted, to be aware and responsible. Spiderman’s motto applies to everyone.