Saturday, April 15, 2006

Google and privacy

Google opened a new service, Google Calendar, which I'm tempted to try out, especially if I find out how I could import my Lotus Notes calendar into it, to have it available from everywhere. I'm already using Google's GMail a lot. I have a Google's personalized homepage. I'm using Google's Picasa to sort my photos. And of course this blog is using Blogger and Blogspot, both courtesy of Google. If one day the fabled "Google Drive" to store your data online comes out, I'll probably use it too. In short, Google is all over my life.

Now in spite of Google's company motto of "Don't be evil", lots of people are worried about Google knowing too much about them. If somebody can read your mail, see your calendar, know what you are searching for on the internet, and has your blog diary stored on his server, he knows quite a lot about you. But the worries that somebody could spy on your life is based on an unrealistic evaluation of how interesting your life is. Fact is that most of us don't have anything to hide. There are no "September 11: Fly plane into World Trade Center" entries in our calendars. There might be a "Tonight: Date with Nicole" entry in there, which your wife isn't supposed to see, but Google is unlikely to read that and tell her. You shouldn't store your social security number, credit card numbers, and all of your passwords on some server, but other than that most of our data are safe, because they interest nobody. So go ahead, let Google take over your life. It's free. :)

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