5 ms·
I don't know, doesn't Google harvest the content of anything I send to an @gmail.com address? Or how about the massive scanning of books over the objections of
by dilap 16y ago
I don't know, doesn't Google harvest the content of anything I send to an @gmail.com address? Or how about the massive scanning of books over the objections of book publishers a while back (though I think this ultimately got resolved)? My general impression of Google, and part of why I find their crying foul so jarring, is that they will harvest as much information as they possibly can, to whatever end, until restrained by public outcry. (Which, BTW, I'm fine with!)
But it seems very hypocritical to get butt-hurt on behalf of Bing toolbar users who are having their movements tracked.
(BTW, I don't find Google's observance of robots.txt to be particularly compelling or telling, because they've never been in a position where ignoring it would be significantly beneficial to them, as far as I know.)
- ghshephard 16y agoGoogle was pretty clear that they would be harvesting the content of your gmail to target ads. The different here, is that MSFT did this "Google-search-Click-Tracking" thing on the down low. I agree with you though, if I, as an IE9 user wish to submit my click track results to MSFT for analysis so they can improve search results - that's fair game. But, It's not clear to me that MSFT should be able to review what the user was searching on before they clicked on that data. Now they are actually using Google's search Data + the user's click traffic. I think they cross a line there, particularly if they aren't willing to come clean and admit that's what they are doing, and make it clear that they are sending your Google Search queries + your click traffic back to Redmond. How many people on HN were aware that Microsoft was doing that with IE? Click Traffic, sure - But I didn't know they were sending my Google Search queries back to HQ.