Google Finally Has the U.S. By the Balls

Google is outside our system of checks and balances. They are quickly becoming absolutely necessary for our government to function, but their operations are not transparent and are outside the control of the American people.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-25-n64.html (thx for tip)

http://philosecurity.org/2009/12/24/our-google-government

Privacy? Get Over It.

Schmidt concedes, surprise surprise, that our privacy is no longer sacred:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eric-schmidt-google-and-privacy-2009-12-11

Personalized Search for Everyone Destroys Search Privacy

With Google's personalized search feature for everyone, Google has lowered the bar again on privacy.

Now personalized search is specific to your computer, not your secure login.

Google has once again taken away your privacy. Unless you turn the feature off, you no longer have complete control from hiding your searches from other Google users on your computer. The only way to make this feature to go away is to do this.

I advise Google to make the default OFF, not on, and let the user decide if he or she wants to open up all his searches to everyone else.

Granted, with cookies and history in browsers being saved by default for the last decade, it's already a bit scary letting someone else use your computer, if you're searching for unsavory things.

But I think we all have a right to search for whatever we want, in the privacy of our own computers.

UPDATE: I just tried to disable history-based customization this by falling the steps by clicking on web history on the search results page, but could not figure it out. Go figure.