It's not easy being Google. Once you take the moral high ground, and make your unofficial company motto "Don't be evil", people actually expect you to not be evil -- even when it is inconvenient to you.
Google is currently blocking a number of privacy-enhancing proxies, such as FoxyProxy and Tor, possibly because some bot or bots are misusing them all. (Why am I skeptical that all of these services have been compromised by a bot?)
Just maybe Google has a legitimate reason for blocking these proxies. But, legitimate reason or not, they're putting their convenience ahead of people's right to privacy -- and that is stretching "Don't be evil" virtually to breaking point.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Goggle versus privacy
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
It's not just 'bots' that they're trying to block -- several viruses and worms make use of Google (e.g. by searching for strings from default pages on vulnerable servers) to identify targets. So yeah, it's a valid concern.
There's also a financial incentive, seeing as Google's currently embroiled in a lawsuit over 'click fraud' by -- you guessed it -- automated bot programs.
Post a Comment