Technology & Privacy

Critics say technology raises privacy concerns
By Francine Brevetti, BUSINESS WRITER

PETER M. STANWYCK figures he uses the popular search engine, Google, at least 10 times a day. He's sure he must have used other search engines before Google was introduced to the Internet but can't remember what they were.

The Oakland attorney is enchanted with the beta site maps.google.com.

Stanwyck knows there are other online sites that will give him the same information, but he reasons, "If you know where it is, why go to another place?"

Stanwyck's point of view is typical of most Internet users today toward the giant search engine Google. With its whimsical, stripped-down homepage, Google crept into the Internet in 1998 as a "pure" search engine with no news, no chat rooms, no weather or stock quotes or any of the other accoutrements of most search engines.

But times have changed. Google now rivals Microsoft in its ambition to gain Internet real estate. This would be of no concern to the user if it were not for the fact that Google is sitting on so much private information. Information for which the government regularly subpoenas it, according to the Electronic FrontierFoundation.

And according to EFF and others in the search business, there is nothing protecting us from Google's misconduct other than Google's word that it will never hurt us. Google officials declined to answer questions for this story.

The company, whose name is based on a mathematical term (googol, 10 to the power of 100, in essence an infinite number), has become a friendly tool to most Internet users. New online users especially appreciate it. They may not know the intricacies of search or all the other search options online, but they know Google.

And they know how "to Google." We've become so dependent on it that the name has become a verb and entered into our lexicon.

Privacy advocates say this dependency is a cause for concern.

Chris Sherman, president of Searchwise LLC and author of "Google Power," says there are major privacy concerns with the way Google accumulates personal information, but he believes Google is sensitive to those concerns.

"It tries to do the right thing," said Sherman, a longtime acquaintance of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who praised their benevolence

Full article in Inside Bay Area