Google ... Note This

What appears to be a brand new feature of our beloved Google is the ability to "Note" any URL which turns up in the search results. Noting a URL adds it to your personal notebook, which works like a scrapbook ala bookmarks. Pretty interesting ... although I'm still a fan of IE favorites, browser history, and the back button.

[jwenting]

one more way for Goooooooogle to track what you're doing and build up a complete commercial and political/social profile of almost everyone on this dirtball.

[tgreer]

Of interest are the collaboration features, the ability to "share" your notebook with friends and family and "publish it" as a public web page. It seems Google is not content with caching entire sites and scanning copyrighted printed publications; they see a new opportunity in the social networking environment of the web. They want to get people to voluntarily generate content which becomes a "new public page", which they can then in turn regurgitate, index, and monetize.

To those who are tempted to voluntarily store, share, and publish their browsing history, ask yourself how this feature is possible. The answer is: Google is already doing exactly that, on a massive scale. Next, ask yourself why Google would offer this for "free". There is no free lunch, and I join the increasing number of people who view Google with a great degree of skepticism and an increasing amount of distrust.

[Dani]

Public bookmarking sites have been around for oh so long though.

[jwenting]

sure, and none of them were altruistic... None of them had the marketing power Goooooogle has, nor the recognised interest in building up profiles of everyone for unknown purposes (possibly just marketing, but for just marketing they're collecting way too much data on people).

If government agencies collected the amount of data on people that Google does, the ACLU and civil liberties and human rights organisations would be all over them...
If Microsoft did a fraction of what Google is doing they'd be up over their heads in lawsuits about it.
But Google is run by a couple of far left kids so it's OK.

[RTC]

If government agencies collected the amount of data on people that Google does, the ACLU and civil liberties and human rights organisations would be all over them...

Well right now Google doesn't have the power to storm your house with guns, seize your assets, and lock you up... However, I suppose Google could always be soepena'ed by the Government for their records so I guess its really just the same thing but a step removed.

Really though, are any search engines non-profits? Its google.com, not .org. being facetious here but I don't know any 501C3's, churches, community groups, or social service organizations that offer powerful competitive search engine alternatives.

[tgreer]

I'm all for Google making a profit. I'm against any business that makes a profit by stealing my content or by reselling portions of copyrighted material, or by spying on my shopping and browsing habits.

[DOAWK]

yeah.