Thursday, December 27, 2007

GOOGLE WANTS YOU TO GIVE UP

Pure evil? Looks like it.
At least if you click on the header it does.
I've mentioned the Great Google before, but this time I think they might have gone too far.
They've snuck in a new feature called Google Talk. Which seems to be a sharing sort of thing. You know, chat with your friends online.
You'd think it was only competition to AIM and Yahoo.
But it's a bit more than that.
"If any of your friends from Google Talk are using Google Reader and sharing items, you'll see them listed under 'Friends' ."
That's a direct quote from the Google.
However, they admit that any files you have under your "Sharing" are also open to all your friends. And anyone you send an email to, can see whatever is there. And you can see their files. Google says you can deny this privilege to different people, but it sounds like an awful lot of work to me. The more people you send email to, the more can see your shared files.
Yep, the simple act of buying something on line gets your files opened to the company you do business with unless you remember to exclude them. I can't imagine New Egg being interested in my files, but since it's an online geek store....
However I believe I've figured out a way to prevent Google's Social Networking Tool from letting anyone have privileges on my computer. I just don't use Google Talk.
Sorry Google.

8 comments:

alphonsedamoose said...

I think I have it disabled but am not sure. I agree you should have the option of opting in not the other way around.

Buck said...

I like Google...a lot. But I don't like some of the stuff they do. And, like you, Cat, I'd never use "GoogleTalk."

Anonymous said...

Remember the book 1984? Over-population is responsible for all this lack of privacy. Yep.

Catmoves said...

Moose. I did not download Google Talk. I use a different service for the extremely rare occasions when a friend IMs me. (Not that I particularly like IMs, but I can't have everything my way.)

Catmoves said...

Buck, Google does a lot of things I don't like, but, dangit, they also do good things. Choosing wisely and reading their TOS seems to be the only way to avoid many pitfalls.
I'll be posting some other crapola that Goog gets up to, soon.

Catmoves said...

Babzy, I've replaced the worn out copies, of 1984, twice.
Sooner or later I will try to remember a SciFi story I read many years ago about the effects of over population and do a posting. How about you writing a post about it?

TomCat said...

Great minds, fellow Cat. I came up with the same solution.

Catmoves said...

Good on ya, Tomcat.