*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 8th, 2010 10:51pm PST - promote requested by original submitter mrsid.

Hey, at least they try. *quality *animation that *talks

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

Adding video to channels (Animation, Talks) - requested by gwiz665.

ZOMG! Google is the new Microsoft!!

They're welcome to all of it.

bwah ha ha ha!

*politics
*money

Adding video to channels (Money, Politics) - requested by NetRunner.

"If you're doing something you don't want people to find out about, maybe you shouldn't be doing it."

There's a ton of things in my life I'm proud of and I don't mind sharing with friends and family. Most of it I DON'T want to share with some sketchy psycho in the backwoods of Arkansas. I wonder if the CEO wants where he lives, and where his children go to school, and what times they go there, to be shared with the pedophiles of his community.

My concern for the implications of society losing privacy is overshadowed by my enjoyment of riding tech's slippery slope into a troubling future.

I can't help but wonder if this isn't sponsored by Microsoft/other company in some way, as there have been multiple stories about MS testifying against Google over monopoly concerns.

I am not certain how easy it is to put together this information (address, phone, random pictures, ties together of random activities, etc) on some random stranger as I have trouble finding this information on myself, family members, and friends. Unless of course they post it freely on their facebook/myspace/twitter/whatever the flavor of the season is.

My only concern with Google Earth/Maps would be that it takes a picture at an angle a normal passerby couldn't hope to achieve (satellite or extreme heights to go over privacy fences). A lot of government websites include pictures of homes taken on behalf of the government for their public documents....plus lots of other information like selling price of house, floor plan, current owners, residents, liens, failure to pay taxes.....

Hell I wish their address estimator was more accurate because nothing pisses me off more than trying to hunt for address numbers when driving down the road.....if you knew what the houses before it looked like you'd save a lot of hassle and traffic hazards of people sudden slamming on their brakes or doing U turns in the middle of the road.

Marinegunrock: Trying very hard not to downvote.

This is nothing but fear mongering. What? You think Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page are all sitting somewhere petting a cat in a dark cave? Come the fuck on. You got caught leaving a porn shop? OH NO! It's not like regular people passing by the shop couldn't see it. A naked baby!?!? Seriously? Ugh.

Fox News level quality reporting, here.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Me too. There's a reason dystopian themes are popular in SF and video games. >> ^lesserfool:
My concern for the implications of society losing privacy is overshadowed by my enjoyment of riding tech's slippery slope into a troubling future.

There's various things we can do to regulate them, it doesn't have to be all class action lawsuits and it shouldn't be. Google hasn't taken over yet but the implications are indeed something to be concerned about. It's not an overwhelming worry of mine though.

If Google wanted to own your phone, they wouldn't be pushing so hard to open the phones and networks. They may be (okay, they are) fanatics on some subjects, but there is no evidence of the huge conspiracy that this video is trying to suggest.

The crappy reporting here definitely smells of astroturfed FUD.

>> ^Payback:
I wonder if the CEO wants where he lives, and where his children go to school, and what times they go there, to be shared with the pedophiles of his community.


He most certainly would not. For example, this article from CNET got Google CEO Eric Schmidt very upset when they published information about him that they obtained from Google searches.

Allegedly, Schmidt demanded a one year boycott of CNET.

>> ^Payback:

There's a ton of things in my life I'm proud of and I don't mind sharing with friends and family. Most of it I DON'T want to share with some sketchy psycho in the backwoods of Arkansas. I wonder if the CEO wants where he lives, and where his children go to school, and what times they go there, to be shared with the pedophiles of his community.
do you mind sharing it with us?

i don't mind google wanting all of those things. i certainly do.

i can tell the company is basically good when a slick, scary video like this, which was probably produced by MicroSoft, doesn't make them sound all that bad at all. They seem like any other big company based on the information presented here, except not nearly as evil.

OMG they want to "target ads at me"!

Wait, couldn't we also say they want to custom tailor ads for me? Showing me ads for things that I might actually want? Quelle horreur! I want to be able to completely ignore ads, like the one for Armani's Spring women's collection over there ------->

Serious fear mongering fail from someone who has no understanding of advertising and all of the great things we get essentially for free because they're supported by it, like VideoSift perhaps?

I for one welcome etc.

I think it's safe to say we're entering or have entered into an era of lessened privacy and highly targeted marketing. After all it's not being decided by legislature, it's simply occurring because people are willingly providing information about their life online, probably unaware of how it will be used.

I guess it is to be expected though, people are watching TV much less and accessing an ever wider range of media. Advertisers need the capacity to target you in these new media outlets, whereas marketers need to work harder to figure out what it is exactly that you like. Demographics that clump large groups of people together by age, gender and location are probably becoming simply too unreliable because people have diverged into so many different niches enabled by the communication power of the internet.

It will be interesting to how see this pans out in the future. I don't think they'll ever be much protest against anonymous mass data mining by companies to identify cultural trends and choose what to produce and sell. When they do try pushing the envelope, and I'm sure they will, and try directly targeting to individuals based say on what they talked about in IM, or the contents of an email they sent, I expect they'll be a backlash.

I find this show kind of superficial and lame.

I show them my love by browsing the web with Adblock on for most sites.

I don't really mind that much if google knows everyone and owns everything.
As long as it's given out free, and they have no power over them.
But being in US, the government can just poke their heads into their databases when they feel like it.
What happens if a properly evil corporation wants some of that information for their actually nasty purposes through a ploy of law or lobby?
You know, like has already happened with RIAA and MPAA bullying isps and other services for customer data to sue the entire world's youth for negligible losses.
If google would guarantee the data would stay in their database, unretrievable to an external party, i wouldn't mind.. but as is, i won't put anything online i wouldn't mind my mom/neighbor/boss/wife finding out.

So if you use their software then they own your computer?

>> ^Psychologic:
So if you use their software then they own your computer?

They might have been talking about ChromeOS, not the Chrome web browser.

This digital life revolution mentioned here is inevitable, Google or no. Consider the alternative, I may be naive but I actually believe Google, as a company, have a very strong sense of right and wrong and they go to incredible lengths to stick to those values. The obvious antithesis is Apple, the fact they are so successful is truly concerning, it is proof that there's a gross misunderstanding of the concepts of freedom of information and its importance in the general public. You want complete privacy? you're more than welcome to go live in the woods. Again, these changes are inevitable and we should be thankful Google is leading them as anything else would be too 1984ish for me to accept.

Fear mongering at it's finest

Well said Ninja. They've certainly done a better job than everyone else so far.

This is one-sided fear mongering. The Eric Schmidt quote clearly pertained to activities done in public. And yes, if you don't want people to know about something, don't do it on the freaking sidewalk of a public street. Regardless, Google goes to great lengths to preserve locally applicable privacy laws in places like Europe.

Google isn't trying to steal your DNA. They invest in a gene sequencing company that discovers diseases before they strike, oh that's so insipid <sarcasm>.

What other corporations were brave enough to call out China on their censorship?