Skip to main content

Google: Love or hate it!

From The Atlantic:

"This morning, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released the results of a February survey analyzing Americans' feelings about online privacy. The main takeaway is something of a paradox: The majority of us are uncomfortable with personalized search and targeted ads. At the same, time, though, we're more satisfied than ever with the performance of search engines.

Taken together, the polling shows that there is a great uneasiness about the status quo of data collection on the Internet. And yet, people like using the Internet.

In phone calls with Pew, 65 percent of Internet users said it's generally "a bad thing" if a search engine collects information about individual searches and then uses it to rank someone's search results -- because it may limit the information you get online and what search results you see. Only 29 percent said this practice would generally be "a good thing," because it would offer better and more relevant search returns. Similarly, when the question was framed more personally, 73 percent said they would "not be okay" with being tracked (because it would be an invasion of privacy); only 23 percent said they'd be "okay" with tracking (because it would lead to better and more personalized search results).

Pew found a similar breakdown when the matter was framed around advertising rather than search: 68 percent of those surveyed said they were "not okay" with targeted advertising, because they didn't want their online behavior tracked and analyzed; only 28 percent were okay with it (explaining that it leads to more relevant ads and the like).

And yet: Despite all those high-percentage objections to the idea of being tracked, less than half of the people surveyed -- 38 percent -- said they knew of ways to control the data collected about them."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t
Post a Comment
Read more

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l
Post a Comment
Read more

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?
Post a Comment
Read more