Pranesh Prakash: > I noticed recently that (all?) URLs sent via Google Hangouts > automatically get replaced by a Google URL redirection (the way their > search results do if you're logged in).
That's not limited to when you're logged in. And Google is not transparent about it, in fact they deliver code to make it look like there was no redirection before you click on a link in Google search results. Of course, Google only wants the best for everyone and is "not evil". Yes, that's sarcasm. Google, like every company not run as, say, a fully family owned and run business without external shareholders (there it isn't necessarily the case, though still quite likely since they will have to compete with other companies), is driven by the expectation and requirement to monetize whatever they can, and this is guaranteed to impact ethics as soon as the pressure grows strong enough. Of course there could be, can be, and I would think most likely are legitimate uses for this URL redirection (such as the warning screens when you're about to visit a known phishing site), but I bet there is more to it. After all, you could work around this by just embedding this information directly in search results, or not displaying such search results unless set in preferences. But then, there is also a pretty obvious non legitimate use case there: tracking. And Google is all about tracking. Initially this was not the case, but during the past 10 years this has changed rapidly. Every new service introduced within the recent years has, if you think about it, a lot of benefit if the primary goal is to know more about your users. Just think about * Gmail, with its laughable privacy policy (yes they do say they will track you, and anyone who can sum up 1 + 1 knows this means you cannot use them for political work, and then you shouldn't rely on not directly paid services for doing anything sensitive anyways - there are viable alternatives), which is surely not suitable for organizations who care about keeping content of their e-mails to themselves, but is still used by way too many organizations, and many universities * Doubleclick, which was already one of the world's largest ad networks before Google bought it, embedding tracking cookies on every other website you visit, and was then combined with Google Ads for much even more reach (and sales) * Recaptcha, a way to look nice, because you're offering a useful feature, and on the other hand get integrated into loads of websites which this way ensure users' data ends up with Google * Google+, together with the Google+ icon which, just like Facebooks', is always pulled form Googles' servers, since they so need to now who is accessing websites which have the logo on it. * Google APIs are added to loads of websites, and loaded by (nearly) every web browser which accesses those websites. They always load data from Google servers, even if it's just about loading some Javascript you could easily host yourself. * Google Analytics, now embedded into pretty much every second website you visit on a daily basis * The "accidental" collection of information on the location of wireless networks as they were mapping for streetview. I could go on for much longer. If you take all these opportunities for Google to collect information and think about how this enables them to track your movements across multiple websites (*some* Google service is basically embedded on every website nowadays), even without cookies (but it workseven better with global cookies so Google uses them whereever they can), just based on your browsers' unique signature (definitely when combined with your IP address) [1], then it can become quite obvious how embedding Google services to your website and using them to send e-mail (and making your buddies send e-mail to them) is not going to increase your karma. It causes me pain each time I read an article which supports the view that Google is somehow doing good. It is not. Just like any other company, that's not what their business is about. And by their sheer size, they are actually pretty evil, since they have the power to centralize way too much information. And they happily will. And this is never "a good thing". Definitely, other corporations are no better, some are worse. But none of them is as huge, as uncontrolled, and as widely deployed and enabled to collect every one of your daily actions online. There are alternatives to Google services. Use them, for your own good, and for the good of people you interact with. The myth of Google being "for the people" needs to be crushed. Al -- GPG key http://zimmermann.mayfirst.org/pks/lookup?search=0x39A8722D GPG FP A38F 4F71 749E 609F 397E EB52 778E 4678 39A8 722D Info https://tachanka.org/
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