Google plans to outFacebook Facebook
Microsoft is traditionally accused of being the world’s monopolist-in-chief.
But that was then.
Today, the title undoubtedly goes to giant advertising company Google which sees the world, and everything in it, as its advertising oyster.
It has its fingers in so many pies, up to and including politics at government level, you can no longer see the pies.
It’s already trying to outfox Firefox and out micro Microsoft with its very own browser.
Now it plans to outFa$ebook social advertising site Fa$ebook, complete with a nauseating folksy promo video.
And hooked directly into Gmail, it also reads your mind.
“Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip,” says the puff page.
Says Gargle >>>
When you use Google Buzz, we may record information about your use of the product, such as the posts you like or comment on and the other users with whom you communicate, in order to provide you with a better experience on Buzz and other Google services and to improve the quality of Google services.
Provide you with a better experience? Riiight.
And ‘may’ record?
“Your activity on ‘connected sites’ (such as Picasa Web Albums or Twitter) may [there's that word again] be shared in Google Buzz”, it says, continuing >>>
You may review and revise the list of connected sites in order to choose which sites to maintain as ‘connected” to Google Buzz.
If you use Google Buzz on a mobile device and choose to view “nearby” posts, your location will be collected by Google. If you use a mobile device to create a post which shares your location, then your location will be collected by Google and displayed to other users, as described when you first attempt to use Buzz on a mobile device. You may thereafter opt out of the collection and display of your location on a per-post basis. You can also choose to exclude your location from all of your posts.
For features requiring voice recognition, we collect and store a copy of the voice input you make. To improve processing of your voice input, we may also continuously record in temporary memory a few seconds of ambient background noise. This recording stays only temporarily on your mobile device and is not sent to Google.
For mobile, we may store some data — such as your user profile photograph and your location — locally on your mobile device in order to reduce latency.
“If you chose to delete your Google profile, your Buzz posts will be deleted, but the comments and ‘likes’ you have made on other people’s posts will not be deleted”, says Gargoyle.
“You have the option to remove your comments on others’ posts individually if you’d like. Residual copies of deleted material may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.”
And as it says openly in its privacy statement:
“When you visit Google, we send one or more cookies — a small file containing a string of characters — to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search. Google also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. We may set one or more cookies in your browser when you visit a website, including Google sites that use our advertising cookies, and view or click on an ad supported by Google’s advertising services.”
No need to stay tuned.
Related Articles
Del.Icio.Us this! | Digg this! | Reddit this! | Stumble this!

No comments yet