Google Watch

A look at how Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy policies are undermining the Web.

Intelligence connections at Google - (Found June 19, 2008 )

Google recently acquired Keyhole, which got money from In-Q-Tel, which is funded by the CIA. Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google since January 2000, used to work for the National Security Agency and had a top-secret clearance. The U.S. Army uses the Google Search Appliance. Can you trust Google with a database of all the search terms you've ever used Meanwhile, there are some who now suspect that the Gmail sign-up system is building a huge social network database that will allow Google to.
http://www.google-watch.org/jobad.html

Mozilla Foundation evades taxes - (Found June 19, 2008 )

We finally got Mozilla Foundation's Form 990 for 2004, which was filed in November 2005. It shows $4.4 million in income from Google searches during 2004. The Foundation does not consider this to be "unrelated business income," which means that no taxes were paid on this amount to either the IRS or the state of California. If this income is tied to AdWords (and perhaps even if it isn't), then the Foundation is guilty of tax evasion.
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html

A new site: Wikipedia Watch - (Found June 19, 2008 )

Right now it's only one page, but at the rate that Jimmy Wales and his acolytes at Wikipedia are provoking us, we expect our new site to grow. It's related to Google Watch because we're fighting for fairer coverage of what we represent. Yeah, yeah, we're aware that you can change the Wikipedia page yourself. But when we do, Jimmy's thugs (and even Jimmy himself) keep changing it back. Something is not right here.
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/

The man behind www.google-watch-watch.org - (Found June 19, 2008 )

This two-page site started up in mid-2003. For two years now, almost every mention of Google Watch on any blog or forum produces a watch-watch link from "anonymous" in the comments. Here we look at watch-watch creator Chris Beasley, a template spammer who says he makes six figures a year off of his many affiliate sites.
http://www.google-watch.org/gaming.html#case3

Try our little market-cap watcher - (Found June 19, 2008 )

Bubble bubble, Google and trouble. We're waiting for the crash, now that Google's market capitalization is right up there with Time Warner. You can watch along with us by hotlinking to our GIF. This little item updates throughout the day when the stock market is open.
http://www.scroogle.org/bubble.html

Google spins to avoid copyright law - (Found June 19, 2008 )

We filed a freedom of information request with the University of Michigan, and their formerly-secret library digitization agreement is now available. The arrogance in this document amazes us. There are massive copyright issues -- first with the University's violation of the library copying provisions under Section 108 of the Copyright Act, and secondly with Google's assumption of "fair use" under Section 107, even though they plan to make money from the copyrighted material by selling ads.
http://www.google-watch.org/modify.html

Scroogle improvements - (Found June 19, 2008 )

We improved our ad-free Google scraper. In April 2005 we added support for 28 languages, and in May we added Yahoogle, which fetches 100 links from Google and Yahoo at the same time and compares them. The source code is still available.
http://www.scroogle.org/

Google's game plan for mission creep on link hijacking - (Found June 19, 2008 )

Is this really a Top Secret leak from the Googleplex Does it matter whether it's real or not, when Google is clearly headed in this direction For starters, Google's toolbar phones home with every page you land on, and tattles to Google what you're looking at, while offering up your globally-unique Google cookie ID that expires in 2038. As if that wasn't enough, the toolbar updates automatically, without asking. Now Google has a new version that comes straight from Hell.
http://www.google-watch.org/toolbar.html

Personalized search: Holy Grail or a crock - (Found June 19, 2008 )

Here's your choice: add an extra word in the search box to specify what you mean, or let all the search engines collect everything they can about you for years and years, so that they can guess what you mean. Every high-tech pundit we've read thinks the second approach is the way to go. Apparently they've all been dumbed-down by search-engine groupthink already.
http://www.google-watch.org/crock.html

Google is fighting the wrong battle on that subpoena - June 19, 2008

It's not a privacy issue, at least not with this subpoena. Then why is Google resisting the Justice Department Probably because it makes them look cool among their geeky fans. Or perhaps if everyone knew how much porn is found by searching the engines, it might make Google look uncool to everyone else. The person who first started speaking out about privacy at Google more than five years ago is not impressed with Google's position, and here he explains why.
http://www.scroogle.org/subpoena.html