To personalized or not to personalized
Passing by the Google homepage today, I see a link to the personalized page. Personalized page is not a new idea. Excite was the first to introduce such concept as My Excite during the portalization of major search engine back in the pre-boom days. I have also been using services from My Yahoo, especially their stock portfolio ticker page, where to I put it in an iframe at my web turnpike.
Personalizing Google, howevever, is very different from personalizing Yahoo. I do pretty much all my search through Google. In my browsing behavior, the only other information gathering tools I use are Answers.com, Wikipedia, and a few other journal specific search tools. That means, if I personalize Google, the company can cross reference all my searching behavior. In a way, every time I get out to the cyber highway, I will be monitored.
Ok, take it one step back. Actually, if we install any Instant Messenging software like MSN, we are already potentially at risk of someone out there cross-referencing our identity with the source IP address. Microsoft tries to get everyone using their passport, which comes with the XP operating systems. That also allows Microsoft to keep track of almost everything we do.
Going back to Google, actually they already know more about me than I would like them to know. The Google Analytics service allows webmasters to have tools for tracking visitors. If you pay attention to many web sites nowadays, you see a brief moment where Google Analytics is run when you enter a site. This is true also for all my pages on the web. And guess what? I use my Gmail username for that account. Also, I have multiple Gmail accounts to store all my incoming and outgoing mails, no matter where I send it from. So if I personalized my google search page, not only will they know who send me an email, who I write to, what I publish on the web (by the way, blogspot owned by Google), but they will also know what I am looking for.
But then, why not personalized? Google already knows so much about me. Personalizing search page will let google study my searching behavior, and perhaps to customize search result for my benefit. Of course, they can also find better relevant ads to make me click on them often, which is their core business model. And imagine this, say one day, our clickstream will be declassified 100 years after our death, then future historians and anthropologists will have so much tools in their disposal to figure out what actually has been going on in our society.
Well... perhaps fundamentally I don't believe in privacy. During the tech boom times, some guy and his girlfriend started a web site call "We live in public" -- he installed web cams all over his home, and people can watch live video stream any time. Yes, the guy probably did it for self-glorification. But looking it another ways, if we don't see this phenomenon from an individualistic perspective, it is demanding us to find a new paradigm of society:
Ihe Internet is leading us to redefine the meaning of self. Our body functions together as one, and I have never heard that the liver is complaining that its privacy is infringed by the kidney. This can also be true if ease of information sharing is linking people closer, and self will be defined in terms of community.
Will Google be the Borg Queen? Apparently I have been assimulated.
Personalizing Google, howevever, is very different from personalizing Yahoo. I do pretty much all my search through Google. In my browsing behavior, the only other information gathering tools I use are Answers.com, Wikipedia, and a few other journal specific search tools. That means, if I personalize Google, the company can cross reference all my searching behavior. In a way, every time I get out to the cyber highway, I will be monitored.
Ok, take it one step back. Actually, if we install any Instant Messenging software like MSN, we are already potentially at risk of someone out there cross-referencing our identity with the source IP address. Microsoft tries to get everyone using their passport, which comes with the XP operating systems. That also allows Microsoft to keep track of almost everything we do.
Going back to Google, actually they already know more about me than I would like them to know. The Google Analytics service allows webmasters to have tools for tracking visitors. If you pay attention to many web sites nowadays, you see a brief moment where Google Analytics is run when you enter a site. This is true also for all my pages on the web. And guess what? I use my Gmail username for that account. Also, I have multiple Gmail accounts to store all my incoming and outgoing mails, no matter where I send it from. So if I personalized my google search page, not only will they know who send me an email, who I write to, what I publish on the web (by the way, blogspot owned by Google), but they will also know what I am looking for.
But then, why not personalized? Google already knows so much about me. Personalizing search page will let google study my searching behavior, and perhaps to customize search result for my benefit. Of course, they can also find better relevant ads to make me click on them often, which is their core business model. And imagine this, say one day, our clickstream will be declassified 100 years after our death, then future historians and anthropologists will have so much tools in their disposal to figure out what actually has been going on in our society.
Well... perhaps fundamentally I don't believe in privacy. During the tech boom times, some guy and his girlfriend started a web site call "We live in public" -- he installed web cams all over his home, and people can watch live video stream any time. Yes, the guy probably did it for self-glorification. But looking it another ways, if we don't see this phenomenon from an individualistic perspective, it is demanding us to find a new paradigm of society:
Ihe Internet is leading us to redefine the meaning of self. Our body functions together as one, and I have never heard that the liver is complaining that its privacy is infringed by the kidney. This can also be true if ease of information sharing is linking people closer, and self will be defined in terms of community.
Will Google be the Borg Queen? Apparently I have been assimulated.
by Raymond Yim at 10:18 AM
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