BBC NEWS | Technology | Privacy fears hit Google search:
"Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,' said EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston."
Ok, so you might have to read the whole story to understand what I'm on about here, but surely the point is that Google are the most trustworthy of the search companies, since they are the only ones fighting the US government about handing over their search logs. I'd be more worried if Yahoo or AOL had something similar, as they seem to have rushed as quickly as they could to hand over their information in court, panting and wagging their tails as they did so, waiting for the pat on the head they'll never get.
Oh, and this is only a problem if you're using the tool to search over multiple computers, and have that option switched on. Don't know about you, but I have one computer at home, and one at work. Don't need to be searching both at the same time, escpecially if it's a very important document, such as "tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files". All those types of documents are in specific folders with really obvious names, not just scattered around in a huge My Documents file scanning 40Gb and with no folder system. To be honest, if you're stupid enough to not know what you're doing when you install these programs, perhaps you shouldn't be doing everything on the computer. I wouldn't feel safe if I wasn't aware of exactly what information is leaving my desktop.
I don't want to seem nasty to people who genuinely get caught out by this kind of thing, but the internet is a harsh, unpleasant place, the realities of which need to be brought home to people. Google are, as far as it's possible to tell, acting honourably, and honestly. The Electronic Frontier Foundation need to find a real cause to champion, rather than acting like a tabloid newspaper. Grow up, kids, and start fighting for something real.