Google

After the Google company was launched on September 7, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin their search engine went online just few months later. The service should pose a threat to Yahoo¹⁷, the market leader in that branch back then. Shortly after the launch

14 Free Trade Agreement between USA and Australia

15 as of 2003 the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had served almost 1000 subpoenas [Mid05]

16 any information about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can be reasonably ascertained, from that information (cf. Australian Privacy Act Section 6)

17 www.yahoo.com

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Figure 3.4: ISP Architecture

the service became a success and many other services (usually financed by advertisement) followed.

Rapidly Google became more than just the owner of a successful search engine. Apart from a mailing service (see GMail), Google News provides some kind of daily news portal with a feature to send news directly to users per mail. People can built their own personal starting page (www.google.com/ig) and keep track of their appointments (see Google Calendar below). Even an specially designed version of the search engine exists for PDAs and mobile phones (www.google.com/mobile). (cf. [WEL08])

The Google company, more so it’s search engine, became famous and w4ell konwn by so many people that even the verb “to google someone/something”, meaning looking uo information of something/someone on the web (not just with Google search engine), was added to (online-) dictionaries (e.g. LEO Dictionary¹⁸, German DUDEN).

All this useful services provided by one single company could as well pose a threat to peoples privacy. Not just search terms are sent to Google servers, but people put content and data on servers owned by Google willingly (see Google Docs, Google Code, ...), so works in progress, developments are accessible almost from anywhere and can easily be shared with co-workers and friends. Data put on these servers however is not that safe as it may seem. The privacy policies and terms of use connected to these services should be read carefully, before Google is given access to sensitive or valuable data.

Some of the most important services provided by Google and privacy issues that may arise according to them are discussed below (cf. [DRW]).

Search Engine

As of today Google seems to be the most important and the most famous online search engine. The engine is translated into numerous languages (including German, Italian, ...).

18 dict.leo.org - comprehensive online dictionary/translator for numerous languages

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In addition to the text field, where people type the search terms into they are looking for, option buttons give people the opportunity to filter search results easy and fast (e.g. only sites are shown that were written in an certain language). The extended search offers even more options and commands to choose from, in order to improve search results.

The search term put into the form is of course sent to Google, where the request is processed, stored and the results are sent back to the client. Results that are sent back to the user are filtered and often even censored. Google is removing sites from results that break laws of certain countries (e.g. sites that break copyright laws according to DMCA¹⁹) or their own in-house rules. Filtering on the other hand is used to improve search results, by storing terms that a certain user was looking for in the past. Hence Google is also able to derive profiles of peoples interests - an ability that is especially useful for advertisement that is tailored for every single user. Privacy agents got even more troubled when Google took over Doubleclick²⁰ in 2007.

Chrome (Webbrowser)

Google’s newest development is called Chrome and should battle Microsoft’s market leading position with Internet Explorer. Since September 2008 Google’s very own web browser can be downloaded for free (www.google.com/chrome). Chrome is still in development and additions are made nearly everyday, but this new browser has already earned praise and reprimand from users and critics (cf. [SUR08]).

Chrome should be way faster than it’s competitor developed by Microsoft and easier to use by customers, but tests proofed otherwise. Google’s browser is not faster than other web browsers, especially running with Microsoft Vista. But even istalled on the faster XP Chrome is still far slower than FireFox (www.mozilla.com/firefox/) or Opera (www.opera.com) (cf. [SUR08]). The user interface is more minimalistic in order to increase usability, but is in fact missing many functions, which are standard in other browsers (e.g. administrative functions for bookmarks).

Most important features of Chrome are listed below:

• With anonymous mode no traces of online behavior is left on one’s computer (similar to Apple’s Safari Browser www.apple.com/safari)

• when terms are entered into the URL-textfield already visited sites are searched for this terms (like features already implemented in FireFox and Opera).

• the nine most visited pages are included into the starting page

Security and Privacy Every new Version of Chrome gets an distinct version number -hence the used version of Chrome is easy to identify.

While surfing Chrome is connecting regularly to Google servers to transmit data, while the actual nature of the sent information can’t be determined. Likely the connections are established to enable features like the build-in phishing- and maleware-filter (similar

19 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act

20 Online Advertisement Company - displays advertising web banners on third party websites according to users interests

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to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer). Hence content of data isn’t transparent (private and sensible) data could be transmitted, which could be useful to Google in one way or the other.

GMail (E-Mail Service)

Google’s e-mail service (gmail.google.com) was first announced on April 1 2004 (cf.

[GOO04]). Because of the announced storage space of 1 Gigabyte for mailboxes (other free-mail providers like Yahoo, GMX and Hotmail provided just a few Megabytes per customer back then), the announcement was first wrongly regarded as an April Fool’s joke.

The e-mail service was advertised with the following advantages (cf. [GOO04]):

Storage: Google provides every single account with 1 Gigabyte of storage, so customer are able to hold their emails forever (at that time more than every other free-mail provider)

Search: with built in search technology, people are able to quickly search their emails (sent or received) for specific keywords

Speed: emails aren’t filed into folders, but parsed into “conversation - trees”, hence it is easier (and not that time consuming) to follow sent emails and following replies Security and Privacy Hence to the huge size of storage available for single customers, people are seduced to never delete their messages from their mailbox. However even if some user deletes a message from his/her account, it is not completely deleted (cf. [GMA]).

In fact the mail is still stored on Google owned servers and the content can be still accessed internally by the company (for customized advertising purposes). Google argued that no human-being is parsing mails stored in mailboxes and that the information collected is used for advertisement purposes only (cf. [BEI04]).

Furthermore Google stated in its privacy policy that

they will be pooling all the information they collect on you from all of their various services. Moreover, they may keep this information indefinitely, and give this information to whomever they wish. All that’s required is for Google to "have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public." [GMA]

According to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA) emails lose their status as protected communication after 180 days have passed. After that deadline has been reached an email messages is just an ordinary entry in a database and it is no warrant (but an subpoena) needed to make Google to provide a copy. Due to the fact that Google’s databases are spread all over the world and therefore subject to the laws of respective countries, it is unclear how the privacy of email’s content is kept intact (after some time has passed).

With the ability to parse email’s content (for certain keywords) and store information about email authors as well, there is now a massive potential for abuse (cf. [GMA]). These practices sound alarmingly similar to measures CIA, NSA used for years already with their communication monitoring technology (see section below) for national security’s sake.

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Google Desktop

The search feature this application (desktop.google.com) adds, doesn’t just cover content available online (similar to the standard search engine provided by Google), but it is also able to search local computers for specific content. All files stored on a computer are indexed by Google Desktop for faster execution of searches. It is possible to search for numerous file types, including image, music and video files. With available plug-ins the list of supported file types can be even enhanced. Results of local searches include comprehensive information about the files found and a short abstract of the files content with search terms clearly marked. Because of Goggle Desktops indexing it is even possible to search for files that were deleted (by accident).

Apart from the search engine, Google Desktop includes the feature to add certain gadgets to the sidebar offered. Examples for useful little gadgets are analog/digital clocks, news-tickers, weather information ... new gadgets are available almost every day.

Security and Privacy Since Version 3 of Google Desktop it is possible to expand a search to include more than one computer. Privacy agents however advise against using this feature„ because index data is sent to Google servers when using that option.

Google Docs

With Google Docs (docs.google.com) it is possible to store documents on remote servers and edit these documents in real time. Hence people are able to create and share documents with friends and co-workers easily. Features are similar to capabilities of Microsoft’s Office.

After complains (not just made by privacy agents) Google altered it’s terms of use and terms of privacy. Before the edit the copyright of content put onto the servers migrated to Google. Now the copyright remains at the user who created the document. Google however still reserves the right to alter, translate, share and distribute the content in order to enable full functionality of the provided service.

Miscellaneous

Other services provided by Google Inc. are listed below:

AdWords and AdSense: AdWords and AdSense are services that display advertisement on third party websites.

AdWordsdisplays ad-banners according to search terms entered into the search engine.

These resulting ads are clearly marked as advertisements for better distinction from search results (with background coloring and the “Ads by Google” caption).

AdSense is a service that allows webmaster to display Google Ads on their own websites. When these advertisements are clicked by users, the owner of the site is rewarded with a small salary, which is derived by the actual amount of clicks.

Google Earth and Google Maps: With these two services (earth.google.com and maps.

google.com) provided by Google it is possible for users to virtually travel to every location on the planet. Numerous pictures taken by satellites in space are combined to create the most thorough map that is accessible by the general public. Unlike