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Is Google Reading Your Email to Determine Blog Popularity?
problogger.net — Straight from the Google Blog Search patent, here's the scoop on exactly what Google is doing to rank blogs and blog post popularity. It's a bit creepy and has "Big Brother" written all over it.
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- ssehlhorst, on 10/12/2007, -16/+5great detailed analysis reverse engineering google's blogsearch patent filing!
- Scheissenegger, on 10/12/2007, -4/+55Yeah Google, PLEASE read my mail and if you see unfiltered spam, please filter it. It makes life a lot easier.
- GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+46Is Google, Yahoo!, Outlook, Hotmail and Your Company's Server Reading Your Email to Determine Spam?
AAAAAH BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING ME!
Get a grip. How do you think modern spam filters work? - EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32Good, at least someone can keep up with all my email.
- msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16a) blog popularity/preference is unlikely to be a concern to anyone. blogs are boring and mundane for the most part.
b) yes, even your blog.
c) if you don't want Google-bots crawling all over your personal web data, don't put it in the public domain, or willingly have third-parties send it to Google's email servers - 1021, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3oh jeez... most of the responses above show that we would rather have a corporate state than a government-ruled one. If the government had been doing this for some ulterior yet seemingly good motive (as Google is doing right now), we'd all be freaked to all hell about our privacy and rights.
I know anti-spam engines _may_ be the only reason Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al are doing this but it shows a sense of trust in private entities which we know nothing about from the inside which is not there in classic governments right now, in most countries around the world. This definitely indicates to me that we'd rather be in a corporate state rather than a classic government-ruled one. - SVPirate, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5*hands out the tin foil hats*
- vaga222, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@1021
There is a HUGE hole in your theory. If google want to read my email, filter my email and even reply to people using my email account then that's OK. I for one would not use their system. The government however uses force and violence to get the data, either by subpoenaing companies or threatening them with other legal sanctions.
Atleast google has the decency to give me a EULA before they infringe my rights. - Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2"If the government had been doing this for some ulterior yet seemingly good motive (as Google is doing right now), we'd all be freaked to all hell about our privacy and rights."
Probably because the gov't would be able to use their collected data and cross run it with existing government databases for so much more than Google can. - bobothn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@vaga222
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/privacy.html
" * Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.
* Google's computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering advertisements and related links, preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail.
* Google may send you information related to your Gmail account or other Google services. ."
Sounds like it is all covered their. Also it is not like they hired some guy to sit their and read your email it gets processed by a bot. - 1021, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2"Atleast google has the decency to give me a EULA before they infringe my rights."
What the hell do you think the thousands of laws against government and people plus the constitution are in classic government? They are effectively make up what private companies might encompass in one simple document which they name the EULA. I'm sorry, there is no real HUGE hole in my logic, the plausibility of the corporate state first came into play here in the US with the New Deal after the Great Depression: "Mussolini himself praised the New Deal as following his own corporate state, as quoted in a July 1933 article in the New York Times" (Wikipedia). And it has now become ever so obvious even in the tendencies of people to trust corporations over governments of old. It is only a matter of time till the next iteration brings in the rise of the corporate state in some country or another.
@bobothn
"not like they hired some guy to sit there*"
How is this even relevant, and so you think the NSA/CIA/FBI have some guy sitting there to read information they get on you? Nope. - vaga222, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I understand that they don't have a guy sitting doing it all manually :)
My point was that in a free market situation I would have the choice to use the service or not. Hence the point about google staff sending emails from my account. - b0wl0fud0n, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3What was really scary for me was what happened after I wrote an email to a coworker about some unpublished rss feeds at a startup I currently work at. After a day or so, google emailed me back assuming that I was the owner of the feeds and asked me further about the details of the feed. Google also had put the feed into it's blogsearch.
- jmkiii, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If your email resides on google's servers, google owns it.
- akyra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Keep in mind Google's services are pretty much free. And because it's free there is always a catch. If it makes you uncomfortable that Google's algorithms are reading your email ( the gov't can too), don't use Gmail. Perhaps you should sign up with .Mac. LOL. (I'm a Mac user BTW).
- puffinkiss, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31No, it isn't. Google is simply crawling for links in your emails/chats and counting them up, analogous to the way it finds relevant links in your emails and displays them on the side.
- mad5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23They also monitor Google Reader stats to see how many subscribers all the blogs have.
Whats the problem?- mthoringen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20The problem is a missing apostrophe.
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Where? Looks grammatically correct to me.
- mad5, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Thank's.
- SillyRabbits, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Does anyone really expect e-mail to be private? I just lead a very boring life so I guess it doesn't matter who reads mine... :)
- msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Nobody should expect unencrypted anything to be private.
http://www.gnupg.org/ - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9People are r*tards.
Some google minion is not in there perusing your mail going "Zomg, Bill, check this out. This dude therapistlawl11@gmail.com is boinking his sisters dog!".
Google has some machines crawling e-mail looking for links, filtering out spam, etc etc. No different than any other system really. That's how spam filtering works. A computer automatically reads your message /word for word/ looking for triggers for it to label a message as spam. That's how the FBI systems that are most likely hooked into the intarweb somewhere work, they probably crawl e-mail looking for "terrorism" and "bomb" etc etc. - 1021, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1@betterth
You are absolutely right, the government and private industry do the same thing, crawl your messages. Yet, we seem to have a harder time with the government doing it, even though they are a lot more open than Google or Yahoo or MSFT will ever be, why is that? See my comments on the top thread.
- msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Nobody should expect unencrypted anything to be private.
- neiltc13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20A computer reading emails? Why does it even matter? It's not like the computer is going to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets to anyone.
- ray901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11lol - yeah - it's not even reading the emails, it's parsing them. Reading implies an understanding of the content, parsing is just applying an algorithm to a given set of bytes. This is a silly article.
- Luigi30, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Oh god! The computer's reading my text!
- Coniferous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Uh, no.
Sorry, you can only use "big brother" when you aren't given an opportunity to opt out of it. in this case you can just switch providers. Heck, you could make your own mail server if you were THAT paranoid. - paulbjensen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'm not surprised by this. The more information Google get access to, the more accurate their various search services will be. The only real concern is if the system is abused in the sense that an employee at the company reads the emails of another user for personal reasons. This does have the potential to be used for malicious purposes, but it comes down to whether you trust the people at Google to "do no evil".
- bIuebonics, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7any e-mail service anywhere, except one you host your own, has the potential for employees to look at your e-mails. just because google uses algorithms to search for links in e-mails does not put them at any greater inclination to be able to read your e-mails than say, yahoo or hotmail.
- detrate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11ZOMG a search engine crawling email???
- moisie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The computer "reading" it doesn't have any comprehension of it so it doesn't matter. Ultimately it only matters if they abuse it and I trust google far more than a lot of companies. Your regular webhost could read your emails, and they don't even have to have a computer scanning them in order to improve their service to you.
- tinker123, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9For people who pride themselves as being smarter than everyone else IT Geeks sure behave irrationally with google. If they substituted "microsoft" for "google" in any headline like the one in this thread they would be screaming bloody murder. Instead, with these headlines the usual response is something like "Aw shucks, they are just scanning your email to find some information AND at least they are telling you they are doing it".
Google may have been more noble as a startup, but they are a corporation now. Corporations act mostly the same. You are kidding yourself if you tell yourself the wouldn't screw with you because they are "google". - SteelChicken, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6more proof bloggers are self-important attention whores.
what a stupid article. - Kyderdog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You mean you use gmail NOT thinking they read your mail?
Come on guys did you expect something for nothing? - JasonPrini, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The machine is benign.
We repeat: The machine is benign.
But all your base still belong to us. - topnotchnet, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2lol at people trusting google "more than" other companies
and if your doing anything borderline illegal duh encrypt it
but i highly doubt they care about your complaint emails to dell, aol, best buy or whatever business you have a grudge against
just make sure your cable bills,internet bills, other utility bills, cell phone is not in your name pay cash, pay the deposit, pay in advance, tell em your name is Blank Smith soc number 123 45 6789, sign up and be on your way, none of these places have a right to see your id or have your soc security number/ birth date
those are the easiest way for stalkers to find you, if the govt wants you they know where you work , what property you own, the last credit card purchase, etc. so they'll find you unless your name is osama of course : ) - Burguois, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3So wait, Google automate tracking of blog-urls in multiple sources to determine popularity?
Holy jumping Jesus, the intrigue! Next think we know they'll be automating searching of all incoming mail to find potential identifiers of spam. NEXT STOP VIDEOSCREENS!
Google doesn't give a ***** about your Aunt Jemimia's hernia operation. All they're doing is checking for popular blogs, and I'm pretty sure such a clause is in the terms and conditions when you sign up. You did read it, right? - zongamin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4So its acceptable to spout ***** on your own blogs and then expect some STRANGERS to read it, but google collects some data on blogs popularity from its email servers and they are invading your privacy??
Grow up google bashers - google has no interest in you what so ever. - my10cent, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0who cares? anybody that conducts important business knows not to get a webmail, Google can read my mail I dont care, nothing important in there.
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sure, Google is reading your mail, if you're talking about algorithms... :-p
It's not exactly like they've hired a 100,000 people Chinese child labor force to read millions of mails.
I mean... Who cares if an algorithm scans your mail to find common keywords.
If we're to be paranoid to find that a problem, just imagine how much the Google web crawler reads everyone's web sites!111 And MS/Yahoo would be doing it too! Better jump off a cliff right now... - dirq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Well, I'm going to start emailing everyone my blog address and start spamming myself. I'll link-farm my own gmail account!
- Sakk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2It's hilarious reading submissions anymore.
Replace Google with Microsoft in this article and every single post here that reads like this "It's nothing, don't be stupid, that's just the way it is, I hope they do it better to get rid of the stuff I don't want" Would then read like this " ZOMFG!@! ***** SUCKS I HATE BILL GATES HE IS READING IT PERSONALLY DOWN WITH THEM!!@!!@!" - userini, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It's remarkable how important people feel they are. Google doesn't give a damn about what you write in your emails. It doesn't make any money for them.
Being able to offer better search and more targeted advertising than their competitors, on the other hand, makes a grip. What's the problem with that? Don't we all want more concise search results and less punch-the-monkey ads? - ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1I don't see anything about e-mails in this article. It's talking about number of subscribers of the RSS feed (this data is public!), nothing about emails... Inaccurate.
- scottc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The article has a section titled "Is Google Reading Your Mail?!" You didn't read far enough.
- ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You are right, I thought this article was shorter, sorry. You can dugg my previous comment down.
- blessing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Problem with the Microsoft/Google comparisons - Google is judged on what it could/may do in the future. MS is judged by what it has done in the past.
- hadak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3now google knows how much of a bitch my ex is.
- BullTaco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The claims of the patent application seem a bit broad and obvious.
I hope the patent office does their job and forces Google to narrow them a bit so that they are not so broad:
"A method comprising: receiving a search query by a blog search engine; retrieving a blog document in response to the search query;
(1) determining a first score for the blog document based on the relevance of the blog document to the search query;
(2) altering the first score based on a quality of the blog document; and providing information regarding the blog document based on the altered first score. "
This claim would cover what Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Alta Vista, etc. have been doing for a decade at least with regular webpages involving primary and secondary weighting of relevance indicators. Blog pages would just be a subset of regular web pages.
Where's that $%%^ wiki page that the USPTO set up to comment on patent apps? - SilverRocket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How many years until Google is as reviled as Microsoft? 1 year? 2, max?
People are funny when they start trusting ANY corporation to do the right thing... especially a publicly traded one! - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yes, of course they are. The only reason they are giving you free email is so they can extract data from it.
- mojibyrd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Unfortunately most people have become so desensitized to being snooped on and have the attitude of go ahead and watch what i am doing, as i am doing nothing wrong that they do not realize the implications of this snooping as long as they can play with the latest gadgets/games, download porn/songs from the internet....not to mention that we are all working harder than ever to make ends meet...but it is time we all said enough is enough and take a stand on all this spying and media control that is on-going....wake up america
- dkern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is wonderful news. Maybe now Google will be able to find out how 5 million emails accidentally got deleted from the White house, thereby giving to to national security the corrective advice and systems integration so this will not happen in the future!
Sorry, I just had to! - ultrarob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is exactly the reason I don't have a gmail account and don't intend to get one. I also won't install Google's software to search my hard drive. I can't imagine that they aren't sending data back to their servers. I do use their online search but it does bother me that they are keeping a record of all my searches. It's not that I don't trust Google now but things could change. Even worse the government could get their hands on the data and that really scares me. Not that I'm doing anything illegal but I don't think that matters.
- juliocgrajales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Of course they are, not only my email, but my docs, chats, search's, news articles, directions, etc... come on they have not been silent about it, the only issue is whether they have broken any privacy laws, and to date I have not heard of any significant stories about Google betraying user's privacy laws... nonetheless i expect them to read it but use it for my best experience using their product, so who defines "my best experience", well I do, so we will see...
- juliocgrajales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wanted to add, there should be a law that requires companies like Google to send a list to all users of who has viewed, accessed, requested, used any bit of your information... sort of like a credit report
- zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If I were to trust anyone with my email it would be Google there ad's are not all up in my face
and they kill off 99.9% of all the spam I receive.
But the last place I would trust my secrets to is email.
Even the White House knows you need to hide your emails.
White House lost Over FIVE MILLION e-mails in two year period
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/12/white.house.email/index.html - zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1If I were to trust anyone with my email it would be Google there ad's are not all up in my face
and they kill off 99.9% of all the spam I receive.
But the last place I would trust my secrets to is email.
Even the White House knows you need to hide your emails.
White House lost Over FIVE MILLION e-mails in two year period
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/12/white.house.email/index.html - jholdaway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As I see it, All servers have access to the email on it. I am more apt to trust a companie that says exactly what they do with your email. 1) crawl it to put ads on your email page, 2) crawl it for ranking data.
One of the good things about google is they are transparent for the most part. when china said censor or be blocked they said publicly "google's site in china is censored" When our government asked for data they publicly said they were asked for data. So if you have something to hide, you may just want to use another less known email service, And maybe only log in from public computers. Of course the massive amounts of emails means that political and national security actions may be looked into by big brother but the email about how you stole your neighbors plasma is likely safe in the haystack.
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