Tag Archives: Consumer Watchdog
Privacy Watchdog Releases Google Video
Posted on 03. Sep, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
This clip portrays Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a merchant of secrets in this computer generated clip that looks almost like a children’s cartoon. It was created by Inside Google, which is funded by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.
What do you think? Is Google as bad as this suggests?
thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/7/10
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Greg Farnum. 0 Comments
Google agrees to hand over privacy information to European regulators.
Google TV teaming with Logitech to expand home entertainment options.
Can’t spell? Google can help.
James Fallows looks at Google and the future of journalism.
Consumer Watchdog says Google has “Microsoft-like monopoly.”
Inside Google? Really? Seems More Like Outside
Posted on 22. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit organization whose mission is to fight on the behalf of “American consumers and taxpayers” has launch a blog called Inside Google where they intend to keep in check some of the privacy issues that the search engine giant has been encountering recently. From a few of the articles that I have read on the site, Inside Google clearly believes that the folks at Google need to be more open about the way they do business, and one of the issues highlighted is the way their search algorithm is calculated to bring back query results.
This is especially true when looking at the post fuming about the fact that the term “Inside Google” doesn’t come up on the first few pages of a Google Search, yet does when querying Bing. The opposite end of this is perhaps Microsoft should be asked if they are trumping up the Inside Google site while Google is giving it a representative ranking since the Inside Google site is very new; the domain was only registered three months ago and currently has no PageRank.
Plus, there is no update on this post since it was written to point out that searching the term Inside Google appears in the first page of Google Search, at least when I queried it today. Even when done in Incognito Mode or another browser with cleared history. Looks like the “lack of transparency” tag placed on these posts doesn’t apply to Inside Google.
I know that I have not always written rosy things about Google, and they still rank me well, probably because their engine is based on a specific system to return the best results for a query, not by humans directly manipulating search results. Here are some examples of things I’ve written:
Concerned About Privacy? Scroogle Scrapes Your Searches
Do You Know Why Google Wants to Trade Energy?
Maybe Google Knows Too Much, GoogleSharing Can Help
Google Invests in Recorded Future
Inside Google is based on the foundation that because Google has seventy percent of the United States market of online search it should be investigated because it is a monopoly. But there are other competitors in the search market. In reality if Bing, Yahoo or Ask were actually better search engines than Google, I would use them. But they are not. Hence the reasoning behind the fact that I use Google Search as I’m sure others who read this post would agree.
If serious privacy or security issues arose that Google was not willing to face or to make amends for, I would be all for going after them, as would a great deal of others. In that regard perhaps Inside Google is on the right track with what they are doing but some of these articles posted on the site seem, well, a bit angst driven for some reason. Is there a motive to why Inside Google feels like they’ve been left on the outside? Possibly because its journalists were formally a part of the once dominant print media industry?
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/20/10
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Android 2.2 has been announced with Adobe Flash integrated in the browser, new developer tools and new ways to connect to your PC.
Here is the official blog post on Google TV, complete with a video overview of the new technology.
Everyone at Google I/O got one of Sprint’s HTC Evo smartphones, which is loaded with features and runs on 4G.
According to a chart shown at Day One of Google I/O, the number of Chrome browser users is now at 70 million.
The Consumer Watchdog group has launched Inside Google “to educate the public and opinion leaders about Google’s dangerous dominance”.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/9/10
Posted on 09. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
The New York Times is running a profile about those who are downloading and using Chrome OS, complete with a bit about our pal Hexxeh.
Some people are concerned that Google is getting too big, like former journalist turned Consumer Watchdog advocate John Simpson.
Is Apple developing their own alternative to Flash?
Although some people don’t like the recent changes that have been made to Google Search, there will be no option to revert to the classic version.
Google has launched the Google Analytics Application Gallery where developers can submit their own tools for Google Analytics.
