With all the hubbub over Google’s privacy record — first with Google Maps, then with the recent study by Privacy International — it’s easy to forget that Google has a long record of being the good guys, and that they have never once turned over user data.
Unlike Yahoo, which kow-tows to government censors and freely turned over data on a Chinese artist that led to his 10-year imprisonment for speaking out against his government, then warns you they may do the same thing to you.
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007, 12:17 pm | 
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June 13, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Doesn’t google also censor their Chinese search hits? Don’t get me wrong, I agree that the Yahoo thing is WAY worse, but Google censors along with the rest.
June 13, 2007 at 12:40 pm
BTW, I googled to find that. It’s still my choice, too.
June 13, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Nah, they only hand over your emails if you’re accused of hate speech by one of the preferred groups.
With all search engine – online mail providers – it’s six of one – half a dozen of the other. Any of them at any time will have the ability to give up any and all information acquired about their users. Rule of thumb – never use these emails for anything you don’t want to see in public. Any searching you do – know that it can go public at any time. Period.
And as SarahK noted – they haven’t handed out info in China – merely censored data on searches… at least until they found out that they were going to get bad press on that – then they just shut it down. I guess the thought process was… After all what’s a little censorship among good business friends… right? What possible harm could come from that?
How much goes on behind the scenes that we don’t know about? It’s anyone’s guess. Personally I don’t trust them – I used multiple engines when searching for things – to see what comes up where. It’s interesting to note the differences.