OPINION
Trying to hide from alert Web intelligence
06-03-2003
by Bernie Goldbach
The vaster the Web becomes, the more you need a way to find anything, anyone, anytime, and Google has long been the tool of choice. But the reach of the big G is starting to make some people nervous.
Have you heard about the Total Information Awareness program? If you haven't yet, you probably will soon. Millions of dollars are going to the program, which aims to compile electronic dossiers on Americans. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center puts it, TIA's goal is to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible, and use computer algorithms and human analysis to detect potential terrorist activity.
Nearly 200 corporations and universities are working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in building a collection of information about personal behaviour. DARPA, the organisation that helped fund the first development of the Internet, has put money into the University of Southern California, the Palo Alto Research Center, and defense contractor Science Applications International. Each grant for this Defense Department domestic surveillance program is estimated to be worth a minimum of USD200,000.
This is big bucks stuff. But without spending a thing, anyone can set up an information retrieval system and do it now. Just go Googling.
Start with Googlert. Some people set up a Googlert so they can determine what is being said about them. At Googlert.com, simply type in your given name followed by your surname into the first search term box. Googlert will send you e-mail whenever your name is mentioned anywhere on the Web. This is a clever form of Web intelligence.
Bloggers often use Googlerts to monitor who is linking to blog topics. By selecting "Link Search" from the bottom of the advanced search page, you can have Googlert find all pages that link to your home page, or to any page that interests you.
But it's discovering that Google knows other things, like your birthday, that gets people's attention. By using the "advanced search" part of Google, you can look for recent items like first mention on-line of a death or a birth in your home county.
You can train Googlert to look for any mentions of an article, book or paper that you are interested in. Simply type the name of the publication into the search term box, and Googlert will send you a message. Configure your mobile phone and your Googlert comes as an SMS text message.
Googlert is especially good at tracking new developments in hobbies, sports results, and appearances by your favourite artist or stories about celebrities.
What if you want to escape the reach of Google? Is there a Google-free zone anywhere on the Web? That's doubtful. Everywhere you turn in the wired world, there's a Googlebot, a Google Hack, a Googlert or a Bloogle. Some people are getting a little paranoid and want to find a quiet place where Google never visits.
Google thrived in the Web world not just because it worked, but because influential techies sang its praises -- they told friends, who told other friends, and so on. What's notable is that more than one name has begun to express vague unease about the reach of Google. Dave Winer, Scripting News Web developer and Berkman Fellow at Harvard, doesn't like Google's reach, especially since it jumped into blogging with the purchase of Pyra Labs, and Winer has written that he now plans to favour other search engines when exploring the Web.
He's not alone. Pete Prodoehl, who has published Rasterboy's Home Page since the spring of 1995 (now Rasterweb the Blog), thinks everyone should switch search engines for a day.
"I mean, we used to have Microsoft-Free Fridays, right? What about a Google-Free Friday? Will you still find what you're looking for?"
Finding information is relatively easy when using other big search engines, such as AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Teoma or Yahoo. But none of them have the same combination of comprehensive coverage and Web intelligence as Google. You can run to another search engine but it's unlikely that you can hide from Google.
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