Is Google’s Massive Database a Security Risk?
(Page 1 of 4 )
Massive databases equal massive targets to many people, and Google has some of the largest databases in the world. Should we be concerned about what the search engine giant will do with all that information -- especially since a surprising amount of it is personal and sensitive? Even if Google follows the "do no evil" policy laid out by founder Sergey Brin, many with less honorable intentions may gain access to some of that information. This article outlines the risks.
Mae West once said that “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Not to disagree with this dear departed screen star, but there is at least one situation in which too much of a good thing is not so wonderful: too much information. More precisely, a concentration of too much potentially sensitive information about too many people makes a tempting target, and not just for hackers. In this case, too much information in the hands of search engine giant Google can cause the rest of us to feel somewhat less than wonderful, as privacy advocates have been chiming in with their concerns.
The focus on Google and how much information its servers contain about its users evolved from how popular it has become. The company has leveraged its popularity as a search engine into other endeavors. It now offers a variety of services, including email, blogging, and personalized search. Projects in development include a digital library, a payments service, and software aimed at speeding up web traffic.
Whether Google has managed to beat its rivals in these areas, it certainly has them running scared. When its Gmail service offered users 1 GB of storage space for their email, for example, Yahoo and Microsoft scurried to increase the storage space on their email users’ accounts. They would hardly have done so if they weren’t afraid of losing customers to Google.
The key point is that many of the services Google currently offers, and is planning to offer in the not too distant future, collect and require personal information – sometimes in the form of cookies that track users’ habits, sometimes in the form of actual personally-created content (i.e. emails) preserved on Google’s servers. As Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center observed, “This is a lot of personal information in a single basket. Google is becoming one of the largest privacy risks on the Internet. I don’t think any of the others have the scope of personal information that Google does.”
Next: Who Seeks Information? And Why? >>
More Search Engine News Articles
More By Terri Wells
/ 4 
