Topic: Why we can't trust Google

[GrayWolf]

If you don't know this about them, you certainly should!

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4686395/can-you-trust-google

[Nomad]

Unable to get it to play.....

[Lefty_OMorrow]

He lost me at monopoly. He refuted his own statement the second he said he uses Bing as a search engine. You have a choice so it's not a monopoly. I find it interesting his choice of search engine coincides with the company he claims to not be working for. If he wanted to demonstrate independence from MS he should have chosen a less transparent answer.

[fastfire]

I use this serch engine.....http://www.ixquick.com/

[ballardw]

The reason I don't trust Google is getting too many results that do not display ANYTHING related to my search terms. Until they will ignore "tag" items that are not content I'll be doomed to going to sites, finding they don't match and then trying to remember the displayed text (that repeats on an awful lot of supposedly different sites) so I can skip the duplications.

[luvmy45]

You know, years ago, this type of information gathering used to be called market research

It's been going on for years, and while today's information age allows a speed that is unheard of in years past, it is nothing new.

Granted the potential of a corrupt person to do something bad with it is there, however they are far from big brother, and anything you do on the web is by your own choice, so in the end, you have no one to blame but yourself.

If the information age scares you about what they can collect about you, then go back to using a land line, and snail mail and unplug... otherwise, use an anonymizer, and other general PERSEC precautions and realize that you are a market research target. 

[Evergreen]

Everything you do or write on the web is there forever..  If it scares you, you shouldn't use the web... I too have worried about this, but I know with a little research and ingenuity there are workarounds to this problem.  I have not implemented them as of yet, but I may feel inclined to do so, eventually.

My thoughts are, if you are scared of google collecting information, then just use a proxy server that will block your IP from registering on google's servers.  When using a proxy, the connection to google will be via the proxy.  FOr example, if your proxy is in India, you will be brought to Google India page.  A lot of proxies are slow, but you can find a good one and some you can pay to use.   I just find google to be the best search engine, despite all the other so-called competitors.  However, I don't think you are safe using any search engine, web forum, social networking site, etc.

[DCR]

All this talk about proxy servers is going over my head, but I get the idea I think:  go through some site that anonymizes you somehow first, then go to google?

Could someone list some trustworthy (if that's even possible) proxy servers I could try?

Thx..