Big brother google

Brian Zhang Larsen — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:51:51 +0000

I just had a rather scaring experience with the big all Seeing Eye of Google. The Google search history has existed for a while, and probably much longer as a hidden amusement tool for Google employees. This tool must really say a lot about a person. In fact I think this tool, can easily say more about a person than the content of a mail box, or a bank transaction list. Even more than a IRL trashcan.

With this tool, it makes it possible to almost reexperince nostalgic moments, when you desperately tried to find some information for a blog post, or for some damn compiler problem on your fresh linux install. Somehow my data is only available for a little more than a year, and as I relive my search history I see a whole of master thesis relevant searches. These searches are often interuptet by some definitely NOT thesis relevant searches like “chuck norris” or the more dramatic “how to remove water from the ear”. Oh yes, I remember that trauma. The tool also compiles lists of top sites, queries and clicks. I an walking the self exposing line and reveals my top sites here:

Top sites
1. en.wikipedia.org
2. www.google.com
3. www.flickr.com
4. dev.mysql.com
5. www.microsoft.com
6. www.imdb.com
7. www.php.net
8. www.experts-exchange.com
9. www.w3schools.com
10. rpmfind.net

I think it is an impression on the top sites visited from Google, or sites that appeared as top in my searches, and not my actual visits, even though it might be very similar. Even though the placement of google itself seems weird. Actual visits can only be tracked by Google, if I use the Google toolbar, which I don’t, or by Google analytics. But the latter might conflict with certain laws.

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Big brother google