Techs-on-Call Computer Blog

Google just announced that they are going to run fiber optic cables to people's homes and offer internet service. The plan is 1 gigabits per second internet, which is much faster than what most internet providers can offer. For examples, most high speed internet connections range from 1.5 megabits per sercond to 15 megabits per second. Even Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse, which both deliver cable TV over the internet, isn't that fast. Neither is the city of Wilson's Greenlight internet. Google's internet is 1 gigabit, or 1000 megabits, per second.

Is this a good idea? In my opinion, no. First, those who do everything do nothing well. Google is branching out too far from its roots, and as result they cannot focus. I still use Google for my search because I can always find what I need faster on Google. Which is related to me my second objection: Google isn't doing this to help America. The official blog post may sound like they are, but Google is a for-profit company. And Google profits off data-mining, which tracking what people do on the internet. Do you really want to give a company whose main source of income is data mining control on how you access the internet? I don't. You would be naive to think Google will not find some way to monitor the behavoir of the people who use their service and sell it to advertisers. I would rather have a slower internet than a monitored internet.

On March 5, 2009 Microsoft unveiled Internet Explorer 8 and it featured an option called InPrivate browsing. On July 1, 2009, Mozilla released FireFox 3.5 which also featured an option just like InPrivate browsing but they simply call it private browsing. Google's Chrome browser also has this, but calls it Incognito mode. However, they all received the idea from Apple's Safari browser which had this feature for a long time. These features allow you to browse the internet but when you are done, all traces of your browsing are deleted.

Are you really completely private when you use these browser settings? No. Even though for most people private browsing is good enough, it does not mask the data to and from the internet. Furthermore, once the private browsing session terminates, the history and cache is not securely deleted. And nothing is going to stop monitoring programs installed on your computers. (Note: there are legal monitoring programs and this is not spyware.)

While private browsing does have benefits, you should not rely on it make you anonymous. The methods to make you anonymous are much difficult. Furthermore, private browsing does not protect you against security exploits.

Just imagine if every web page you ever visited was monitored. The monitoring program is done by a for-profit business that wants to sell user behavior to advertisers and marketing firms. Although no personal information is actively collected, the monitoring program does collect your IP address. The whole system is not actively monitored but uses a program to analyze your browsing habits in real-time. Then as you browse the internet, you will be given advertisements based on your entire browsing history. All of this is done with your internet provider at the source, so opting out is very difficult. Of course, if you just happen to give your personal information to an unsecured website, it will be in the database. Employees at the for-profit business are not likely to actively try to get your personal information. Still, the less than ethical might try and hackers would love that information. With personal information, a hacker can personalize a con or break personal passwords since people quite often use passwords that are related something personal.

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