April 21st, 2005
cool but
Via Tom at Inter Alia I see that Google now has a means of allowing you to track all of your searches (as long as you are logged in, which shouldn’t be a problem if you have a Gmail account).
I think this is a really cool feature. I can log in from any computer and retrieve any search I’ve done in the past.
Except for one little problem.
When I’m using Safari and I command-click on a link, it won’t open in a new tab. I can right click and select the “Open Link in New Tab” option, but otherwise, it just loads in the same window. That is mightly sucky, particularly on my laptop, where I don’t always have a mouse plugged in and rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts.
comments
Beyond its uncooperative behavior w/Safari I’m having trouble seeing how the benefits of this new feature outweigh the risks. I can’t think of a time I wanted/needed to remember a search I did in the past — if I do a search and find what I was looking for, I either bookmark it or otherwise save the info I find, precisely so I won’t need to do the search again. So where’s the value? And the risk is just that this information will be subpoenaed when users get prosecuted for crimes.
Actually, there are times I do a search, find what I want and go away happy, only to come back three weeks later and try and find the same site (because I really only bookmark sites I visit regularly) but I can’t remember the exact search terms I used.
You are right that this could be a tool for law enforcement that could further undermine individual rights, but so could many technological tools we have. Your personal computer can be searched just as easily as your Google account.