How Google knows everything about you
By Michael Field- Fairfax Media Saturday, 08 November 2008


Google knows just about everything about you – even if, in the unlikely event, you've never used their search engine.
Google's strongest international critic, in Auckland yesterday, warned it is the "biggest detective agency that ever existed".
Professor Hermann Maurer, chairman of Graz University's Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media in Austria, told Fairfax Media that Google is so good at collecting information it violated data protection laws in countries like New Zealand.

A research team he led argued that Google created unacceptable monopolies in many areas of the worldwide web.
He found around 61 billion internet searches are conducted each month.
In the United States, on average 57 per cent of searches are conducted with Google, and up to 95 per cent of internet users use Google sometimes.
"It is dangerous enough that a single entity such as Google is dominant as a search engine," the study said.
Speaking at Auckland University's Business School Professor Maurer said Google's search engine were not the problem as such, but rather the way they linked the up to 50 Google applications. He said the United States based company had teams of people and software constantly analysing content, including what is in Gmail.
"Its not the search engine as such, it's the fact that they can put together lots of information from various services. It is from this that they have lots of information about you."
People did not need to even use Google products to give themselves away.
A product, Google Analytics, is installed on internet service providers (ISPs) and everyone who uses them is recognised and the information is passed onto Google.
Read the full report at Stuff.Co.online.