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Monday, October 06, 2003
Google Has Fun; Alarmists Sound Alarms
Google has revealed that it is tracking the number of searches performed by a subset of users, and displaying the number on the Google home page.
Predictably, alarmists think this is Big Brother at it again. But, I hardly think of Google as Big Brother. If Google is doing this, you can bet it's for some good reason. In the New York Times article linked above, Marissa Mayer explains that this is an experiment to show people how often they use Google.
No doubt Google is doing this to gauge reaction for some other purpose, like, maybe power users are asked to pay a small fee to use Google, or something of that nature, in exchange for more advanced features. But, no one knows what their goal is yet, and they're not divulging anything at this point. Still, many searchers are eager to see further innovation by search engines, and perhaps this is a precursor to some cool new feature. Even if it's just for fun, you can bet that Google isn't doing this as part of some Patriot Act regulation!
Posted by
Cory Kleinschmidt
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