FSFLA/ blogs/ lxo/ Discussion/ 2010-02-14-bye-bye-google.en

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This is Alexandre Oliva's personal blog, that does not necessarily represent the opinions held by FSFLA, LibrePlanet-BR, AdaCore or any other organization the author may be or may have been associated with, or even by myself, as of now or ever.

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Comments for 2010-02-14-bye-bye-google.en

Hey, great step forward !

Join us in #autonomo.us :)

-- kristianpaul, Sun Feb 14 13:43:17 2010

I've listened the whole Eric Schmidt interview, and the part you mention was was taken out of context to create eye-catching news. You are mistaken and misleading when you repost that on your blog.

They were talking about the government requiring access to user data for law enforcement. If you take a look at the history, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo!, Google does take all the legal actions possible to protect the user data. I'm sure you have heard about Google denying the US government access to user data. And there was also the problem with the Chinese attack where Google stepped up to protect its users.

Here is a post from another user whose opinion I share: "Having listened the the interview, it looks to me like the interview was intentionally cut to pull this statement out of context. It looks like Schmidt was merely suggesting that the reality of the current situation is that information you post online can be viewed fairly easily by law enforcement. In fact, service providers are even legally required to retain identifying information for a minimum period to help law enforcement in some places (such as here, in the Netherlands); so Schmidt's statement strikes me as merely being a colloquially expressed common sense opinion that's been taken out of context.

It's a real shame that the poor journalism underlying this is being rewarded with such attention; I think you should remove the link to their site and explain the nuance and lack of context they provide. No need to boost their ad-revenue for posting inflammatory (witness the many comments), misleading content."

-- Anonymous, Sun Feb 14 15:54:26 2010

Regarding Buzz, yes, that was a mistake and Google recognized that was not what users wanted. See Millions of Buzz users, and improvements based on your feedback and A new Buzz start-up experience based on your feedback.

And because it was a mistake and because Google values its users' privacy, it worked really fast to fix those issues. Not many people have worked on a service that is used by millions and millions of people, and that touches many different complex applications. Buzz is a huge complex system and you should be amazed by Google's effort and efficiency in fixing those issues within a day.

Seriously, you are not safer using open source/free alternatives. The other day I had my username, password, credit card number and personal information stolen from the Mozilla store (see store.mozilla.org/faq). What about that for protecting users privacy? I don't see why PSL-Brasil would be any better.

-- Anonymous, Sun Feb 14 16:09:43 2010

When I first saw your blog post, I was very disappointed about your decision, the reasons for that and the way you were trying to convince other people to do the same. Given what I've written in the previous comments, I hope you can now reconsider your action and take a more informed decision. If you decide to keep your account, or open a new one, you will want to check out the Google Dashboard. The idea of the dashboard is to allow the users know and manage all the personal information Google has about them. It is a very useful tool for privacy-conscious users like you.

-- Anonymous, Sun Feb 14 16:30:55 2010

Oi Oliva! Aqui eh o Claus. Obrigado pelo e-mail, e muito interessante o seu blog post.

Pra ser sincero, eu tambem estava pensando em "Romper com o Google", faz alguns meses, mas por razoes completamente diferentes. O fato eh que, depois de ter meu e-mail no IC cancelado, e varios outros e-mails que eu fui perdendo com o tempo, a quantidade de informacoes que eu perderei, se um dia o gmail fechar suas portas por qualquer motivo, eh muito grande.

Por outro lado ainda nao sei exatamente com o que eu posso substitui-lo. Mesmo meus computadores pessoais mudam com uma frequencia desagradavel para o objetivo de arquivo.

Mas o seu blog levantou um outro ponto saliente que eh capaz de fazer eu mover a minha bunda para tomar uma atitude um pouco mais rapido :-)

Um grande abraco, e vamos manter contato!

-- Claus, Sun Feb 14 16:36:32 2010