Privacy and Google

Last week, San Francisco-based News.com started putting a short note at the end of its stories on Google: ``Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.''

Yes, Google can pry in to very personal information that is available on the web. And yes, political contributions *are* public knowledge. Most will agree that is a good thing. Perhaps the agencies that publish that information should not publish home addresses and telephone numbers though. Sorry Eric, being a billionaire has its draw backs. Kudos to Elinor Mills for making her point so well in a July 14th article on News.com. Just as I raised concerns about Google in the enterprise there are lots of concerns with Google in the Universe. But ones that have to be overcome as we enter this era of universal access to all known (or published) information.