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Jaiku Bought By Google, Some Fear Privacy Issues

Posted by Zonk on Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:53 AM
from the you-could-always-not-participate dept.
Businesses Google Privacy The Internet
Platonic writes "According to the New York Times, Google's recent purchase of Jaiku, a little-known micro-blog service (think Twitter) might raise privacy concerns due to the automated nature of the web site's services. From the article: "The deal, announced this month, has much of the tech-tracking blogosphere abuzz. Some claim it is the harbinger of a new, truly interconnected world, where a chunk of our existence will migrate online ... Chris Messina, an open-source entrepreneur and founder of the consulting firm Citizen Agency, takes it a step further. In a blog post after the Jaiku deal was announced, he said that he envisioned a world where all information had migrated online, where the address book "lives in Googleland,"'"
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Submission: Jaiku bought by Google, raising Privacy Issues by Anonymous Coward
[+] Developers: JaikuEngine Gets Open Sourced 41 comments
volume4 writes "The switch has been flipped and Jaiku has been moved to App Engine. Google will no longer be developing Jaiku, so the code and the future of Jaiku is in the hands of the open source community. From the Jaiku blog: 'Today, we are open sourcing the Jaiku code base under the Apache License 2.0. The code is available as JaikuEngine on Google Code Project Hosting as of now. Anyone can set up and run their own JaikuEngine instance on Google App Engine.'" We discussed Google's purchase of Jaiku in 2007, and their subsequent decision to halt development a few months ago.
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Jaiku Bought By Google, Some Fear Privacy Issues 50 Comments More /

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  • I can see the point of people concerned about privacy. However, I think the kind of service discussed in the article, a sort of address book 2.0, sounds pretty cool. Its something I would probably go for if I had a life. And as for the privacy deal, there's nothing forcing people to use this kind of service.

    • And as for the privacy deal, there's nothing forcing people to use this kind of service.

      If 90% of the people in the world are constantly updating the site with where they are and who they're with, the site will almost always have your location whether you sign up for it or not.

      If 90% of the people in the world are a part of the service that degrades their privacy, the reasonable expectation of privacy gets lowered, and people start thinking that you have something to hide. It's an idiosyncrasy until it's a cop that gets that suspicion.

      On the other hand, if 90% of the people in this wor

  • I can see it now... I need that address I saved to google to send that document to that important client but- uh-oh! 404! I love the internet! I'm so glad I migrated all of my personal information to Google!
  • If Google bought my company I'd tell everyone to migrate their whole lives to Google, too.

  • Do your part, don't use Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:04PM (#21087319) Homepage
    More space for me. On a more serious note, don't put things online if you don't want the world to know. Better yet, assume everything transfered via the internet is world readable (444)
    • Truer words haven't been spoken (nor written) about the internet. After all, the company you trust today may wind up in the hands of Google tomorrow...

    • Re:Do your part, don't use Google (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tppublic (899574) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @01:06PM (#21088363)
      "don't put things online if you don't want the world to know"

      My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove.

      • My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove.
        So true, so true. It mattered little that I guarded my (work) email address like a paranoid, when a "trusted" friend of mine sent a stupid joke email to me. And 70 other people. From Hotmail. (Oh, and our corp spam filter sucks, naturally.)

        *takes off hat and takes a moment of silence, for privacy lost by the carelessness of others*
  • It's a little late to start taking privacy issues with Google...
    • Why do you say that? Google still requires participation from the users or else they'd shrivel up and die. If everyone stopped searching with Google, a large portion of their revenue would disappear instantly. If everyone disabled or white-listed javascript, then Google would lose the foothold in third party sites too. It's the nature of the internet that you can do whatever you wish, and you get to determine what happens in your browser. People use Google because they trust them, and if that trust disappea
  • From TFA: "This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing." ... "In practical terms, Jaiku's mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing. ... "

    It has leaked that there are plans to make the use of the service mandatory for US-inhabitants.

    CC.

  • Blogosphere (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theantipop (803016) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:10PM (#21087419)
    Is there a way I can block all stories involving usage of the word blogosphere? I've accepted blog as the hip way to say webpage, but blogosphere takes it a step too far.

    What's next, newspapers are papticles and the news industry becomes the infoknot.?
    • Remember, that sphere is geometrical object which is hollow. So everyone proudly claiming he is part of blogosphere is empty inside.

  • So what? Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by decipher_saint (72686) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:11PM (#21087433) Homepage
    For those who were as baffled as I at first FTA:

    Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, described the service as a "holistic view of a person's life," rather than just short posts. "We extract a lot of information automatically, especially from mobile phones," Mr. Koponen said from Mountain View, Calif., where the company is being integrated into Google. "This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing."

    So this tool automatically gathers little scraps of information about a user and draws lines between what it thinks are logical connections (like any good tinfoil hat aficionado might do in a dank basement) into some sort of tag cloud for that user. Ostensibly the use is used by applications as a sort of "stuff about you" repository, so maybe in one application you set your default home address as something when you go to use an application that requires your home address it could dip into that repository and insert it for you.

    The pro: It's like having an assistant
    The con: It's like having an assistant who works for the FBI

  • YRO Ad Libs! (Score:5, Funny)

    by R2.0 (532027) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:12PM (#21087453)
    _________ (random company)bought by Google, ____________ (some random blogger) fears _______________ (some wild ass speculation).
    • I wanna play! Microsoft (random company)bought by Google, tinfoiljoe(some random blogger) fears Armaggeddon (some wild ass speculation).
  • See Google reliance on Mozilla [slashdot.org]. They're using open source software and net standards as a way of warring against Microsoft, Sun and Apple. Soon they will own just about anything, so we the consumers should make a decision now about how much of our data we want Google to be able to correlate from the many different sources (search, blogs, micro-blogs, cloud OS, chat) it has at its disposal, and can reveal to law enforcement agencies.
    • That decision is actually fairly easy to do. Just don't put it online. If you don't want people to know about it, don't make it publicly accessible.
    • Ok.

      All of it?

      Phew, that was easy.

      Seriously though, omnipotance is only scary when it's one way. If the government knows everything about me, but I also know everything about them, I really don't need to fear them.

      90% of the things people are worried over the world finding out about them are things that 90% of the world shares in common with them. And the remaining 10% of the things people are worried over others knowing about them are easily overlooked when you know the 10% of everyone else as well.

  • Weak article. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kebes (861706) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:14PM (#21087509) Journal
    I usually avoid commenting on how bad an article is, but TFA was frustratingly fluffy. I had to read halfway through before even having a vague idea what the company in question actually does. To save others the trouble, allow me to condense the article down into only the meaningful sentences:

    Google [acquired] Jaiku, a small Finnish start-up active in the obscure field of microblogging ... Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, [said] "We extract ... information automatically, especially from mobile phones" ... In practical terms, Jaiku's mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing. ... a live diary, constantly updated so that we can see, on our cellphones, where our contacts are and what they are doing.
    And the worry is, apparently, that this kind of live updating information (via mobile devices) will be an invasion of privacy. Of course it will be. But, people will learn what intrusions they are willing to tolerate, and take it from there. Take Facebook as an example: many people put all kinds of personal details on their profile. Others set their privacy settings quite high, so only their closest friends can see anything. Others don't use Facebook at all. At the end of the day, users will simply activate features to the extent that they find them useful. A close-knit group of friends might quite enjoy keeping track of each other so that they can meet up at a concert. Privacy-conscious people will disable all those features, of course. Most people will learn enough about the interface to activate/deactivate these features as desired.

    I understand the danger of having a single company (Google in this case) having easy access to comprehensive data about your life (location, email records, search habits, etc.). And I firmly believe that people need to educate themselves about the dangers of releasing too much personal information. But I fail to see how this recent Google acquisition is cause for great concern. Mobile devices are increasingly useful. So are social networking tools. Merging the two is an obvious next step, and a step that Google is taking.
  • 1. Google buys some somethin' or other. 2. OMG!!! It threatens your privacy. 3. ??? 4. Profit!

  • Jaiku haiku (Score:3, Funny)

    by benhocking (724439) <benjaminhocking@ya h o o . com> on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:36PM (#21087835) Homepage Journal
    Jaiku, blogger site Once alone, now of Google Privacy, evil

  • Chris Messina Rebuttal To NY Times (Score:4, Informative)

    by mmurphy000 (556983) on Tuesday October 23 2007, @12:38PM (#21087869)

    Here is Chris Messina's blog entry [factoryjoe.com] on his inclusion in the NY Times piece.

    In a nutshell, he doesn't like the NY Times' headline.

    So, to put it simply, there are no "new" privacy issues raised by Google's acquisition of Jaiku; it's simply the same old ones over and over again that we seem unable to deal with in any kind of open dialogue in the mainstream press.
  • Remember the uproar from the PIII chip serial numbers? How about the GPS tracking enabled in phones? We didn't even know what they had planned but the fact they existed and could potentially be used to track us was enough to foster consumer action that eventually made it possible to at least disable them. Granted in those cases the fact we had no way of disabling it was an important aspect but my point is that we had issue with it in principle. Unfortunately over the years I've noticed a decrease in hea
  • The idea of Google or Facebook pulling data from my mobile phone and adding it to some on-line profile seems a bit much, although really it's a small and logical step from what places like Facebook do already.

    If anyone can pull this off it will be Google precisely because despite some bad press the vast majority of people outside of Slashdot still trust the company to "do no evil."

    As we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.whatever, companies will increasingly need to be able ensure that user data is both respe
  • even without concerns for misuse, it's a question of informed consent && a free market for the value of your personal data. Google's self-proclaimed goal of collecting all the world's information is possibly monopolostic and in its economic interest to reduce the percieved value of that information to you.

    For example, in exchange for datamining your search and placing highly valuable tagetted ads, Google et. al. gives you free websearch. People get this, and agree to it-- but its probably not so muc
  • Actually, Google bought two mobility sites: Jaiku and Zingku [baheyeldin.com], not just one.

    This may be in anticipation of the launch of the gPhone, rumored to be launched end of this year.
    • Next time she asks you to go down on her, say "I will be right back."

      Come back with a clothespin on your nose and say "Here goes nuthin'..."
    • and why exactly shouldn't people fear losing their privacy?
      • Are you saying you value privacy. What are YOU hiding?
      • Since when is the fact that a person is terribly dull and fully uninteresting considered private information?
        • Your response has nothing to do with the parent's comment. Before entering a discussion, it might be good idea for you to de-ass your head. The air is great out here, and people won't have to yell so loud to reach your ears.
          • I would say that to you, it had a lot to do with the previous post. Which is far more than I can say about your trolling.

            I don't personally care when my own friends go to the bank, the grocery store or the laundromat. If the place is robbed while they are there that is interesting, and worrisome as well. Since they are my friends, I would care if they found some sort of new food to try or if they figured out a time when the laundromat is more convenient, but mainly because I know these people.

            Microblogging
            • Read the parent fucking post, numbnuts.


              "It is unfortunate that it is human nature to fear losing privacy"


              Where do you see a reference to "microblogging" in that? The ONLY thing that sentence states is that it's unfortunate for people to fear losing their privacy, and THAT is what I took issue with.


              Again, read the parent fucking post, and stop making tangential arguments.

      • That way you wouldn't have to take any measures to stop others from knowing your private stuff.
        However, we value our privacy, so care about big broogle.
    • It's actually very fortunate. Privacy is something that I value highly, and yet sometimes I don't mind losing it (I wouldn't mind every one of these posts coming back to my employer, etc). Fighting the loss of privacy will help keep the loss of privacy in check so that, when we reach an equilibrium with the internet, when the change isn't so great, we can sit back and see that we've struck a good balance between public information and the ability to keep things private, for instance, which porn sites we sub
        • You say that one thing we might wish to keep private is which porn sits we subscribe to. I say the reason one might want to keep such a thing private is very indirect. You aren't worried that others will you look at porn or porn of type $(?). You are worried that there will be a societal backlash. The problem is that society doesn't accept common thoughts and behavior as normal. The problem is not that you are losing your privacy. Privacy in and of itself has no value.

          Porn is really prevalent with men and s
        • I agree that you didn't deserve that down moderation, and I didn't mean to imply that was the only one. I was using it as an example, like hiding a surprise party from your significant other or hiding your whereabouts from a stalker. Besides, even if society should change (which is another argument), it's not going to any time in the near future.

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