Ok, I know a lot of people simply love Google. One of them is my wife, she thinks just about everything that Google does is cool and hype. Well, I guess she is not alone.
Personally I start to become very sensitive to a company that starts buying more and more companies and does not only try to control the Internet, but is actually controlling the behavior of people and thus how they use the internet. People might argue that Microsoft is bad and evil, but I feel more evil towards Google and I think Google will have more power over you then any Microsoft you can think off.
Just the other day, the Washington Post published this article about how Google has the worst privacy practices of all Internet companies. Just think a second what that means. Google is the largest Internet company that collects millions of data every day, but has the worst security practices! Sure, free tools and services are nice, but the trade off is that all privacy is lost? Call me paranoid, but I just don’t like it.
So, what to do?
For Search:
It is no secret, but I have been looking for a replacement of a good search engine in the past. I do not like the way how Google searches and shows me trillions of results, anyway. The other week I stumbled upon Mahalo. Mahalo is by itself not only a search engine, but the results are hand picked (!) and the results are a combined view of other information to the found results. Sort of like Google and Wikipedia together, plus if Mahalo does not find anything you will find the Google results at the bottom. Me thinks, this is a very good concept.
For eMail:
Well, there are plenty of good eMail services out there, if you really want to use such a service. But then on the other hand it has become fairly cheap to have a virtual server setup and run your own mail server. You don’t need to worry about any space and about privacy issues in any way.
Desktop Search:
Simply put, just don’t use Google Desktop. There are other tools out there, that do the job as well, if not even better. As an example there is a Swiss based company called Svizzer that have a very good desktop search engine or the Oracle Enterprise Search Engine (admitted this is more target for enterprises then private usage).
Last but not least. Install a FireWall on your machine, but one that does not only guards against incoming traffic but also one that watches all your outgoing traffic. You will be surprised how much you reveal to the world every day.
Anyhow, all I actually wanna say is that one should not believe the hype but think for yourself!
