Week 12

. .I did a search for an article discussing Google and Privacy. I thought about the words “Google” and “Privacy”. I threw in the word, “virus” as an added filter after the initial search because I am starting to see/think that maybe “Google” is a getting bigger than anyone outside of that company first thought. I then decided to search with the LexisNexis search tool. The reason for it may be obvious, the rest of the possible selections have the preface “Google” all over the entitlement, and so I would think it prudent to try to use what I believe the most unbiased search tool. The search leads me to an article discussing the new “Flu Trends” program developed by Google. The article I found was written by Seth Finkelstein, which was published through “The Guardian” on November 27th, 2008. The format is New Times Roman and in “*.Doc” format. The article is not even a month old, so I think it is fairly new information.
. .The article discusses how “Google” is head and shoulders above the competition in finding trends of people; their track record with Yahoo and Microsoft goes far back. The article goes into the fact that Google has produced a program to sift out searching trends for virus’s and flu’s, to essentially stop an outbreak from happening to the masses with the use of this added technology. The article states that “Harnessing Google’s ability to do extensive real-time monitoring of the search activity of millions of users . . .” This is the ultimate situation staring at me, for somebody or something to have the power to synthesize massive amounts of information and tell what is going to happen and have your history to cross reference that info. It gives me the impression that this should be a Governmental Program and not something bought and sold on the flexible Stock Market.
. .The article has its own merit; the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) which is a privacy group, said of Google’s “Flu Trends”, "Historically, identification through aggregated data has been subject to abuse . . . Therefore, automatic, permanent, one-way anonymisation of such information is necessary." telling of possible biasness regarding the topic in discussion. This denotes possible plans Google may have in store for its own future. Google is setting it-self up to be governmental in its own way, the writer says the “techniques developed to find interests for advertisers are being repurposed” to find outbreaks of disease. It looks like they are vying for a governmental contract.
. .I believe the writer is objectionable and tells the facts they are, but the questions and statements he says are enlightening. The writer says “While people's health concerns should be certainly be treated as confidential, what's being done here is to find methods for automated mass observation.” Leading too “This is even more worrisome when one considers the implications for electronic health records, an area where Google has been very active - whoever gets to be a standard computerization technology provider for the health industry will make a fortunes.”
. .Google is just showing off its skills, letting everyone be put on point that Google is someone to reckon with if not look up too. In very short time, it has take Google very little time to make itself a target of other companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft, and this article does nothing to change that thinking, if fact, it hardens my view on them because it may want to get into the healthcare aspects of governmental works. Healthcare is big business; elections are made and lost over it. Cutting downtime and procedure, as the governmental Medicare system is slow and occasionally unresponsive through my own personal experiences, to then hand it over to a public company is not the best route. If anybody is going to control it, it should be the government. But in these days of internet savvy company’s could this be ancient thinking.