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Germany Warns Users To Stay Away From Google Chrome
Vertical Search News Source: http://mashable.com
Published: Sep 08, 2008 - 02:22 pm
Story Found By: NickWilsdon 1716 Days ago
Category: Vertical Search
Germany’s Office for Information Security (BSI) is advising users to steer clear of Google’s brand new beta, citing privacy fears. Germany’s oldest and perhaps biggest prime time news channel "Tagesschau" are carrying the story.
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from NickWilsdon 1716 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Europe did it to Microsoft, can they hit Google on the same antitrust charges? The US search giant would seem to be sailing close to the wind on this definition of abuse.Second, firms in a dominant position may not abuse that position (Article 82 of the EC Treaty). This is for example the case for predatory pricing aiming at eliminating competitors from the market.Since 1 May 2004, all national competition authorities are also empowered to apply fully the provisions of the Treaty in order to ensure that competition is not distorted or restricted.

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from NickWilsdon 1716 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Philipp Lenssen @ Google Blogoscoped is also covering the story. This looks really bad for Google. Prime-time headline news with a picture of Google Chrome and an official warning to stay away from the browser. 

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from IncrediBILL 1716 Days ago #
Votes: -4

Well Germany does have some history of people trying to take over the world so they should know.However, their security warnings are silly because using Google’s browser isn’t much worse than the world installing the Google toolbar on other browsers.Maybe they should warn against the millions of Google toolbars installed too?Silly Germans...

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from NickWilsdon 1715 Days ago #
Votes: 0

There are some good comments on Philipp’s blog - namely this one from Christoph Francke - who’s translating the German news.AFAIK the key objection is to a unique user identifier that is generated during installation and is used as a permanent quasi cookie for any communication with Google.com. Also it is critizised that the software installs in data directories and can be installed without privileges (*). @Matt Cutts: The objection to the unique identifier was the same with MS Office years ago and the public outcry was MUCH louder. Few people here so far understand that GOOG keeps 2% of the communication between Omnibox and Google.com – which is tagged with the unique user identifier. Thus RIAA, police, NSA can use that (when given access by the courts) and will be able to identify a certain number of people as shown in the AOL case.European countries cannot leave their citizens’ privacy to US courts. If you want to run your business in the EU you better deal with it – MSFT did. If not: stay in the bay area.Interesting. Also interesting is seeing Matt pushing IE8 as being more dangerous in relation to privacy.If we want to talk about actual (as opposed to perceived) danger to privacy, I believe IE8b2 is more of a risk--see my comments about the "Suggested Sites" feature of IE8b2.I guess it’s good to see MS dragged into this conversation too. I’d feel much happier about privacy if the major players are competing on this point. This maybe a key advantage to everyone in Google entering the market.

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from onreact 1715 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Matt Cutts better shut up those "conspiracy theorists" (as he called privacy advocates) over at the German government ;-)Maybe the US public is oblivious to privacy after 9/11 but some people still care.

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from Gab 1715 Days ago #
Votes: 1

And now, Tad, I’m finding the comments more facile :(.

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from dthurman 1715 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@onreact, most of the US public does care about privacy, sadly it’s government and big brother corporations that seem to not care about our privacy. But I do think Cutts is starting to show some stress related actions...

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from Reggy 1715 Days ago #
Votes: 1

@dthurman, And our privacy will continue to be stripped away until we stand up to them, that said google is just doing bussiness building themselves out. Hopefully they will follow their montra "Don’t be evil".

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from mjwalshe 1714 Days ago #
Votes: 0

privacy fears sighif they had said don’t use it because it stores paswords in the clear i could understand it but FFS Gmail and hotmail have for more privacy implications than a browser.Why is it when dealing with the internet some Europeans just don’t seem to get it i remember our guy when went to Europe to try and drum up interest in .coop  there was a lot of resistance to it as they seemed to think the internet was some capitalist plot. Though my cynical side thinks I wonder if there is any connection between the boards of certain German Auto  manufacturers and the BSI and posibly the german tv channels who might have an exe to grind 

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