Leave Google Behind

No, this is not an April Fool's joke:

In the wake of Facebook’s F8 conference this week, where it apparently bid to become the new Sheriff of the Internet, Facebook’s plans to effectively put ’social’ into the very structure of the Web has a few people a little concerned.

The main issue is that there are concerns that Facebook, by default, now opts you in to allowing third party sites like Yelp to ‘personalise’ your experience, and there are questions about how much information is given away.

The result is that lots of geeks are considering leaving Facebook, and perhaps even more interestingly, veritable droves of Google software engineers are among them.

Maybe those engineers should consider finding another place to work in addition to decamping from the world's largest social network. The Monster of Mountain View is far more invasive and pervasive than Facebook, with its array of spyware-laden products and services. Most people have no idea that they're being tracked by Google Adsense and Google Analytics as they surf the Web. Adsense and Analytics are embedded into so many websites now that it's become more unusual to stumble across a website without them than one with them.

Facebook is merely following in Google's footsteps. That doesn't excuse the company's behavior, but it's clear who their bad role model is.

The engineers deactivating Facebook accounts as a user privacy protests aren't the only hypocrites working at Google. A few years ago, the Monster of Mountain View blacklisted CNET for publishing a story in which it demonstrated how easy it was to find information about a person by using Google. The person CNET chose to be its example?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is evidently obsessed with his own privacy whilst not caring that his company invades the privacy of millions of people.