Gadgetory

while speaking of controversy not just over Green Mountain but over another g Google its latest attempt to break into the world of social networking now it recently updated what it calls its social circle networking tool now what this does if you have a gmail account it allows you to view the names and social connections of complete strangers and it is automatic you don't need to sign up for it is social circle and invasion of privacy or as Google simply connecting dots providing a service it's valuable to users and you do on your own another way or if they didn't someone else would do it instead Noah Kravitz is editor-at-large for TechnoBuffalo Michael furtick is CEO of reputation.com and an expert on internet security now let me start with you could you just explain in very simple English and what social circle does an example of what it would do sure errands so um you know as you said google has sort of been rolling out these tools for a while and and their latest update to their social tool is social search which basically lets you and this is where you actually do have choice in the matter if you're signed in to your Google account you can choose to connect other social networking accounts so Twitter Flickr which is a photo-sharing service coro which is kind of a question-and-answer sort of crowdsource knowledge database product and if you were signed in and you and I were connected and you did a search for say awesome bald guys in your search results you might get back you know an article with a little tag underneath it that said Noah Kravitz tweeted about this yesterday or that sort of thing so it's it's kind of connecting the dots like you said but blending it into what Google does best which is search results okay all right so I mean so it's not just in other words your friend but friends of friends who know your friends suddenly know what you said and all of a sudden you people can see some of the privacy concerns I guess Michael I mean but but Google's point would be this is good someone's going to connect these dots or the individual person could find this on their own so they're not doing anything that violates privacy do you buy it well I'll tell has had some form of social search since 2009 they're really trying to chase Facebook's tail and so they are still letting people opt into the searchability so if you have a Google profile you can link in different parts of your social profiles you can do kind of choose in a sense right yeah you can choose i think that google's on the risk of the precipice of a big risk however so so Google the evil the evil step child version of this story would be if Google actually opted everybody in to the Machine by doing a broad search of the web using their massive index to connect the dots so that you know the people at work now know that you're a big Trekkie or people at work now know that you're into some kind of extracurricular activity you don't have to be enough yes but that's that has not happened yet and so so they got a big knock down from the FTC over the google buzz a few months ago they seem to have step back from that precipice to be a little bit more careful right now we reached out to the FTC which did did obviously come after them on google buzz FTC did not did not give us a response google did which will which will put up on the screen but Noah how is this really different then google buzz which the FTC had a problem with are we now looking at this latest functionality being something that the FTC will also put the clamps on well you know FTC aside google buzz was a massive fail in in the public so you know it doesn't really matter but no i mean i think i think what you know what you said was a big if and and the key here is there's responsibility on the user's end as well you know basically anytime you sign up for a service a lot of times or if you get a new product if you activate a google android smartphone for that matter you are linking accounts you are linking account to potentially depending on how much you share over share online a lot of personal information but you always have to opt in and people need to be a little bit more careful you know obviously the company should get a whole you know rain in the 50-page terms of services people are trying to read on a three inch screen but the users have to be more careful about what they're signing up for what they're opting into and especially what they're sharing online michael is this is this just the way the world is going to go though I mean if not Google then fill in the blank right there is just not gonna be any privacy out there so so this is what worries me you're exactly right what worries me is that we are sacrificing I think our privacy I think that this is a moment to actually recognize that Google has done something that could threaten our privacy but actually has given us the option to opt in they have not opted us in by default a lot of the social networking sites including the most famous ones have been opting us in by default or kind of course sort of tricking us into opting in and Google is actually giving us an option here I want everyone to understand though that if you do opt into this different parts of your life that you had no idea we're going to be connected will now be connected for anyone to see Google is still giving us the option on this case and we should reckon we should applaud that in this case all right well gentlemen thank you very much