Search engine privacy

In the most recent reading I did for my COM430Z class entitled “The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets Web 2.0” by Michael Zimmer, discusses the ever so prevalent issue of privacy on the internet. According to Zimmer, search engines are on a quest to create personalized search results for each and every user. They do this in several ways. Zimmer states that these search engines such as Google and Yahoo! are using the latest user friendly Web 2.0 technologies, such as Facebook or Flickr, to compile information on each person. This craze is being referred to as Search 2.0. In Search 2.0, Zimmer says that perfect recall is used to track and monitor one’s history and the commonly searched topics you’ve looked for. The sites use resources such as you’re “… IP addresses, cookie ID, date and time, search results…” (p.3) to personalize your results leading to the user to be more likely to return to this particular search engine in the future, therefore leading to the search engine to charge more for targeted paid advertisements on their sites.

Although search engines are ultimately using Search 2.0 to better each user’s experience, the whole thing is a little frightening. The article talks about a case where a man’s emails that he thought were deleted, and search results were demanded in a court, and it was found that he searched for murder methods. Is that considered hard enough evidence to charge someone? I think the scariest thing about this whole phenomenon is that most people aren’t even aware that it exists. I learned about it for the first time last year in a course I was taking on computers, and I have to admit, I was disturbed. Something is literally tracking you, and that information can possibly be used against you at some point, when you didn’t even knowingly give it up. The whole idea of personalized search results does help to narrow ones search when there are millions of things out there on the World Wide Web, but at what cost is it affective. People should be made more aware of it. Maybe there could be a disclaimer when you enter the site, or when you set up your accounts. People should have options.


Zimmer, Michael. (2008). The externalities of search2.0: The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets Web 2.0. First Monday, 13.Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/inde.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944.