Escaping Google's Grasp

2006-06-07 Posted at 10:22:05 AM

motd

"The healthiest thing we can do is ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.

Just like we do with the squid."

but first, something completely different

Don't book tickets online. And if you decide not to heed my warning and do so anyway, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT use expedia.ca, or more specifically, yahoo travel.

I booked my flight to germany recently with yahoo travel. The round trip ticket cost was $566. That is NICE.

Then WHY did i get my tickets $777 later!?

A little thing called the 'yahoo travel fee' is among the many culprits. Yes people, it is more expensive to use expedia from the yahoo site than it is just to use expedia.ca. But wait, there's more.

I live in Canada. Yahoo.ca decided to send in my tickets from the states. I was charged US currency.

There is more, but that is not what this post is about. It's about our other online enemy out there, Google. What's that, you say? You LOVE Google? So do I. But there's a problem.

The Problem With Google

Google is great. There is noo doot aboot it. I'm sure at least 70% of America has Google as their homepage. It loads fast, it finds results. Sweet.

In this way, Google reminds me of Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor. Richard was THE fisherman. Without him, everyone else would starve. So, even though he was a jerk and walked around naked all the time, they kept him around. To the rest of the tribe, there was no alternative.

And look what happened. He won. And now he is in prison for not paying taxes on his winnings. Think about it.

Google is THE search engine. Without it, everyone else would starve, bouncing around the internet blindly without direction. Even though Google is slimey with privacy issues, we keep it around. To the majority, there is no alternative.

Last year I had a computer studies professor that would not touch Google with a ten foot pole. He used Altavista as a search engine. (By the way, Altavista has an image search as well, but also an audio search and a video search.)

Ok, there are a lot of search engines out there. Some, like Altavista, are comparable to Google. But what about Gmail!? How can we live without Gmail!?

The truth is, Gmail is the scariest part of Google. I stopped using it when i realized that there was a possibility of someone reading my emails. That opens doors to the possibility of identity theft. It only takes one person who is fed up with their job at Google and wants to become someone else.

Gmail IS the best web-based email that I have come across. But why limit yourself to web-based? Why have your emails stored on someone else's computer?

You could use the free email account that probably came with your ISP. Use thunderbird (not outlook express. please do not use outlook express, you are better off using google).

The only way for true privacy is to pay for it. And it's not that expensive. Domain names have gone down in price since the 90's.

For instance, you can register 'gavinisageek.com' for about $6 USD (yes, I am not yahoo, I TOLD you it was USD) per year. You can set up a server on your computer, or pay for one to be set up. Get your local geek to set one up on your computer.

That way, you can have gavin@gavinisageek.com as your email address. The emails would go straight to your computer, instead of someone else's.

If that is too hard or expensive for you, stick with your ISP email. I would rather have my email in sympatico's hands than in google's.

And the truth is, there are people that will not email people who have Gmail accounts. I do, but I am very careful about what I say.

projects

Currently I am working on fixing up a guitar. Pictures will be coming soon. I bought a $100 craptar from the music store. It didn't even work. I took it apart and started sanding down and painting the neck and body. I will finish it up and put it back together. So far it looks sweet.

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