I installed Google accelerator and on a pretty active day's surfing it saved me 8 minutes.

The 8 minutes came in dribs and drabs of a second here and a second there; 8 minutes as one chunk would have been worth it but the accelerator didn't really accelerate much for me. I uninstalled it.

For that meagre saving, Google got all my click-stream for that day's surfing. Like the Google toolbar, the accelerator has access to pretty much all the unencrypted data that went through my browser that day including email addresses entered into forms and the like. It seems to me that the Accelerator is the free crack that gets users to give up large amounts of very personal data in the guise of speeding up their surfing experience. This data can be used in a variety of ways, most obviously to make Google's advertising more relevant. For some it may be a fair trade, but for me my data is more valuable than 480 seconds of time saved in a onesy-twosy way.

I guess Google is trying to see how far it can get with pushing the envelope of "do no evil"; spyware disguised as a web accelerator seems to be on ragged edge.

Current Mood: awake