DISQUS

Thriving competition indeed. Unfortunately Erick's statement that "Microsoft killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer" perpetuates the myth the regulators are scared about in the first place.

Microsoft didn't kill Netscape. Netscape killed Netscape by thinking they could throw out their code base and start over; resulting in them being unable to respond in time to changes in the browser market.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000...

Maybe Monster will file a cease and desist on coat hangers next: http://consumerist.com/362926/do-coat-hangers-s...

It seems to me that google is glossing over the implications of having a cookie by simply admitting that they collect it.

Google is no longer just a search engine, but a service provider (email, documents, checkout, domain management), and each of these services require varying degrees of your personal information. Gmail for example requires your cell phone number (for verification), and obviously has your email address; while checkout requires your address and bank account information.

What non-technologists might not realize, is that all of these services use the same cookie that google collects whenever you perform a search query. Therefore, this seemingly harmless cookie google mentions, can actually be used to link your search queries to all of the other personal information google knows about you whenever you perform a query on a machine where you have also been logged in to one of google's myriad of other services. For some perspective, see http://google.com/searchhistory

I'm not trying to imply that google has devious motives for linking all this information together; in fact, by being able to do so, they are able to provide a personally tailored service, with more relevant search results.

I do however think that this thinly veiled disclosure on the information that google collects when you perform a search query can be misleading when viewed in two narrow of a context.