Bad Google!

It was just last week that Google launched its new version of the popular desktop search client. The new Google Desktop 3, which is now available for free download at the search giant's web site, has hit a controversy.



According to news reports floating around, the software's new search-across-computers feature could put sensitive data at risk and violate federal data-privacy regulations. Many news web sites suggest that IT administrators at many public universities and large corporates have already banned the software from their networks.

The reason? Google Desktop automatically stores copies of files, for up to a month, on Google servers, in order to let users search across multiple computers for files. Now, that's a hideous feature!

So, why hideous? Because the way the great US of A government is acting up, it could even force Google to turn over the data to the government. According to industry experts, if Google is subpoenaed, it might be forced to turn over personal data, even if the data is stored on Google servers temporarily.

By doing this, your personal data would be compromised in the name of "investigation" by the great US of A! Though the feature is disabled by default, it doesn't solve the problem since all it takes is a single user who is unaware of the ban to turn it on.

That reminds me... I need to uninstall Google Desktop 3 from my machine!