One normally thinks of Europe as a hotbed of left-leaning governments, more concerned with over-work than their budgets. So, it seems odd to thank them for protecting an old-fashioned American value.
For generations, privacy was expected in the U.S. We had the right to control most information about ourselves and our families. Then, Google came along, and privacy was no longer important to anyone. Or, at least, it was no longer available to anyone. People were so happy to see advertisements targeted to them individually that they surrendered their privacy. Some trade-off!
The Calvary may be the European Union, who is locked into an anti-trust battle with Google, threatening a break-up. Part of the battle is the "right to be forgotten" or the right to withdraw from Google's "data-mining" on every individual. Go E.U. -- beat GOOG !
George Orwell's 1949 classic entitled 1984 described a world where the government watched everything that everybody did. Who knew that it would be a giant tech company instead? Raise your hand if you think the government doesn't have access to the private details of your life that Google collects.
My grandson will never know the concept of privacy or why it was even important. Sad!
For now, I'll just paraphrase John Kennedy's famous 1963 speech in Berlin . . . ich bin ein European!
For generations, privacy was expected in the U.S. We had the right to control most information about ourselves and our families. Then, Google came along, and privacy was no longer important to anyone. Or, at least, it was no longer available to anyone. People were so happy to see advertisements targeted to them individually that they surrendered their privacy. Some trade-off!
The Calvary may be the European Union, who is locked into an anti-trust battle with Google, threatening a break-up. Part of the battle is the "right to be forgotten" or the right to withdraw from Google's "data-mining" on every individual. Go E.U. -- beat GOOG !
George Orwell's 1949 classic entitled 1984 described a world where the government watched everything that everybody did. Who knew that it would be a giant tech company instead? Raise your hand if you think the government doesn't have access to the private details of your life that Google collects.
My grandson will never know the concept of privacy or why it was even important. Sad!
For now, I'll just paraphrase John Kennedy's famous 1963 speech in Berlin . . . ich bin ein European!
