A look back in time

Via Crooked Timber, I became aware of this pretty cool thing.

As people probably know, Google turned 10 years recently, and as part of that celebration, they've made available their oldest index, from 2001. So, now you can see how many hits you got on a search subject back in 2001 compared to now.

Google anno 2001

If I search on my name (in quotation marks), I get 4 hits back in 2001, compared to more than 4,000 hits now.

A search on "pz myers" (with quotes) returned 296 hits back in 2001, compared with the present 229,000 hits.

Searching on "google" resulted in astonishing 3,780,000 hits in 2001, but that dwarfs in comparison with the current 2,910,000,000 hits.

Google supports equal rights to marriage

Currently there is a campaign in California to ban homosexual marriage. This is sought done through a proposition, proposition 8, which the Californian voters will vote on. You can read more about proposition 8 at Wikipedia.

Unsurprisingly, I am against that measure. Unfortunately, my opinion doesn't carry much weight among Californian voters. But perhaps Google's opinion will?

Google has come out officially in opposition to proposition 8.

It would be easy for a company like Google to just keep quiet on issues like gay marriage, so I am impressed that Google come out for equality.

Google takes steps to protect privacy

Wired brings an AP story of how Google is working on protecting searchers' privacy: Google to Adopt New Privacy Measures

Google Inc. is adopting new privacy measures to make it more difficult to connect online search requests with the people making them - a thorny issue that provoked a showdown with the U.S. government last year.

This sounds good, but don't assume that your weird searches on how to build nuclear weapons are safe from the authorities just yet.

Google believes it can provide more assurances of privacy by removing key pieces of identifying information from its system every 18 to 24 months. The timetable is designed to comply with a hodgepodge of laws around the world that dictate how long search engines are supposed to retain user information.

Authorities still could demand to review personal information before Google purges it or take legal action seeking to force the company to keep the data beyond the new time limits.

While it's not as good as many of us could probably wish for, it's a step in the right direction, and probably as much as we could hope for, given the current laws.