Reply #3: I don't use Google to search any longer. Here's why.

[AndyA]

I got an E-mail (not a Google account) from a friend one day, who told me they'd run into another friend of ours that neither of us had heard from for some time. They said the friend had a new job, and had moved. I didn't recognize the name of the company, so I searched Bing for it, found the web site, and went to see what the company did.

The company site had no advertising on it, as it was a corporate site, not directed toward the public.

Later, as I was on the Internet I noticed I began to see ads for this company. I had never seen their ads before, and I thought it was strange that they would suddenly pop up everywhere I went. Then a friend who has webmaster connections told me to go back to that company's site and see if they used Google's logging services. They did.

What happened was that Google logged my visit to that site, then started showing me ads based on my visit. Apparently, Google isn't supposed to use the information in this manner, but they very obviously do. Google has way too much power, way too much of the search traffic.

I'm generally not a big corporate supporter, but I've been using Bing because it's the best opportunity to take some market share away from Google. Google seems to be getting dangerous, and I don't like their involvement in the Net Neutrality business. So much for "do not harm." :eyes: