The numerous reactions which I have received from readers of my book or visitors to my website have shown me that my goal to stir Intenet users up and to trigger a discussion, has been achieved, even if discerning and sometimes disdainful (possibly steered?) voices have arisen in a few blogs and forums. But I reckoned that a Reischl-Bashing might happen (as stated in the introduction) “No one should dare to speak up or write against the most popular Internet company of the world. Or he will feel the anger in the forums of the web.”

The publisher has just requested me to update the book, because a fourth edition will be printed. I will amend and correct quite a few things, which were not known before the deadline of the first edition.

Thank you all for the many motivating emails…

Slowly even the Google stock holders are beginning to realize that the “cool” company has quite a few things to catch up on regarding data protection and privacy, and that Google has some enormous deficits in its attitude toward censorship and human rights. At the upcoming stockholders meeting on the 8th of May these topics are on the agenda. The “Googlers” will most probably not deal with these questions for a long period of time and will push the topics aside as fast as possible – as the agenda proves. I recommend that those who still think Google is a “good company, which does no evil” should read the “2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders Notice of the Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement”.

The New Yorker Office of the Comptroller of New York City and the monastery “St. Scholastica” have proposed, that Google should oppose censorship, support the right for freedom of opinion and press, and should no longer store user data.

Here are the claims in detail:
1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.
2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.
3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.
4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.
5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.
6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

And here is the answer/recommendation by the Google Directors:
Recommendation: Our board of directors recommends a vote AGAINST the stockholder proposal.

In the next proposal (5) Harrington Investments makes a claim for a human rights committee.
Board Committee on Human Rights. There is established a Board Committee on Human Rights, which is created and authorized to review the implications of company policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, for the human rights of individuals in the US and worldwide…

The proposed Bylaw would establish a Board Committee on Human Rights which would review and make policy recommendations regarding human rights issues raised by the company’s activities and policies. We believe the proposed Board Committee on Human Rights could be an effective mechanism for addressing the human rights implications of the company’s activities and policies as they emerge anywhere in the world. In defining “human rights,” proponents suggest that the committee could use the US Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as nonbinding benchmark or reference documents.

This is the answer/recommendation of the Google directors to the shareholders:
Recommendation: Our board of directors recommends a vote AGAINST the stockholder proposal.

This is really a “cool” company. Isn’t its motto “Don’t be evil?” Much more pressure should be put upon this company – even from the EU. If it is possible to force Microsoft to pay fines, it must be possible to ask Google for concessions.

Today I got a very special E-Mail, attached with a photo…

(translated) Dear Mr. Reischl - also in the far away Dubai people are reading Gerald Reischl. Attached a small dokumentation. The pic is for your use. Greetings from Doha.Yours Hans B. PS: Conclusio - incredible, how people are mutating to marionettes…

I wasnt only happy about the pic, I was very happy about the conclusion…

Google is brilliant in deceiving und disguising. This was clearly demonstrated by the “hot” 700 MHz auctions in the USA when Google did not make a winning bid. Yet what should look like defeat is actually a victory. Everyone was convinced that the company would bid an outrageously huge amount – but it was only willing to bid 4.71 billion Dollars, and thereby letting Verizon win with 4.74 billion. I think this move was a rigged bid, especially if you consider that CEO Eric Schmidt helped define the auction rules for the US regulatory authority Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Google requested free access for devices and service providers, to which FCC-boss Kevin J. Martin gave in (I wonder why?). Eric Schmidt’s demands were part of the auction tender: The network must be open to every service provider and any number of devices and software may be used. According to AFP, Google gave the following first follow-up: “although Google did not place a winning bid, it was an important victory for the American consumer”. Even though Google did not receive the frequency-licenses, it is allowed to use the network and run its services over it.

I think it is an intrusion into everyone’s privacy that search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Live! collect and analyze personal data for the (sole?) purpose of marketing. I strongly oppose User-Tracking, User-Analysis and User-Predication – all elements omnipresent in Google’s service. And I am not alone - an increasing number of users oppose this type of espionage that powerful and populous Internet-companies use (against us).

But now opposition can also be felt in the US. In the New York Times, Richard L. Brodsky, democratic delegate in the New York Senate, demanded legislation that would prevent Internet-companies like Google & Co. to collect data from its users without their knowing. The users should/must know what information is collected about them or should be able to prevent Google from tracking them down. Brodsky also considers the targeted ads to be alarming.

That is also my request: tell us what personal data is saved about us! Stop your data-collection fervidness! And the legislation should not only be implemented in New York, but worldwide. Brodsky’s demand is a hot potato that most certainly will be targeted by the lobbyists of all big Internet companies affected. Their core capital - information on hundreds of millions of users worldwide - used for marketing purposes is at stake. This essential component of their business could be destroyed. The complete article is available in the New York Times. Opposition against Google is beginning to form.

I hope this is just the beginning.

New York Times ein Gesetz, das Internet-Firmen wie Google & Co. verbieten soll, nicht mehr ohne Wissen des Nutzers willkürlich Daten zu sammeln. Die Nutzer sollen/müssen wissen, was über sie gesammelt wird oder sollen Google & Co. verbieten können, sie zu verfolgen. Brodsky stuft vor allem die „zielgerichtete Werbung“ als bedenklich ein.Das ist genau auch meine Forderung: Sagt uns, welche Daten ihr von uns gespeichert habt! Stoppt eure Datensammelleidenschaft! Das Gesetz soll nicht nur in New York, sondern US-weit gelten. Brodskys Forderung ist jedenfalls ein heißes Eisen, das die Lobbyisting der betroffenen Internetfirmen mit Garantie zu verhindern versuchen, denn damit würde man ihnen ihr Kapital - Informationen über hunderte Millionen Nutzer, die man braucht, um Marketing und zielgerichtete Werbung im Web zu betreiben -, wegnehmen. Den gesamten Artikel gibt’s auf der New York Times. Es formiert sich Widerstand gegen die Methoden von Google & Co.Ich hoffe, dass das erst der Anfang ist.

The great thing about web-statistics-software, available to a “normal” user, is, that one can not only determine the number of visitors to your website, but also the locations where the website was opened. In the past days I have discovered that there is a lot of traffic in the San Jose and Mountain View region (maybe from the Googleplex?). Apparently the website googlefalle.com is on Google’s watch list… But I will facilitate their investigations: next week the English version of googlefalle.com will be online.

Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick is not yet completely accepted. On the 11th of March 2008, the EU-Commission gave its approval to the deal, yet Google may still face unexpected problems. Doubleclick acquired the company Performics in 2004 – a so-called SEO – Search Engine Optimizer.

Performics sells tips and tricks on how to be placed in a prominent position on search engine results. An irreconcilable situation.
Even Danny Sullivan, the world’s greatest expert on search engines, believes this. He published an open letter to Google on his web portal, Searchengineland, to sell Performics. To be precise, this means that Google sells tips on how to be placed high up on the results of its own search engine. An unethical situation that should be of concern to everyone: this is almost as if an antivirus-software-company would create and circulate viruses and Trojans, that could be identified and eradicated only by its own software…

I wonder if the EU-commission was aware of Performics…

I have a little “bon mot” regarding the book-writing phase… Google’s spokesperson for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, continuously asked what the title of the book will be … I always pretended that I wasn’t sure yet… Until he called me mid-February 2008 (!) and said he had “already found out two weeks ago” what the title of the book will be. I secretly smiled to myself - the title “The Google-Trap” was published on Amazon since December… he should have googled… ;-)

„The Google-Trap“ is now available in book- and online stores. The past weeks were tiring, as recent developments have kept my editor and me busy – Google is in the news almost every day. Various chapters had to be modified/updated (for example the recent Micrsoft-Yahoo! developments). But now it is done.

Once the book reaches the printing press, one has to wait patiently. The process of printing a book is by no means comparable to a newspaper or magazine that publishes your article within an afternoon or a day. A book takes considerably longer to finalize – it has to be printed, bound, packaged and shipped to both a repository and individual book-stores. The past weeks were exciting – after all, the book was a lot of hard work.
The story of the Google-Trap – I knew that I would use this title right from the beginning (but did not tell my oftentimes inquisitive interviewees) – started in the night of the 21st of March 2007. I sent Thomas Zauner, the Managing Director of the publishing company Ueberreuter, with whom I realized my previous books (including my first work “Im Visier der Datenjäger”), an email with the subject “idea”. The next morning I received the following response:

Dear Gerald, the idea sounds really fascinating! I couldn’t find a comparable book on www.buchhandel.de, even though more than 50 books showed up when searching for the keyword “Google”: a market niche! Didn’t think that we’d find something like that ;-) We have our internal non-fiction conference today: I’ll present your idea and if the others are as enthusiastic about your idea as I am, we will sign the contract tomorrow. Thank you, Thomas

That’s how it started. I got the OK the next day and we met a few days later in the cafeteria of the Kurier, negotiated (there wasn’t much to negotiate) the terms of the contract and agreed on a publication date in the spring of 2008. Three months later, I started with the necessary research, which significantly intensified in September. In total, I worked on the book for nine months, interviewing dozens of people – including Google’s Head of Research, Peter Norvig, Google-Earth and Google-Maps-boss John Hanke, Google’s Global Privacy Council, Peter Fleischer, Yahoo’s CEO, Jerry Yang, Second-Life boss Philip Rosedale, the internationally renown expert Esther Dyson and the world’s greatest search-engine expert Danny Sullivan.

Many are cited in the book, some – especially Xoogler, the term for Ex-Googler – wanted to remain anonymous.
I studied thousands of pages of research papers, statistics, publications and press releases, researched online for weeks and rented an apartment in San Francisco, USA to do some more research and interviews. Almost half of the book was written in San Francisco. It was my goal to debunk the true colors of the search engine and I believe I have successfully completed my mission.