This morning, +Karol Dziedzic notified me that I have “really sexy e-fans.” It turns out, +Sassi BoB from AuthorityLabs made a video on a story I wrote at Search Engine Land named Wikipedia Releases Search Data To Public But Pulls It After Privacy Concerns.
In short, the story was about how Wikipedia decided to release anonymized search data to the public as a way to share and be open. The issue was, anonymized search data (as we learned from AOL) is not so anonymous. Most people who search, eventually search their own name and thus, if you can track search history by unique IP, you can technically back track who the searcher is and what they searched for. Read the outcome of AOL’s issue with the NY Times Searcher No. 4417749.
That being said, Sassi BoB argued, in a really good looking way, that since you searched at Wikipedia, you gave that search history to Wikipedia and if Wikipedia wants to give it away, they can. Screw privacy, because you used that search box on Wikipedia. I’d love to see how that would fly with Google.
Watch her argument:
Not a bad argument, right?
