Google and privacy issues

The famous internet search engine name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number represented by 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1995. Larry, a 22 years University of Michigan graduate and Sergey, 21 years, both had a first meeting at Stanford. It is said that they both disagreed on almost every matter in the first meeting.
Page and Brin write in their original paper on PageRank: “We chose our system’s name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol and fits well with our goal of building very large-scale search engines.” Both agreed on a new name, “Google”, which is a pun on the word “googol”, reflects their mission to organise a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
Google is criticised for possible misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others’ “intellectual property”, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people’s privacy, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as antitrust, monopoly, and restraint of trade. Much of the criticism pertains to issues that have not yet been addressed by cyber law.
With so much applications (apps) and services in diverse areas, Google has emerged as a giant in its field. With its growth it has shown its monopoly, its grip on resources and hence abused the power. There are many legal cases relating to monopoly, privacy concerns and much more. As regards to privacy concerns, it seems that Google is unaware of the privacy rights of the people. You can guess it by few incidents.
A Chinese writer Mian Mian filed a lawsuit against the company, for scanning her entire novel without notifying her or paying her for copyright permission, in December 2009.
Google’s page ranking algorithm can and has been manipulated for political and humorous reasons. To check it, Google Watch implemented a “Google bomb” by linking the phrase “out-of-touch executives” to Google’s own page on its corporate management. The attempt was mistakenly attributed to disgruntled Google employees by The New York Times, which later printed a correction.
During 2006–2010 Google Street view camera cars collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of unencrypted public and private Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries. No disclosures nor privacy policy was given to those affected, nor to the owners of the Wi-Fi stations.
In spite of all these lawsuits and hurdles, google has managed to stay on top and in a dominant position. Still it remains a big threat to many competitors, internet companies and even the governments. One should learn from the methodology of google, its diversification, its innovation and involving the world public in common tasks and retaining ownership and all such tactics. But after learning one should not forget to play fair, after all “Pride hath a fall”. Google also failed and flawed at many stages. We hope to learn and get a positive lesson, to spread knowledge, practice in a way beneficial and valuable to the society.