Written by: Sairash Sharma Gautam - 21118, Grade XII
Posted on: 17 September, 2020
Google as of now is a potential threat to our privacy. Google, LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. It began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. But now it may be one of the greatest threats towards our privacy and data.
As Google is so much involved in our life that we can’t even think of a life without it. Now, Let me explain to those who are thinking it is not involved in my life. You use Android that’s by Google, you want to surf the internet you use google chrome, you want to search something you use google search, as of now, I am using google docs in google chrome listening to a podcast on youtube. Now if we have a private company so close to us it is sure to use that closeness to their advantage to get more fortune.
Have you noticed that the ads you see on Google, YouTube and even Facebook are so much optimized and most of the time it shows ads of your last google search or your last website visit? To these private companies which are free to use they need a stable flow of money and that is not possible as they are free so we are trading our information and lifestyle.
I got the information about my data and privacy which is not with me and is with a private company. I hate that so I now wanted to get off on my own where I am the master of my data and privacy and while thinking how I was going to achieve it I came up with the first move to use windows phone instead of android. Which is a little back in development in terms of hardware and software but is way developed in keeping my privacy and data with me. Next, I changed the browser which blocks all the cross-site trackers and other creepy stuff on the internet and is faster than google chrome. Because of which I am 40% more private than others not doing the same thing. Now, I wanted to step up the game and I didn’t want google as my main search engine provider so I started searching for other options and was convinced with some but was not totally ready to entrust them. Now, I was in trouble but I am not a quitting kind of person so now, I wanted to use my 5 years of programming experience to use and make my own search engine which respects privacy ( basically what I wanted a search engine to be like ) and uses three servers before it reaches the end-user, this will makes data so private that you, your router and your internet provider are the only ones able to get that data. I am making it right now and it will also probably be one of the first search engines made in Nepal, it is nowhere to be completed. It can just show search results right now and if the amount of requests is increased to the server it freaks out and gives one search result which is hilarious to watch, my server crying doesn’t do this to me.
I named it Khoji or also known as Khoji hera and after it is complete I will be 90% more private on the internet. Go to Khoji to see what it can do right now. You will be able to use Khoji hera after it is out at Khoji. And the other 10% out of 100 is something that we don’t have the power to control yet. But I know one day we will be completely private and our data will be our own, none of theirs.
