Most of you probably use Google every day. At times you may wonder  how much information Google is storing about you and what they do with it.  Google’s  CEO says they do everything they can to protect your privacy and actually delete information that can be associated with individual internet activity every 18 months. You can also opt out of some of their data collection procedures when you sign  up for the particular service. The interview below with Google’s CEO reminded me of one of my favorite articles from grad school - Data Retention and the Panoptic Society: The Social Benefits of Forgetfulness. To learn more about Google’s privacy policy listen the the audio interview below. To get an interesting perspective on the value of privacy in democratic societys, visit the link above.

Have you ever tried Google Books?  It is a powerful tool that lets you search through thousands of books.  You can search for individual words or phrases in a book, read snippets from pages containing your search words, and in some cases you can even read the entire book online!

If you haven’t checked out Google Books yet, now’s the time.  They recently increased their catalog of searchable material by adding magazines.  You can now search through titles like Popular Mechanics, Popular Science,  New York, and many more.

Google settled with publishers over two copyright lawsuits related to its book scanning project. Google will pay 125 million to settle the lawsuits. The settlement also set up an agreement that will share payments for content and advertising among all interested parties. Google Books will also sell subscriptions that allow library patrons to have access to the full text of scanned books. For more information check out the New York Times or Christian Science Monitor.