Scroogled (2007)

You can tell this is from 2007 because Google employees are obsessing about what Yahoo! are doing. Today, it would be Facebook.

Of course, the potential (but improbable) implications of up-voting this story should not be lost on anyone.

I guess this is minor, but why does it say 1997 in the title? I can't find the year anywhere in the story or in these comments.

If 1984 were written today, I believe it would read a lot like this. However this one reads remarkably like reality. Good story Mr. Doctorow.

This story is also included in the excellent "With a Little Help" collection:<p><a href="http://craphound.com/walh/" rel="nofollow">http://craphound.com/walh/</a><p>The free audio versions of the stories are particularly good.

I like the reference to China, considering Google recently backing out of there due to these sorts of reasons. Makes me wonder if they'd ever consider doing the same in one of their key markets, such as the US.

I didn't read the short story line at the top there, I actually thought this was a real account then. Coming from the UK none of this applies to the UK so I wouldn't have heard about this initiative if any of it was true.<p>Good story and could quite easily be true

reminds me of the nine billion names of God: <a href="http://365tomorrows.com/09/12/the-nine-billion-names-of-god/" rel="nofollow">http://365tomorrows.com/09/12/the-nine-billion-names-of-god/</a>

Of course, the irony of this being hosted on that site is that using Scroogle primarily would result on a suspiciously light Google profile, which would most definitively get yourself marked for further investigation. After all, that's the corollary to "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide".

I couldn't help myself from drawing subtile comparison with 1984. And I loved it.

Particularly the bit about probable cause from statistical anomalies. Oh, we don't indiscriminately go through your records, unless you use TOR, in which case what are you hiding?

The suicide bit is cute. Indeed.