Devious. Sneaky. Underhanded. Those are the words that increasingly come to mind when I consider the "new Web" that's the subject of PC World's December 2007 special issue. What else would you call a world where providers unilaterally change the way their services work without even attempting to notify you, and "terms of service" and "privacy policies" are incomprehensible to anyone but the lawyers who wrote them?
I've long used Google Toolbar for Firefox to track my search history. When Google's Gmail came on the scene, I signed up. Then somewhere along the line, purely by accident, I happened to notice that when I hadn't bothered to log out of Gmail, Google's search results pages (but not the home page) included an item called "Web History." I quickly discovered that this meant Google was keeping track of my personal surfing--not just my searching.
