Why Google Just Bought a Company That Snoops on Your Chats
Found on Wired on Wednesday, 06 August 2014
Emu has built a system that can monitor chats, infer what people are talking about, and insert relevant links—including ads.
Google, meanwhile, isn’t just interested in chats; the company has said that it may eventually show ads on internet-connected home devices, such as thermostats.
Though Emu could help Google smartphone users, it is also poised to further erode their privacy, putting one-on-one communication under centralized monitoring by a third party.
The big players are beginning to infiltrate a market which has been hidden from them so far. IM chats have been useless for them until now; and they don't like that. So the next step is to stick to open source applications without any monitoring, tracking and snooping abilities. Some of them even hide the metadata. Add in end to end encryption and your chats are what they should be: private.