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Google could have put face recognition into the Goggles application; indeed, many users have asked for it. But Google decided against it because smartphones can be used to take pictures of individuals without their knowledge, and a face match could retrieve all kinds of personal information b name, occupation, address, workplace.
b It was just too sensitive, and we didnbt want to go there,b said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. b You want to avoid enabling stalker behavior.b
Coming from Google, "not wanting to enable stalker behaviour" is a rich irony indeed. The world's largest and most sophisticated stalker "has concerns"... Yeah. //Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech