Just another innovation by Google.
 

There should be a little 'New!' button in the toolbar, and when you click on it, it takes you to here:
http://toolbar.google.com/dc/aboutdc.html

Distributed computing a new thing? No, it's not. But by putting it in the very common toolbar that I imagine a LOT of people have, it brings the idle computer time from all these people's computers together, who have probably never heard about projects like SETI@Home.

What do you guys think of this? I think it's a wicked idea. They are always coming up with something new... Fantastic company.

:thumbsup

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Pretty cool, huh?

Where is the button?

About goggle using DC: it´s not so new, there was some talking about that a few months ago in other boards.
I remember there was some discussion about privacy. Google Compute adheres to Google´s Toolbar privacy policy, and this one itself is not very clear.
If you install the toolbar, Google tries to install a 30 year cookie at (in, on,?) your machine (yes, 30 years); this cookie stores all the searches you do using google. What do they do with that info? nobody knows, but google says that their TOS authorize them to collect that info. Something similar probably happens to those installing DC.

The page I showed above has a link to the FAQ, and it states to specifically read the part on privacy: http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html#privsec1

I personally couldn't give a rat's ass what google does with knowledge of my searching. It's something you can turn off for the google toolbar, anyway. It's an option that you must select before it is ever installed - so there is no way that it would be doing it without your knowledge. Google didn't become the best search engine out there by treating the surfer badly...

Thanks, Juge. I thought that Collin was talking about something else.
About the privacy: as I said, there was some good discussion about that in other boards. Besides the privacy itself (I respect your opinions, but I wouldn´t like anyone knowing what I am searching for), people were speaking about how google could use that info to optmize their algo against webmaster optimization tricks (yes, G is supposed to treat surfers well, but we are webmasters, aren´t we?).

But I think that this discussion belong to other boards.

Thanks again:thumbsup

Oh, ha ha, I thought you were talking about the google toolbar button, not Colin's button. I was kind of wondering what button Colin was talking about, myself. :)

Re: Privacy, I respect that people do not want anyone to know what they are searching for, and I am pretty sure that google has an option to turn this off. The option is displayed when you install the toolbar, and have to specifically click 'yes' or 'no'. Perhaps this is just for sending webpages that you visit, and not the actual search - I cannot remember, now. It's one or the other or both...

Btw, we can discuss anything at GFY. :)