"In other words, that is a good description of how things have been and
are now but not what could be. The privacy implications of "looking
through their collection of data" are profound, particularly for things
one doesn't intend to publish (which would distinguish editing Wikipedia
articles from searching Wikipedia articles) which could very well be
done more privately than it is today (as I explain elsewhere in this
thread). This change in how searching is done places searching more
squarely in the realm of service as a software substitute (SaaSS)."
It does not.
You can't browse through a search engines database with your own computer
only. Therefore, it is not software as a service substitute.
Just because something is bad for privacy, it's not immediately SaaSS.
There's a specific definition for this term, and it refers to services that
do some job you could do on your own computer if you had the right piece of
free software.
The central topic here is control and freedom;
sure, connecting to websites raises all kinds of privacy issues and we should
take care of them.
But let's not get confused with terms.
