Google and Your Privacy

Filed in archive Business Trends on June 20, 2007

Google's mission statement reads: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Fair enough. It's unofficial motto made famous is that "You can make money without doing evil."

But Google collects untold reams of data about us and our intentions through search. And now they are acquiring DoubleClick, which is the dominant vendor in the business of ad serving and has many tentacles associated with behavior targeting. So is it any wonder that Privacy advocates see a contradiction in the do no evil pledge?

But don't worry, in a PR announcement that does any spin-meister proud, Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, says "As a leading company" being the focus of the privacy and patent law debates is "an appropriate role for us to play." Say what?!? No Peter, that is not what we wanted to hear from the do no evil company. What we really wanted to hear was that you would do no evil and declare our private data belongs to us!

Alas, that pollyannish view will never come to pass. So what is Google prepared to do for us? Google attorney Nicole Wong gives us a hint: "Patchwork regulation is confusing for consumers because they don't know which privacy regulations should apply in different situations." Further, the company hopes to unify Web legislation across various governments.

So there you have it. Google is fighting tirelessly to save us from too many regulatory bodies. Perhaps the company came to this high-moral standard after getting tired from bending over for the Chinese. Come to think of it, that sounds like what the insurance industry wants to do, and the tobacco industry, and the automobile industry, ... You get the point.