As much as I love Google products, and use them daily, here is a perky brick to the ethical head. The following quote is from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the current CNBC Google Blockbuster.
If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.
When Google was founded in 1998, the company hung its proverbial hat on telling the world that they would be successful without mucking things up in the process. Specifically, number six in the company’s own manifesto:
6. You can make money without doing evil.
This is all well and good until, for example, you’re a global titan with $12 billion and change in the bank, competing for telcom spectrum in an industry as messed up as wireless. What’s that they say about laying down with dogs?
I have lots and lots of problems with the quote, but the crux of my issue with Schmidt’s position here is that it would appear the company’s position operates on the assumption that there is no need for privacy in a world in which you are not actually doing evil. I don’t so much care how Eric treats his own private life, but that he would deem to umbrella my own personal feelings on the matter with his is more than a touch unnerving.
That Google, and others, complies with the current state of the law by invading ones privacy is one thing. It’s generally unpalatable, but not surprising. But that this same distaste for individual privacy advocacy has apparently taken hold at the highest levels of a company we historically have trusted with so much of our collective should be enough to trigger a second or third look at just what we’re storing in the Google cloud.
For that information, head over to your Google Dashboard. This is a new tool from the company designed to give you a snapshot of just how much information you’ve volunteered to share; from Gmail to Voice to Docs to Analytics and more, you’ll see everything that Google sees as belonging to inescapable you.
But that’s only half the story. There appear to be some open questions about just what Google knows about you that doesn’t pop up on the dashboard. And those are the questions we must continue to push, in the tide of the changing face of Google.
