Google: From "Do no evil" to -ick-

by David Spark on June 12, 2007

The company that everyone loved is slowly starting to creep everyone out thanks to a combination of recent events:

  • Google’s “I caught you picking your nose” Street View
  • We’ll get around to filtering your copyrighted content on YouTube when we feel like it
  • Did we mention we’re storing your search information and sharing it with our other services.

All these concerns have culminated into an eye-opening recent report from London-based Privacy International which rated them the worst in terms of privacy concerns among 22 companies which included Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo! Whoah. Wasn’t this the company that was originally branded with the moniker “Do no evil”? What happened?

Don’t get all excited. Until this week, I had never heard of Privacy International. Had you? Why the hell should you or I trust them? Regardless, their claims essentially cause us all to reflect on what Google is doing. And what they’re doing is collecting an amazing information about all of us through search and matching it with their other services we also use (IM, maps, and email).

Individually, none of these issues are upsetting us, but it’s the combination that’s easing at-home stalking. Stalking has been around before, but it’s never been so easy. It’s like when the record industry got upset about Napster. Yes, they were used to people selling illegal copies of their music, but those were criminals and you had to think like a criminal to do it. When Napster came out it, it made stealing easy and you didn’t have to think like a criminal to do it.

CNET has a really good article about “Google Creep” and the Washington Post has a good piece about the alleged privacy issues.

Google has a post about how long search information should be retained.

ReadWriteWeb wants us all to try to go the entire day today without using Google. Too bad I’ve already blown it writing this very post.

  1. Firefox 2.0. Veeker. Google Custom Search.
  2. Daily Motion squeezes YouTube. Google Answers, doesn’t. Yahoo! rebuffs Google’s advances.
  3. Naming your child? Consult baby name books and Google
  4. Google says don’t fear us, fear the government. Men who play BINGO are pansies.
  5. Scary Yahoo! videos. Bush and "The Google." Google lawsuits.
  • http://www.pjk.net pjk

    I don’t have so much of a problem with specialized companies tracking my usage in order to deliver more targeted content or services, i.e. Amazon’s “if you liked this…” emails.

    I do have a problem with a macro-company like Google tracking literally everything, but remaining mum on what exactly the intention is. This is why I only use Google Mail when I know I’m going to get spammed – like AOL mail, I never actually check the inbox. If someone were to read the contents of these inboxes, they would deduce that I was looking for low interest rate mortgages and choked down Viagra by the handful. This is why I run my own private mail server, shared with no one.

    Some things are simply not made better by having a third party run the service.

  • Pingback: The New Privacy Protection Policy of Google

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