Google's phoney privacy promises

Google corporate motto

Google has announced that it has appointed a Directory of Privacy and is going to have better privacy controls in future.  Link

This has come after the WiFi data collection fiasco and criticism from several governments.

Google employees are going to get privacy training and have to sign a Code of Conduct.

The company's new found concern with privacy all sounds phoney. Their entire business model is based on privacy violations. They sell targeted advertising. The more targeted it is, the more they can charge. They can only make their advertising more targeted by collecting as much user data as they can.

It is hard to believe that Google cares at all about privacy when Eric Schmidt, their CEO, has repeatedly made remarks which are contemptuous and dismissive of privacy concerns. For example, 'If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place'.

As long as Schmidt remains as CEO I cannot see anybody seriously believing that the company really cares about the privacy of their users. An organisations culture comes from the top.

The end result of carrying on as they are will be that EU governments will impose sanctions and privacy controls that will really hurt Google's bottom line.

Then they will start to care about privacy.

p.s.

And here it comes.



Links

Time for a new Google CEO