Google's Nonexistent Privacy Problem

By Mike Schuster Feb 10, 2009 12:40 pm

Alarmists cry Big Brother; users laugh.

Questions and concerns over Google's (GOOG) privacy protection have been bandied about since the company first gained its commanding lead in the search-engine wars.

The anxiety intensified with the introduction of Gmail and hit a fever pitch when the Department of Justice demanded a week's worth of search queries - even without a user name attached. And now, with the company's location-aware smartphone on the market, there are some people terrified that Google will somehow turn our user data against us.

Needless to say, the fear is blown completely out of proportion.

On Monday, USA Today printed an article that highlighted the privacy concerns over Google's G1 smartphone and its context-specific ads.

Released in October 2008, the mobile device runs an internet ready, Google-centric operating system, which integrates a user's Google account with the phone's features. Logging into a mobile cloud, the phone syncs the owner's email, contacts, chat messages and calendar events directly to and from their account. (A more refined version called Google Sync can be used on an iPhone (AAPL), Blackberry (RIMM) or Windows Mobile (MSFT) phones.) It's extremely convenient and virtually no different from when the user logs into their account from more than one computer.

However, USA Today thinks this is a huge threat to our privacy.

The article mentions Google's ad-supported search engine and email service, which recognize keywords and provide ads specifically related to each user's data. (So if you email your friend about last week's episode of Lost, a sponsored link might appear directing you to a Lost episode guide.)

The piece also quotes Jeffrey Chester -- executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy -- as saying, "It's like a walking surveillance device." Representative Edward Markey from Massachusetts says, "The Big Brother aspect of it is troubling."

While it's clear these 2 are looking out for the user's best interests - oh, please. It's an automated algorithm that spits out relevant links, that's all. And your information is never made public or seen by human eyes other than your own.

When millions of people already post every aspect of their lives to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr (YHOO), should they really fear software that reads their search queries? Furthermore, would anyone buy a phone specifically designed to take advantage of Google's remote access if they were concerned over the company's so-called "privacy invasion?"

Google survives by an ad-supported business model; for anyone familiar with their services, the ads are hardly intrusive. They're protected by extensive privacy policies so that they're not mishandled or abused. The amounts of data the company stores might give one pause, but so far the benefits of cloud computing far outweigh the supposed dangers.