tedster - 1:57 am on Dec 6, 2007 (gmt 0)

Our opinions are not really as polarized as the posts so far might make a reader think we are. I like two of your suggestions for Google very much:

What company policies are in your charter that ensures that data is used for only certain purposes? What company policies are in place that require shareholders votes to change the use of privacy data, etc.

I'm at PubCon right now and last night in the casino I was talking to Matt Cutts about Google and privacy. The current company policy (but it's not in their "Charter" as far as I know) is that they will only cooperate with a court order for a specifically identified, single user/incident, but not with a demand for a range of personal data that extends over many users. In fact, gMail does not automatically disclose the user's IP address. Many other webmail services do that by default.

I also would like to see more explicit and locked-in policies and accountablilty - and even international agreements and treaties (including non-governmental watchdog organizations) about privacy and data collection/use. I just see Google as already further along in this needed direction, and feel that the article's atitude of outrage and fear-mongering is not helpful. Even the headline and the url keywords are over the top.

Twenty five years ago I was in direct marketing and catalog sales. Ever then, the amount of personally identifiable private data that could be owned for a few dollars was enough to make me quite concerned. There IS a big deal here, and we're pretty late to the party. But let's not make a party into a war.