sublime1 - 5:49 pm on Jun 10, 2007 (gmt 0)

Wait. Please.

Before leaping on Google, has everyone actually read the report? Here's the [privacyinternational.org...] summary by Privacy International, with a link to the "interim rankings" [privacyinternational.org]. The report condemns Google's privacy policies, as well as some others'.

However, the report is about policies, not specific actions that have affected the privacy of anyone: it makes no allegation that I could see about how the data has actually been used in a bad way.

I have no judgment about Privacy International. They seem to be authentic, and clearly they feel strongly about their mission. The tone of their presentations is about on the same plane as GreenPeace, whose motives I strongly support, but whose practices are on the radical end of the spectrum. I have no problem with this kind of approach, except to note that a mainstay of the approach is to generate publicity. Remember GreenPeace guys in rubber rafts disrupting whalers? Publicity works, and what better way to generate publicity than Privacy International's report condemning Google?

But let's assume the report does point out a number of cases where Google's practices are not in line with Privacy International's high standards.

So now we all leap on Google. They have been exposed as the evil company we all knew they must be all along. Our worst fears are confirmed. "Do no evil" -- ha! Isn't that what we're saying in this thread?

Why do we do this as a society -- a predictable pattern of beating down those at the top?

IBM was beaten down by the throngs, to the benefit of Microsoft (and with their help). Then the crowds beat down Microsoft, to the benefit of many, including Apple and especially Google (and with their help). Now we're beating down Google, and even Apple (and their evil iPod battery conspiracy).

I guess this is how we are as a species. Maybe it's a valid survival instinct.

Believe me, I am not an apologist for any of these companies. To a lesser or greater degree all failed in one way or another. The biggest failing was foolhardy bravado, notably Gates and Ballmer. All I have seen from Google at this point is suspicion, righteos indignation, but also several rather surprising positive signs that they may not be as bad as most corporations.

Perhaps this is the way we keep competition alive? But it comes in these absurd waves: at first a company can do nothing wrong; they grow to be bigger than we're comfortable with (through our own actions); then they can do nothing right. In no case is the problem as extreme as we are lead to believe (they are not that good, and probably not that bad, although I'll exclude oil companies and cigarette companies from this broad characterization :-).

Now the crowd has, predictably, turned upon Google.

Does Google have an incredible amount of data and an even more incredible ability to relate that data (which is their true power)? Yes -- they do. They are a very smart and well managed company. Perhaps it is true that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". Maybe I am just naive.

But I have to believe that somehow Google as a company is smarter than this -- smarter and more motivated to be a force of good, if only because being seen as a force of bad is a sure and swift cause of corporate death. A prerequisite of today's profit motive requires the perception of goodness (it hasn't always been this way, by any means).

How the mighty are fallen.

Google's most obvious "sin", like any of the others upon whom the madding crowd turned before, is to have risen to the top of the heap, thus making them the most obvious and easiest target.

Yes, they have grown at an astonishing rate. And undoubtedly they need to focus on how they safeguard their assets and less on growing. To the degree that this kind of report helps them understand the urgency of such a change in focus, it's a good thing.

But no one has said that Google has done anything wrong, as far as I can see in the information on the report.

Now, the true vultures will start picking away at what Google could have become: the lawyers. The only difference between them and vultures is that vultures wait until the body is dead. How come that's ok?

Ok, I'm done now. Tear me a new one.