I have a lot of respect for Simon Davies of Privacy International (PI). So when PI issues research giving Google a "hostile to privacy" rating I take notice.

I have a lot of respect for Matt Cutts of Google. So when he argues that Google takes privacy seriously I take notice.

How to resolve these two positons?

I think the key is in Matt Cutts's counter-argument. He is essentially defending Google by comparing it with common practice on the net. He argues - accurately - that compared with many companies (including your ISP) Google is relatively benign.

PI on the other hand is looking at the absolute picture. The fact that Google is better than industry standard practice doesn't count for much when industry standard practice is so bad.

I take Matt and co at their word when they say they care about privacy. Unfortunately they do so in a world where privacy standards are already very poor. For Google to say "We could be worse" really isn't good enough.

For example Google takes pride in anonymizing user data after 18 months. 18 months?!? 18 days would be more reasonable. No, on second thoughts let's make that 18 minutes.

It says a lot about the appalling state of net privacy that Google take it as read that they can record user searches and associate them via IP address and/or a persistent cookie without the need for user opt-in. Opt in, not out, and not making such an opt-in a prerequisite for using services. If I want the extra facilities Google claims to give me by knowing my search history then I can choose to exchange my privacy for these.

And what about gmail? Ads in gmail are based on an analysis of the content of the email. I know, I know: any email provider, web based or otherwise, has access to the content of your email anyway. That's not the point. The point is that Gmail is giving acceptability to the concept of your personal email being contextually analysed. That sort of thing undermines the larger scale fight for personal privacy to be respected.

Yes, Google stood up to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) when it demanded user query records. Full marks for that. But how many users really understood that Google was collecting that data?

Why is there no big "expunge my personal data" button at the top of the Google home page? Trivial to implement.

Of course most other search engines and other sites fail to provide such a button. There's a question as to whether Google should be held to a higher standard than their competitors. Yes, they should. The reason is that they are bigger, they have more personal user data, they matter. Anything Google does - for better or worse - has a bigger impact than anything most of the rest of the industry does. The same goes for Microsoft.

And it staggers belief that any company claiming to be privacy conscious could roll out Street View.

So I respect those in Google who are fighting the corner for privacy as far as they can. Unfortunately they are in the position of being a well-meaning minority in an industry of sinners. Sinning a little less doesn't make Google a saint.

Google privacy UK politics ukpolitics

Labels: Google, privacy