Why has Google announced a new privacy policy? Does this have anything to do with why Facebook keeps tweaking its privacy policy?
It?s all about the online ads. For both Google and Facebook, more than 90% of revenues come from advertising. The Google ecosystem extends across many more data collection anchors than Facebook, but it is the latter that has been extending its lead in the display ads business, grabbing more market share from both Google and Yahoo. Its youth demographic is obviously one factor that gives Facebook an edge. Google is not going to take this lying down. It?s going to try to convince advertisers it can do better targeting. And what could be more convincing than to say, look at our range of properties. Look, we have YouTube, Gmail (with 350m users compared to Facebook?s 800m), Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google+, Google Wallet, Chrome browser, Android mobile platform, etc. Look, our analytics can cross-reference this database to give you really good targets, aka ?a single user across all our products?? Business owners, be happy. But other users, don?t be unhappy. You already trust us with your emails, photographs, location, appointments, finances, personal idiosyncrasies, movie and music tastes… Now, just trust that we won?t share any of these with outsiders, except in case of a court order. We will just try to help you find that restaurant that you will like, that gym, that job.
And the Google move isn?t really surprising. It has never admitted to the possibility of overkill in communication. Its internal documents have even posited the idea of ?surround search?, where a given search would be followed by targeted ads within 15-20 minutes. Imagine businesses salivating at that kind of timeliness. They just have to make sure that monetisation stays on the right side of the law.
Why is this new policy aggravating some US senators, many consumer groups and many more bloggers?
The senators want to know if Google has just made protecting consumer privacy more complicated, in defiance of the deal that it struck with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a deal similar to one that Facebook has also signed. Google says it has only made things more straightforward, offering users a consolidated privacy policy in place of 60 scattered ones, and without actually collecting any more data than before. Consumer groups and others who have taken offence argue that Google has no business unilaterally thrusting a new policy down everyone?s throats. Oh, last week, they were also ?creeped? out by Facebook pushing Timeline on its members and Twitter declaring that if and when it is required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, it will try to let the user know and clearly mark where the content has been withheld. Maybe some people had forgotten that these endeavours are in the business of profit rather than philanthropy. They have had a hard landing. Ouch.
What about the Right to be Forgotten?
This is what the European Commission has been proposing, a new set of rules to govern online privacy whereby users would gain the ability to pull all their personal data off the internet if they so desired. Failure to do this could get companies fined up to 2% of their global revenue. Along similarly activist lines, the FTC commissioner has proposed a one-stop shop where consumers can gather and correct all the data that has been amassed about them. Doing any of this seems cumbersome, if not impossible, at a time when increasing amounts of personal data?ranging from records about property to marriage?are legally being placed in the public domain. And again, internet companies will lobby back hard. Facebook?s COO has just given a commanding speech about how internet enables economic growth and job creation, while US House hearings are being treated to statistics like the EU?s privacy standards are associated with a 65% decrease in the effectiveness of online advertising. Could that be why there are no European social web start-ups in the same league as Facebook, Twitter and Google? Plus, politicians and regulators face the challenge of contesting a constantly moving target. Technology moves so much faster than them.
Can you circumnavigate Google?s new privacy policy?
Absolutely. Switch to Hotmail. Too hard to break the Gmail habit? Just make sure you aren?t logged into it when surfing the web, scouting YouTube or Google Maps. No log-in, no identity trace. And there?s lots more you can do if you are willing to spend some more time protecting your privacy. You can got to Google?s Ad Preferences page, and limit personalised ads. You can use the Incognito mode on Chrome. You can go to the Dashboard from your main Google Account page, erase your web searches or YouTube history, opt out of sharing Google Wallet information and generally educate yourself about the hows, wheres, whys of what Google knows about you. Take control. The alternative is to just trust Google. Even assuming it?s supremely trustworthy, building up a single point of failure should make you nervous. Remember how hackers dived into Sony?s PlayStation 3 game system last year, walking away with over 12 million credit and debit card numbers. Or into AT&T through a bug in its iPad software, compromising 100,000 customer e-mail addresses. So, irrespective of how much you ponder over privacy, spread that personal and financial data. Across Apple, Amazon, Aol, Google, Facebook et al, all of whom you can be sure are collecting more information about you than you know. Oh, but will you keep track of this spread as well as Google does?
Neo: What is the Matrix? Trinity: The answer is out there, Neo, and it?s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.
The movies have been preparing us for this, a supranet that fuses physical and digital worlds to track us when we sleep or hardly sleep, when we are alone or not, when we sit by our computer or use our cellphone. Shopping, dating, working, voting?the more our life functions move online, the more we desire a more intuitive web experience, a forum that anticipates our dreams and desires. Yet, various surveys have shown that even among consumers who appreciate more targeted advertising, there remains an acute discomfort with the knowledge of being tracked and targeted. Nothing really changed about how Google was operating on January 24, except we were forced to take off our blinkers. This happened when Twitter announced ?the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country?. This didn?t reverse the billion-tweets-every-four-days trend. This will happen again. Neither consumers nor regulators will offer a unified position. Every concession will be contested. It?s actually early days in the battle of individual privacy vs internet experience. People are definitely not ready to be unplugged.
renuka.bisht@expressindia.com