eric tatro dot com

I'll admit, I'm kind of a Google fanboy. Of course, they make some mistakes (the Buzz rollout that exposed some private information of Gmail users) and engage in practices I'm not completely in favor of (lobbying for net neutrality legislation), but in spite of that, Google is pretty awesome. They support open source. They provide very useful, even revolutionary, services for free, so long as they can display some inconspicuous ads on the side of your screen. And those ads can even be useful, depending on what you're searching for.

Kirk McElhearn from Macworld.com thinks Google has been violating its unofficial creed of "don't be evil" lately, and that the Buzz mini-debacle (which Google acted quickly to fix) is just the latest in a long line of offenses. As a result, he says he's dropping Google services wherever he can, and if that's his thing, more power to him. His cited reasons, however, don't seem fair.

For example, he's fired up about Google removing a number of mp3 blogs from its Blogspot service, even those that had explicit permission from artists to post their songs. However, this doesn't seem to be a legitimate gripe with Google so much as it is with the music industry. From the EFF via BoingBoing:

Targeted bloggers need to know these details, not only so that they can remove the file if it's indeed infringing, but so that they can file a DMCA counter-notice in the event that the file is not infringing.

Ordinarily, the party issueing the takedown notice would be required by US copyright law to specify which content is being accused. But, as an international organization headquartered in London, IFPI is arguing that it doesn't even need to play by the USA's rules. "We neither admit nor accept," they write, "…that Google is entitled to be served a notice in compliance with the DMCA." Translation: IFPI is essentially threatening to sue Google under some unspecified foreign law — presumably one which lacks even the modest safe-harbor provisions available in the USA. It's no wonder Google felt the need to take drastic action to avoid liability, even at the expense of the resulting headaches and bad press.

Ultimately, his concern seems to be with the amount of information Google is able to amass about its users through its services, which Google then uses to sell targeted ads:

Google knows more about you than the NSA, and has recently shown that it doesn't give a hoot about your privacy. The company has gotten too big, and has turned into just another corporation trying to maximize its assets–and those assets are you. Who's to say Google won't progressively loosen its privacy controls and monetize more and more personal information?

First, Google has shown that it does care about user privacy, it just got careless with the Buzz rollout. Look how many times Facebook has had to issue a mea culpa about violating user privacy in far more grievous ways than Google ever has. I guarantee that the next time Google unveils a new service along the lines of Buzz, they'll have learned their lesson.

Speaking of which, users rightfully throw a fit when their private information is exposed for monetary gain. Again, see the Facebook Beacon example, which ended up being an expensive and embarrassing failure for Facebook, who shut down the service last year amidst much controversy and a class-action lawsuit. The people who run Google aren't idiots, and they know better than to alienate their users in this way.

If you're nervous about the amount of information Google knows about you, then by all means, use any of the several alternatives that exist for search, e-mail, docs, and so on. But it's silly to drop the very valuable services Google provides just because they could theoretically act irresponsibly with the data they have access to, even though to do so would doom their business.

Posted via email from Tatrocalypse!