Google Ranked Worst in Privacy Policies
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Written By Emily Koh | June 11, 2007 | Share This
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A new study from London-based watchdog group Privacy International (PI) has ranked Google the lowest in privacy practices of Internet service companies, calling it “hostile to privacy.” The report, “A Race to the Bottom - Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies,” surveyed 20 major web-based companies over a period of six months, including Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Amazon.
Google was criticized for its data retention policies, with the study noting that its “range of attractive and advanced tools does not exempt the company from demonstrating responsible leadership in privacy.” By comparison, other companies like Microsoft and eBay were lauded for having made improvements on privacy issues.
“We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google’s approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations… This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google’s product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google’s market dominance and the sheer size of its user base.”
It should be noted that none of the other companies surveyed in the study received a perfect score. The BBC, eBay, Last.fm, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia were among the top ranked, considered “generally privacy aware.” Microsoft, which was rated one spot above Google, was said to have “serious lapses,” while Yahoo and AOL were considered “substantial threats.”
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, responded to the report, but also brought up the issue of how privacy issues are unavoidable with all Internet companies: “Consider, in the last year or so, other companies gave users’ queries to the government, leaked millions of raw user queries, or even sold user queries and still came off better than Google did.”
Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land scrutinizes the report in further detail by going through Privacy International’s ranking criteria point by point, and concludes that Google measures up fairly evenly to most of the other companies in the study, and warrants that its ranking is unfair. However, he seems to suggests that too much weight shouldn’t be placed into this report:
“Frankly, the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset for this report is that they singled out Google as the worst. That’s almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren’t so bad.”
Shelley Powers points out that this may be an issue of Google simply not understanding the concern for privacy protection. She notes that all the information collected by Google is made to customize the user’s experience by filtering search results and making recommendations based on our feedback.
“One thing I disagree with on the report: I don’t see Google as ‘hostile’ to privacy. I think the company just doesn’t understand it, or why any of us would be concerned about it. I think this overall puzzlement reflects the company’s inward view, and lack of diversity on the staff–and by diversity, in this instance, I don’t mean race or sex. I mean the company lacks the ability to see outside of its own algorithms.”
While it’s true that Google services amass and retain a wealth of user data, other Internet companies are also guilty of similar practices — Google just seems to receive more attention because of how expansive (some may call it invasive) its properties are. That Google recently rolled out such features as Google Maps Street Views or Google Universal Search doesn’t seem to help its case. While the report merely seems to highlight what we already know, it has raised the discussion of privacy concerns. Whether the report will make a significant impact on existing policies at major web-based companies, however, is a something to look out for.
Privacy International will release a more detailed report in September after further consultation with the companies involved.
Topics: Google |