A
admin
Guest
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Google is the great Internet God of goodness, or so claims No. 6 of the company's "10 Things" corporate philosophy list: "You can make money without doing evil." But this week, Google has suddenly put its doing no evil claims in doubt.
Yesterday, Google launched social networking service Buzz with opt-out privacy settings, meaning that a user's list of followers and followees are fully viewable in Google Profile, by default.* Unrelated, but by Twitter -- ah, buzz -- standards even more evil: Google deleted six popular music blogs hosted at its Blogger service.
How evil these actions are -- and others coming later in this post -- depends on viewpoint. To whom is Google's first obligation? Itself? Its shareholders? Or its customers?
Customers-First Scenario
By the viewpoint of customer standards, opt-out privacy and blog deletion -- without forewarning, I should emphasize -- are evil acts. Google absolutely is making money while doing evil. Plain, pure and simple. The blog deletions, whether or not justified by DCMA take-down notices, are also the worst kind of public relations. People love their music, and they rally behind the underdog -- David standing before Goliath. The blog deletions are worse than evil. They're stupid.
How about Buzz, which requires users to opt-out of exposing followers and followees rather than opting-in to make the information public? While various news sites and blogs have suggested the opt-out approach could expose, say, secret relationships (like that girlfriend you were boxing on the side), I immediately thought about China. There, Google is making a stand against censorship (supposedly). Because Buzz doesn't self-censor by default, new users in China could expose dissident relationships to government investigators. Buzz uses Gmail to auto-generate follower lists. Whoops.
Buzz privacy also is as much stupid as evil, because of the negative buzz generated over the past 24 hours. Example news headlines or blog titles demonstrate how much:
<ul> Google Buzz is a dirty snitch, Gizmodo
Google Buzz leaves privacy concerns ringing in our ears, The Register
WARNING: Google Buzz has a huge privacy flaw, Silicon Alley Insider
Google is the great Internet God of goodness, or so claims No. 6 of the company's "10 Things" corporate philosophy list: "You can make money without doing evil." But this week, Google has suddenly put its doing no evil claims in doubt.
Yesterday, Google launched social networking service Buzz with opt-out privacy settings, meaning that a user's list of followers and followees are fully viewable in Google Profile, by default.* Unrelated, but by Twitter -- ah, buzz -- standards even more evil: Google deleted six popular music blogs hosted at its Blogger service.
How evil these actions are -- and others coming later in this post -- depends on viewpoint. To whom is Google's first obligation? Itself? Its shareholders? Or its customers?
Customers-First Scenario
By the viewpoint of customer standards, opt-out privacy and blog deletion -- without forewarning, I should emphasize -- are evil acts. Google absolutely is making money while doing evil. Plain, pure and simple. The blog deletions, whether or not justified by DCMA take-down notices, are also the worst kind of public relations. People love their music, and they rally behind the underdog -- David standing before Goliath. The blog deletions are worse than evil. They're stupid.
How about Buzz, which requires users to opt-out of exposing followers and followees rather than opting-in to make the information public? While various news sites and blogs have suggested the opt-out approach could expose, say, secret relationships (like that girlfriend you were boxing on the side), I immediately thought about China. There, Google is making a stand against censorship (supposedly). Because Buzz doesn't self-censor by default, new users in China could expose dissident relationships to government investigators. Buzz uses Gmail to auto-generate follower lists. Whoops.
Buzz privacy also is as much stupid as evil, because of the negative buzz generated over the past 24 hours. Example news headlines or blog titles demonstrate how much:
<ul> Google Buzz is a dirty snitch, Gizmodo
Google Buzz leaves privacy concerns ringing in our ears, The Register
WARNING: Google Buzz has a huge privacy flaw, Silicon Alley Insider