In response to Adam and Berin’s excellent introduction to their Googlephobia series, invaluable TLF commenter Richard Bennett succinctly sums up the rap on Google.
There’s no denying that Google has the capacity to do some pretty heinous things with all the sensitive data stored on its servers. But the relevant question isn’t whether Google could do evil, but whether it realistically will. What incentive is there for Google to do anything but keep private data as secure as humanly possible? Sure, Google could earn a nice chunk of change if it were to sell user search queries to the highest bidder. But why would Google put its entire business on the line for a comparatively insignificant short-term gain?
A major privacy breach is Google’s nightmare scenario. If anything happened to cause users to lose trust in Google, they’d go someplace else for email and search. Advertisers would follow suit, causing Google’s stock price to plummet. Google might never be able to recover from a severe privacy fiasco. Obviously, Google is well aware of its vulnerabilities on privacy, which is why Google has incredibly strong safeguards to ensure that sensitive data can’t be uncovered by a rogue product manager with an itchy trigger finger.
Then there’s the liability issue. The multi-billion dollar lawsuits that would ensue were Google to suffer a data breach or an internal leak would deal a serious financial blow to the company, especially because Google’s privacy policy is more than just a comforting statement—it’s legally binding.
Continue reading →
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer
As we noted in our intro to this ongoing series, Google’s tenth anniversary has passed with Googlephobia reaching new heights of hysteria.
But is Google really too big and dangerous, or are people just too lazy to find other alternatives to each of the wonderful services that Google offers? If one is truly paranoid about the firm’s supposed dominance, it doesn’t take much effort to live a Google-free life. To prove it, we set out to find alternatives to each of the services that Google provides. After awhile, we got a little tired of compiling alternatives in each category and just provided links for the additional choices at your disposal. It’s tough to see what the fuss is about with the cornucopia of choices at our disposal. If you don’t like Google, then just don’t use it or any of its services. The choice is yours.
In each case, we’ve listed Google first, even though Google may not be the market leader (e.g., Google’s relatively unknown social network Orkut).
Search Engines
Continue reading →
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer as part of an ongoing series
With Google celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, many panicky pundits are using the occasion to claim that Google has become the Great “Satan” of the Internet. Nick Carr wonders what the future holds for “The OmniGoogle.” The normally level-headed Mike Malone worries that Google is “turning into Big Brother.” And Washington Post’s Rob Dubbin says that he can’t escape Google’s “tentacles,” even for just 24 hours. Meanwhile, speculation abounds that the Justice Department is preparing a major antitrust lawsuit against Google concerning its advertising partnership with Yahoo! or perhaps even a broader suit concerning Google’s “dominance” of online advertising generally.
Carr quotes Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s now-famous 2003 interview:
I think people tend to exaggerate Google’s significance in both directions. Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines, unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. People come to Google because they choose to. We don’t trick them.
In the last five years, Google has become far more than just a search engine. As Google’s suite of suite of complementary products continues to grow, so too does the specter of Google as an all-knowing and therefore all-powerful economic colossus. Yet Google isn’t even close to being the sort of nefarious monopolist out to destroy user privacy at every turn, as some seem to imply—if not exclaim. Indeed, in our view, the Net is overall a far better place because of the existence of Google and the many free services it provides consumers.
Our point is not that Google should be immune from criticism. Indeed, healthy criticism of corporate actions plays a vital role in the free market by disciplining corporate policies and behavior—often thus providing an effective alternative to government regulation. This is particularly important in the area of consumer privacy protection, as demonstrated by Google’s quick response to public concern about its Chrome EULA. Continue reading →
I wanted to update readers on the micro-scandal surrounding the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s “Issues & Publications” database. As I noted on Monday, Google’s search engine automatically flagged that database as the victim of a malware attack: some unknown third party (probably as part of a large-scale attack on SQL databases that did not target us in particular) had taken advantage of a vulnerability in the PFF database to insert malcious scripts capable of infecting users’ computers. Google immediately and automatically flagged that database (and the PDF files within it) as potentially dangerous and shared that information through its Safe Browsing API with the StopBadware.org project, a “neighborhood watch” group that flags potentially dangerous sites.
I attempted to correct the impression of some readers that Google was deliberately censoring the PFF site because of our disagreements on the sensitive issue of net neutrality. Matt Cutts, a Google engineer, has explained this far better than I ever could.
I’m pleased to inform readers that Stopbadware.org removed our database from their blacklist yesterday: Continue reading →
TLF readers may have heard that Google was craftily censoring my free-market colleagues at the Progress & Freedom Foundation. Our good friend and invaluable TLF commenter Richard Bennett blogged over the weekend about how Google seemed to block access to our site when he tried to search for “net neutrality.”
This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Google is blocking net neutrality documents from the PFF’s web site, but documents in the same format that deal with other subjects are not flagged “dangerous.”
This is really outrageous, and a clear example of the problem with a monopoly gatekeeper.
This story made the rounds this morning and much of the DC Internet policy community was atwitter with allegations of censorship by Google. But as I explain in the comment I tried (unsuccessfully) to post on Richard’s blog, this is all an innocent and unfortunate misunderstanding: Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.