Slashdot just pointed to an article about the outcry over privacy implications of the Google acquisition of Doubleclick. From the article:
“Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world,” said the complaint lodged with the Federal Trade Commission. “Moreover, Google will operate with virtually no legal obligation to ensure the privacy, security, and accuracy of the personal data that it collects.”
I wanted to weigh in with a broader perspective, and a counter-argument. While there is some ground for concern, people seem to be ignoring far greater risks to our privacy that are in the hands of people far less scrupulous than Google. Our credit card company knows everything we buy — and sells that information to marketers; our phone company knows everyone we call — and sells that information to marketers; our supermarket knows what we buy and how often — and sells that information to marketers.
Meanwhile, here’s Google, which is using the information it collects to build better services that we eagerly consume because they are useful to us, and yet we’re complaining about the risks of how much data they collect! At least Google’s harnessing that data for our benefit, while most of the other big data collectors are simply using it for their own.
In short, it seems to me that Google is being held to a much higher standard than the rest of the world.
This isn’t to say that no privacy safeguards are required. But let’s put the outcry in perspective. We are moving into a future where what we do, where we go, what we spend, what we pay attention to, will be mined constantly and by everyone. Would we rather have this done in an invisible back office, where we can pretend it isn’t happening? Or would we rather that those people collecting this kind of data build useful services with it, like Google is doing?