The lady doth protest too much, methinks
Did you know that today is Data Privacy Day? Neither did we, but Google did, (it is a sponsor, alongside Microsoft and Intel) and it's celebrating by publishing its privacy principles. This is a laudable move by the search giant, but it does make us wonder why Google is so keen to stress how important our privacy is to it.
An inevitable consequence on becoming one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world is that people are going to become wary of its power. While Google merely dominated search advertising, we were still happy to view it as a plucky underdog, taking on giants like Microsoft and Yahoo! by out-innovating them.
However, once it started moving into free apps, operating systems and other forms of advertising - especially on mobile phones - the potential scope of its influence became apparent, and people started wondering if it had too much. This has presumably been recognised as a major PR challenge for Google and is probably the driving force behind the announcement.
Here are Google's five privacy principles and a vid, should the message be neither loud nor clear enough:
1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
"Focus on providing the best user experience" is the first tenet of Google's philosophy. When users share information with us, it allows us to build services and products that are valuable to them. We believe that focusing on the user fosters both the products and privacy-enhancing features that have fuelled innovation and built a loyal audience of users online.
2. Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
Our ambition is to be at the leading edge of technology, including the development of tools that help users manage their personal information in a simple, accessible manner without detracting from a valuable user experience. We comply with privacy laws, and additionally work internally and with regulators and industry partners to develop and implement strong privacy standards.
3. Make the collection of personal information transparent.
We strive to show users the information used to customize our services. Where appropriate, we aim to be transparent about the information we have about individual users and how we use that information to deliver our services.
4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
People have different privacy concerns and needs. To best serve the full range of our users, Google strives to offer them meaningful and fine-grained choices over the use of their personal information. We believe personal information should not be held hostage and we are committed to building products that let users export their personal information to other services. We don't sell users' personal information.
5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.
We recognize our responsibility to protect the data that users entrust to us. We take security issues seriously and work together with a large community of users, developers and external security experts to make the Internet safer and more secure.
