Does Google Need a New Motto? Nah.
June 25, 2012
Despite the company’s famous motto, Wired insists that “Google Is Evil.” Writer Rory O’Conner contends that Google‘s privacy violations, and attempts to cover them up, make them worthy of the epithet. Specifically, their Street View cars collected private data– from passwords to photos to emails– from anyone whose wireless signal it managed to pick up. When regulators called them on it, the company became defensive, defying and lying, according to FCC findings.
So, how can anyone trust Google? Or, for that matter, other giant data-mongers like Facebook? We can’t, of course, O’Conner insists. He writes:
“Small wonder that Google co-founder Larry Page is feeling ‘paranoid’, as the Associated Press recently reported. Why? As I detail in my new book ‘Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media are hanging Politics, Threatening Big Brands and Killing Traditional Media,’ as the new ‘contextual web’ takes the place of the data-driven web of the early 21st century, it will mean further bad news for Google — even though the company still sold $36.5 billion in advertising last year. Couple Google’s paranoia about Facebook and the evident failure of its latest social network, Google Plus, with its problems about privacy, trust and anti-trust, and it’s no surprise that executives are feeling paranoid. After all, they are facing the very real prospect of waging a defensive war on many fronts — social, privacy, and trust — simultaneously. Despite its incredible reach, power and profit, it’s a war that Google — the 21st century equivalent of the still-powerful but increasingly irrelevant Microsoft — may well be destined to lose, along with the trust its users have long extended to one of the world’s most powerful brands.”
Interesting conclusions. Stay tuned to see how this all plays out.
Cynthia Murrell, June 25, 2012
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