When Privacy International, a UK-based watchdog group, released a study on Friday ranking the privacy practices of major internet companies, Google may already have known it would wind up dead last, saddled with an overall "hostile to privacy" rating that took into account Google's data retention policies and recent purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick. Privacy International, for its part, already knew that ranking Google last and below a company such as Microsoft would cause a backlash:
"We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations. While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy. This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google's product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google's market dominance and the sheer size of its user base. Google's status in the ranking is also due to its aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies and techniques.
The view that Google "opens up" information through a range of attractive and advanced tools does not exempt the company from demonstrating responsible leadership in privacy. Google's increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user's life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook. Neither of these elements has been demonstrated. Rather, we have witnessed an attitude to privacy within Google that at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent. These dynamics do not pervade other major players such as Microsoft or eBay, both of which have made notable improvements to the corporate ethos on privacy issues."
Of course, the watchdog group was right. Google immediately cried foul, claiming that Privacy International has a conflict of interest because one of its board members works for Microsoft. Privacy International responded yesterday with an open letterto Google, explaining its position. (the member of its 70-person board in question has been working with Privacy International for six years before taking a job with Microsoft, at which time he offered to resign from PI.)
Does Google have a legitimate beef or do its actions, as PI suggests, "stem from sour grapes that [it] achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?" Decide for yourself.
