Schmidt's quote is clearly out of context and overblown. Rather than crucifying the man, we should seek clarification of his position. Personally, I believe that his actual stance is along the lines of: "Google does everything it can to protect the privacy of users. Unfortunately, we are required to retain some data by law and some by practicality. If you are doing something you don't want known, the only way to be completely safe it to not put that data in the hands of others. However, if you had to put your private data in the hands of any major internet service company, I believe that Google is the safest choice."
I cannot thank you enough for this comment. I've been hearing non-sense comments over this quote for a week now, including the original post on this thread.
People forget that CEOs, politicians, celebrities, and everyone else are people too. Everyone knows what it is like to say something, but mean something else. Everyone knows what it is like to have to clarify what you just said. People who speak publicly, as part of their job, make far fewer errors than us "normal" folk, but they still make errors. When they make a single error, it is perfectly acceptable to raise an eyebrow, but it is almost never acceptable to sound an alarm. Having seen Schmidt speak, both on video and in person, I have no doubt that he'd respond much better to a polite request for clarification than a misguided angry letter.
EDIT: And I don't even think he made that much of an error! The full quote was:
"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
It's wrong. I can imagine tons of things that I might want to hide form others, and none of these things necessarily are evil things. The problem isn't about hiding. It's about freedom of choice.
Corporations are amoral, they do what is in their interest; the people decide the morals (or laws) of their society. A lack of privacy is not Google's fault, they are simply respecting the laws.
Americans let the Patriot Act be passed into law, not Google. Stop blaming Google and start blaming your democratically elected government. People now have more privacy and liberty in continental Europe and Canada than they do in the US.
"Americans let the Patriot Act be passed into law, not Google. Stop blaming Google and start blaming your democratically elected government"
Just like Google is putting their lobbyists where their interests are in cases where government intervention (or lack of it) is hurting their business (net neutrality, open mobile applications, visas, wireless spectrum, etc), they should also fight against the Patriot Act.
If people don't feel comfortable using Google's products due to fear of government spying, they will restrict their search, clean their cookies, block adsense/analytics, etc, all of which will impact Google financially.
While I agree with you that the real solution is better privacy protections enshrined in law, I have to point out that you can't really derive an "ought" from an "is". In other words, the fact that corporations are amoral doesn't mean that Google ought to be amoral too, especially given their claim that they "do no evil". I think that's the author's point: he's not saying that they're doing anything illegal, just that they're failing to live up to the standards they've set for themselves.
I'm not disagreeing with you. But I want to point out one thing. Here is an excerpt of a letter from the founders that is part of their IPO filing to the SEC. It clearly implies that the Google co-founders envision their company having morals. They assert that their company will do "good things for the world" and hope that the company itself "makes the world a better place".
At the time this letter was released, the Wall Street crowd called BS. I remember the uproar. I was hoping that Google would usher in a different era of corporate governance; one in which corporate balance sheets don't have tunnel vision towards "the bottom line" but take into account the bigger picture. I was wrong. Yesterday I started procuring servers in order to host a lot of the services that Google provides for me like email. It might not mean much but it's my own little way of protesting what I believe to be pure hypocrisy coming from Google.
Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.
Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a well-run newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers’ payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.
MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. In pursuing this goal, we will always be mindful of our responsibilities to our shareholders, employees, customers and business partners. With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail, which provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free. We know that some people have raised privacy concerns, primarily over Gmail’s targeted ads, which could lead to negative perceptions about Google. However, we believe Gmail protects a user’s privacy. By releasing services, such as Gmail, for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide. AdWords connects users and advertisers efficiently, helping both. AdSense helps fund a huge variety of online web sites and enables authors who could not otherwise publish. Last year we created Google Grants—a growing program in which hundreds of non-profits addressing issues, including the environment, poverty and human rights, receive free advertising. And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google’s equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.
The amount of data and power that Google has is absurd. Their reach is global, their influence is unparalleled. On top of that, they are a for-profit company. They have to worry about shareholders, competition, innovation, pleasing their customers, and feeding their employees. They have every right to fight tooth and nail for every penny they're capable of earning...
...and yet they don't. Google is quite Good in many scenarios where they could easily get away with being Evil. You've implied that they have "tunnel vision towards the bottom line", but I think you'd be hard-pressed to support that point.
Okay don't crucify me here... but am I the only one who thinks that this vague concept of privacy is overrated?
Everyone on the internet is so concerned about their stuff being "out there". What does that even mean? Tens of thousands of real-life strangers see your face, your children, your address every year. If I wanted to stalk a random person all day every day in real life, how much information could I gather? Who would find out?
For some reason it's scary to use Gmail, but it's fine to walk into your bank and hand over your entire financial history to a complete stranger. People fear the internet because they fear the unknown. Call me crazy, why don't we focus on actual issues instead? While you are wasting time complaining that Google "has your data", people are dying of heart diseases, hunger, AIDS, cancer, bad emo music, McDonald's, and car crashes, okay? People got real problems.
On the more practical side, I would argue that the real problem is not one of privacy, but one of security and common sense. Would you leave a diary of your secret thoughts sitting on your coffee table? Would you let a stranger store it for? Probably not. Then why would you put your private information on Google Docs or Facebook or your blog?
P.S. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the author actually argues that Google owes people something, besides great service. And for no other reason than to tip the balance of power away from itself, otherwise it's "evil". What?
Look to history for the answer to why privacy is so critical to a functioning, free society.
If you don't care about freedom, then privacy is indeed overrated.
Basically, every law or power given to the government needs to be evaluated as if the most evil entity imaginable were using it. If it is bad in that context, then it is a bad law.
Faulty logic in my opinion: In the past, people used X to do bad thing Y. Therefore, X is bad. Should I not be allowed to have a gun, because someone else shot someone?
It's not having a gun that's bad: it's murder. You can murder in all sorts a way without a gun.
It's not collecting data that's bad: it's violating trust. You can violate trust in all sorts of ways without collecting data.
A better analogy would be that huge pools of data are a temptation to break trust in the way that leaving a huge pile of money lying in the street is a temptation to steal it. That's what those people see in that data, huge piles of money.
The question is should we outlaw things that in and of themselves aren't wrong, but are so tempting that a large minority of people who wouldn't otherwise break the law fall for the temptation and decide to. DUI isn't inherently wrong, but the odds of it resulting in harm are so great that it makes sense to outlaw it. Most of the time DUI is a victim-less crime, that doesn't mean it should be legal unless you mess up and kill someone.
Privacy to me isn't about hiding things. Its about the freedom to choose where to draw the line. If you read Bruce Schneier's post, you will find a few (there are tons) examples of this. And just because everyone 'does it' doesn't make it right. Google is the biggest implicit data collector in the world. Their motto suggests that they do not want to be 'evil'. They have a responsibility to ensure this data exchange for value becomes more explicit. [fixed annoying typo]
Go read the full Bruce Schneier article that was also posted on HN.
According to you searching for an embarassing incident/health problem etc on Google is equivalent to putting your private diary on your coffee table? Well trolled.
Privacy is a fundamental requirement to remain human.
At the same time consider an alternative to GMail. Are you going to host the service on a local machine? Are you going to send the e-mails only using PGP? All the people who are moving their e-mail services from GMail to joe-shmoe-shared-hosting.com are just switching the people who could be reading their e-mail, not eliminating them. If you host your own server in your bedroom, your ISP still can read all your e-mails unless you encrypt them for when they are "in flight". So can any server on the way from here to the recipient's or the sender's inbox.
I guess the only real solution would be for someone (startup idea alert) to start a company based solely on the principal that e-mail should be private point-to-point and charge exuberant amounts of money for this. E.g. guarantee a bulletproof, nukeproof data center with storage and transport encryption that would keep no logs or backups of any kind.
I'm not saying that what Google is saying, doing or we suspect is doing is right or wrong. I just think that alternatives to Google are companies that are much greedier or more desperate.
In some sense, every email to or from a gmail user is an "open letter" to Eric Schmidt.
(No, I'm not implying that that he or the typical Googler does or would review private email... only that some non-null set of employees there, probably including the CEO if he were really determined to do so, could.)
What is the point you're trying to make?
One could use your argument for any single entity in the world. "I'm not implying that Coca Cola's CEO does or would put poison on the beverages, only that some non-null set of employees there, probably including the CEO if he were really determined to do so, could."
Replace Google/review private email with anything and you'll have a meaningful sentence: Obama/release nukes, kindergarten teachers/child abuse, etc, etc, etc...
I'm pointing out a double-entendre, not making an "argument".
But, the double-entendre can also serve as a reminder that when you choose Google as a webmail provider, you have also chosen a set of people for whom your communication is potentially transparent. Yes, when you choose to drink Coca-Cola you've chosen a set of people who can potentially adulterate your food; that's a fair analogy.
Those reminders alone aren't anything profound, except to emphasize: pay attention to the values and incentives of those you delegate these powers. Google occasionally seems casual or dismissive about privacy concerns, as with Schmidt's recent statement. Until something blows up on them, they actually make more money (and more friends in government) by being lax about privacy protections.
I know that this is nitpicking, but it's highly doubtful that some random Obama staffer could just launch nukes willy-nilly. Actually, on that matter, it would probably be an order of magnitude more difficult for Coka-Cola to get away with poisoning cokes than for Google reading private emails.
Actually, I'm not nitpicking, I agree with the first guy. If Google were to violate out privacy in such a way, it's quite possible that we would never find out.
Exactly what I'm thinking. I thought this tinfoil hat mentality has died with slashdot. Face it: any e-mail provider can read your e-mail, including the e-mail provider of your recipient. The sysadmin in your office can read your e-mail. Your ISP can read your e-mail even if you host your e-mail server (unless you use https). Same goes for the ISP of the recipient. The only way to be safe was if everyone hosted their own e-mail servers and used PGP/GPG to encrypt their e-mail.
Maybe it's time to stop being paranoid and start concentrating or real problems? Like pondering on how to create an e-book reader that doesn't suck or discovering how to cure AIDS and cancer efficiently?
It's possible that my priorities are simply out of touch with those of the mainstream, but for me "half of the world can read the email of the other half of the world" is a bigger problem than "ebook readers aren't very good right now". The notion that we should stop caring about privacy because a couple of network protocols have design flaws is silly.
How could they possibly solve it? One of the most important features of Google Mail is fast searching of e-mails. For them to search e-mails, they need to be able to index them so they can't just encrypt the emails on their storage.
Frankly, for me the abilty to search my emails quickly outweights the risk of some nosey Google employee with a shallow private life reading my private email or bank stuff or whatever.
Privacy isn't about hiding things. Its about freedom, choice and the ability as a human being to draw a line. In the online world this has become impossible due to the implicit exchange of data taking place. Google provides you a relevant service, and in return they will take your data. That exchange needs to be explicit.
I think every effort to empower common man will be resisted because legislative, judiciary, administration & corporations will not allow their clout to be diluted and they want you to be subservient forever.
