Google Motto: Do More Evil
If you are pretentious enough to coin a company motto of "Do no evil," you should be circumspect enough to actually follow that code -- or at least have the appearance of trying. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is either a hypocrite or living in a dream world, as he continually sloughs off suggestions that his company is anything but pure. Instead, he puts the onus on us to protect our own privacy -- from him!
He suggested that if we were afraid of anyone finding out what we do online we shouldn't do it. He then advised us to change our names to escape our Web pasts (he later told John Stewart it was a joke, but this was weeks after the damage was done. If it was a joke, why not address it immediately?).
His latest boner is telling us that if we don't like StreetView invading our privacy, we can just move. To where? To another house spied on by StreetView?
StreetView is even more insidious than I once thought. Now Google has admitted StreetView sniffed out e-mail addresses and passwords (on top of the Mac addresses Google already copped to).
In both cases, Google claims the data gathering was an accident. How can such a genius company make so many amateur mistakes?
If we listened to Schmidt, we can change our names and move. Jeepers, that won't raise too many red flags with Homeland Security! It's bad enough when our own government invades our privacy, but a private company? Dang.
Do we need tougher rules to restrict what companies such as Google and Facebook can do with our online information?
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/27/2010 at 1:18 PM