In our previous entry we went over some of Eric Schmidt’s key points from his interview that opened the D9 conference in RanchoPalos Verdes, California. Certainly the opinions of Google’s former CEO and current Executive Chairman are valuable when it comes to the platform wars of the 21st century. However, Schmidt was more than willing to share a number of other opinions and thoughts, including on Google’s privacy policy and privacy concerns regarding the Android platform.
When asked if Google simply knows too much about us, Schmidt responded by saying that the company is committed to allowing anonymous searches by users and that data stored to the Google account of a user really belongs to the user. “If you wish to use our services as a logged-in user, you could use our privacy dashboard and you see what we have, and you can tell us to forget it,” said Schmidt. “We tell people what we know – and we give them the choice of getting it deleted.” That seems to contradict some of the accusations from outside groups which state, very simply, Google not only stores basic information for all searches – including data on your geographic region and your origin IP address – but that court orders may result in Google handing the information of users over to government authorities.
But search isn’t the only place where there are privacy concerns. The Android system often takes very personal information – including GPS-signaled location, phonebook information, and more – and provides it to those using the apps. Shcmidt states that the opt-in policy (that users must be notified about and agree with the priveleges of Android apps) is the current stance and the company has no intent to curate the results as Apple does. “The Google model is just the inverse” of Apple’s, said Schmidt. “That’s okay. Let the market decide. It’s called competition.”
[via the Wall Street Journal]
