Wow, just… wow.
If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker.
He goes on to say how they tender that info to various government agencies on demand (much like other search engines do), but more importantly, apparently good Mr. Schmidt doesn't live on the same planet the rest of us do.
Mr. Schmidt, i don't tell you or your company aspects of my life for the same reason i don't tell my car mechanic what my current bank balance is.
Truth is, Google, like a good many large companies, is in the business of data mining. Hopefully, this is not a surprise to anyone, particularly when you think about that whole "index all the world's data" mantra and the fact that your financial, medical, credit history and other bits are all index-able data. Google has the added bonus of being in the advertising industry, so they stand to profit by most effectively mining your information to determine what ads to show. Reading up about a severe illness a favorite character may have contracted? Perhaps you might be interested in low cost funeral arrangements. Spending time away from your spouse? Perhaps you'd appreciate getting a good deal on Divorce proceedings.
That's one of the bigger problems with data-mining. While it works great on average, it's often horrible on specific, and can lead to other issues. Like your wife wondering why you're getting ads about Divorce Attorneys and funeral plots.
This, of course, is why i do things like run Flashblock to kill off LSO trackers, and have multiple accounts i use for various aspects of a single behemoth site. (It's also why i tend to avoid things like Facebook which don't allow me that sort of fine grained control over how my information is being mined.)
So you see, Mr. Schmidt, the quest for online privacy is not about being a bad person. It's about being a careful consumer means not handing your wallet over to the people trying to sell you things. It's also important to realize that while you may not think of yourself as particularly "evil", that's never going to stop someone else from making that decision.
