Have we all forgotten that Google was building the infrastructure for a censored internet search engine in China? So much for “don’t be evil.”
6
Ooh, this makes me so angry!
He's lying. He's slick about it, but he's lying.
"'For everyone' is a core philosophy for Google; it’s built into our mission to create products that are universally accessible and useful. That’s why Search works the same for everyone, whether you’re a professor at Harvard or a student in rural Indonesia."
Google Search emphatically does not work the same for everyone. It puts people in search bubbles, so if I read a lot of New York Times editorials, I get liberal links first; if someone else reads a lot of Fox News editorials, or even Wall Street Journal ones, he'll get conservative links.
"To make privacy real, we give you clear, meaningful choices around your data. All while staying true to two unequivocal policies: that Google will never sell any personal information to third parties; and that you get to decide how your information is used."
Of course they don't sell your data to anyone! They jealously hoard it, so that they can sell services that use your data, such as targeted ads, but other things too. Some things you can't opt out of.
8
Then why can I not have the photo of me removed from Google street view?
17
I love this op-ed piece...we have all experienced almost instantaneously that searching for something in Google Chrome will lead to some company or other trying to sell you a product or service related to the key words you have used. Privacy is something that is so low down on Google's priorities that having the CEO of the company evangelize it must make all of us have a hearty belly laugh! Thank you Sundar...you made my day!!
Mr. Pinchai forgot to reveal some things about Google.
He forgot to say that Google was founded with the goal to archive and catalog "The Entire World's Data" -- which includes, of course, EVERY USER's data.
Google has been diligently doing so. Taking your data, and keeping it -- whether you know about it, like it, or want them to.
Their EULAs (legal agreements that every Android/Alphabet/Google user signs) say that EVERY BIT OF DATA that exists, passes through, or is entered into their Android App or Chrome browser IS THE PROPERTY OF GOOGLE and they can do whatever they want with it -- including sell it (with "some" restrictions).
When Google claims that we have control over our privacy, the truth is that they give us only the PERCEPTION of control. How many people have actually gone on their sites to limit our data and opt-out? I have, many times, over many years -- and EVERY TIME their websites either crashed or gave errors, or said to "come back at another time." Their privacy services are a CHARADE.
When Google also claims to give us the ability to delete our data from their systems, this is ALSO A CHARADE. What they mean by "delete" is that we can make our data "invisible" but it will remain in their possession, and in their archives. We cannot actually delete anything, but just make it invisible. They get to use our data forever.
Mr. Pinchai is being disingenuous. Anyone surprised that a major $100 Billion company is so greedy, and lies to us?
Avoid Google!
3
According to my DuckDuckGo third party tracker which is supposed to block third party trackers Google is the worst offender with regard to tracking on the sites I have visited during past few weeks. Google was tracking on 66% of those sites. So it is way beyond search terms and going to Google sites, Google apparently tracks on the majority of websites and I would assume most people are not trying to block third party trackers. This seems kind of outrageous in a democracy where privacy is highly valued.
5
Well written by the CEO of a company that reads and indexes all of our gmail!
2
Mr. Pichai doesn't mention the profit earned from taking peoples personal information regardless of permission.
Internet users should not be forced to opt out of all these various money making schemes, that jeopardizes a users well being.
Google and all the others should be required to ask in clear language. Chief executives held criminally and civilly liable.
I recall once Eric Schmidt - the ex-ceo of google on the user privacy say something on the lines - if one is so afraid don't go online!
I believe nothing is free in the world, there is a cost. Google services aren't "free" the cost is privacy - a subjective term. It's a choice either use the many services that companies like google offer knowing the cost and what's at stake or don't.
When Google respects privacy in practice, I’ll be more inclined to believe this propaganda.
Otherwise, this is lip service as measured by the ways Google continues to push users to share more and more information *by default.*
Their business relies on YOUR personal info. Period.
1
good ideas, please communicate them to your platoon of lobbyists..
Pichai reads like a more literate, polished version of Zuckerberg. Other commenters have pointed out the myriad ways in which Google betrays users' trust. Unfortunately, the internet business model of generating revenue by selling ads seems inevitably to change a company's publicly stated ethic of "Don't Be Evil" to the unstated but powerful imperative of "Don't Get Caught Being Evil."
Don't forget what Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google said:
"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."
-- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, 2009
See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy
and
"If you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear." -- attributed (by PC World) to Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, 2012
4
Google paid Apple $12 billion this year to remain Safari's default search engine. Why? Because they know most people are too lazy to change it. They keep you logged in so they can collect, collect, collect.
But it takes a few clicks to change it. Change it to DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. You won't even know the difference!
2
What's hilarious is that every single commenter here will continue to use Google no matter what. What a joke.
1
"Yes, we use data to make products more helpful for everyone. But we also protect your information."
Selling consumer data is not helpful for everyone. I understand this is Google's business model, but you have no right to touting your privacy protection to us because you are making money by selling it.
Have you ever try to clear the history in your mobile's chrome browser? Google made it harder than necessarily with clicks after clicks. It then took few minutes, YES, few minutes, to clear it. Technically, it can be done in seconds, but they made it hard for you to protect yourselves.
So while I don't like Google collecting my information, I agreed to that when I used their products. But please don't lecture us on protecting our privacy.
3
As long as people are willing to buy snake oil, there will be other people profitably selling it. Pichai's noble-sounding plea reminds me of the tobacco companies' C.E.O.s' lying testimony before Congress regarding cigarette safety. When it comes to corporate credibility, every generation of consumers unfortunately seems to need to rediscover the wheel. Which is why tech snake oil still sells in billions.
Which begs the question: why in the world does the Times give all this free ad space to Google? It's not like Google can't afford to get "its message" out and pay for the space, or that Sundar Pichai is the victim of a concerted effort by the government to restrict his free speech rights. Maybe he's the brother-in-law of someone high up at the paper.
5
Difficult to read this without being deeply cynical of the shameless hypocrisy. Read Zuboff or check out various interview with her online. Google lives and breathes on the ad model which depends on every sneaky trick in the book to spy on us in every way imaginable (and not imaginable by many) to compile that into models of our past and predicted behavior and to sell that information. Always remember, you are not the customer, you are the PRODUCT. If they are so serious about change, then dump the ad revenue model. Secondly to depend on the violators to correct their behavior is insanity. All this feel good PR washed nonsense is to save themselves and put off regulation and/or splitting them up. It is selfish, motivated by continuing greed and not to be trusted.
4
I was recently on safari in Africa. This article is analogous to one of the lions telling me that it's safe to get out of vehicle. No thanks. Apple makes its revenue from products and doesn't need to sell my information.
There's a clear reason that Google is handing out free Google Home speakers with certain purchases of other tech products. It makes that money back 100x by recording everything in your home through the speaker.
1
Just another example of humans taking one step forward and two steps back. If you use a computer you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
"We approach hen security with a profound commitment to responsibility and a healthy dose of humility"
-The Fox
5
Then why are you fighting California's A.B 375??? That doesn't seem like something a privacy-loving tech giant would do
4
Google (and Facebook and others with the same business model) should offer the ability to buy / subscribe to their services with no data collected. Then people can make the choice between the "free" and paid services. But they should be allowed to continue offering the current "free" tier of services for those of us who think it is a reasonable trade-off. I personally have no problem with the data collection - my life is not so interesting that I care if some program / machine collects enough data to put me in some bucket and serves me ads. First, I don't even see the ads for the most part. Second, if I do have to see ads, they might as well be relevant. Third, if seeing ads are so traumatic, there are browser extensions that block them. Fourth, you can always use incognito mode (now apparently going to be available in more products) to hide searches from Google. If you want even more privacy, use a VPN (although now the VPN provider will know about your searches). Fifth, and to keep this in perspective, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) already collects your data and you are actually paying them. At least, I don't have to pay Google.
Once anyone provides credit card info to use your app, all privacy is gone. In a flash you have way too much information--and no one trust that you or the processor will not sell or otherwise abuse that info. After all, there are zero penalties for abuse. Figure out a way to get your dollar without the user providing any significant info.
As an independent app developer, I feel frustrated when I hear people complaining about the trade-offs they themselves are electing to make in exchange for "free" services. My company's first app was a well-made, ad-and-data-free experience which provided hours of value for a mere $0.99. It was downloaded maybe 30 or 40 times a day, for a while. We resisted "free" as long as we could, but eventually released another app which was "free" to download and use, but supported itself with data-tracked ads and in-app purchases. That app has been downloaded over 100 million times.
If the majority of internet consumers were willing to pay even a few cents for the software and services we use every day, we would not need to compromise our privacy or our personal information in exchange for these "free" services. But until consumers understand you can't actually get any thing for "free", nothing is going to change.
99
@Matt S. There you go Matt. Your experience proves that talk is cheap and comes easy to cheap people. It's like this busted battery that shows full voltage till you begin to draw current, at which point the needle swings completely the other way.
6
@Christopher. Not with my tax money please. Thank you. What's next? A taxpayer funded Facebook where folks can go waste their time?
2
@Matt S
What this indicates is how Internet Ad companies such Google and Facebook have eroded the value of software to the lay person who thinks these applications are/should be free. The existence of Google and Facebook weigh on app developers because it sets the expectations of free ad supported applications which in turn strengthen Google and Facebook position because the value proposition of their ads platforms increase as they increasingly mine our data and create detailed profiles.
6
Trying to read this incoherent piece is like trying to follow a Google menu. If Pichai actually cared about privacy, the default option for every piece of Google software and tech would be complete privacy, and any collection of data would require consent.
10
I pay for my NYT subscription. So call me "surprised" when I fired up my computer this morning and was greeted by a PSA puff piece from the world's largest collector and wholesaler of private consumer data.
6
Hmmm...the sincere humanistic intentions of Google that Mr Pichai describes in this article glaringly contradict previous reports by the NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/magazine/facebook-google-privacy-data.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html
4
This article is a complete insult to those whom have fought hard in the trenches to get this tech monopoly live up to it's original, although now discarded motto, "don't be evil". This PR article/commentary pitch by Google should not have been approved. It is designed to confuse the average person about the power Google has and retains over every user of their platforms.
This is the same company who fought...and fought hard...the implementation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulations and then defied it once it was in place. This article spins Google as a supporter of privacy. Google does not care about our privacy.
This is a monopoly that has far too much power and needs to be broken up - yesterday.
The New York Times should support real commentary, not corporate PR spin designed to squash the real story and the real journalists who have been on the front lines working to expose this and other monopolistic corporate power's.
5
Sounds like an ad for google.
7
Google is not going to “change”; their whole business model for investors and vendors is your search information to sell products/services. If someone is looking for an alternative to google, try qwant.com. Google it too so Google knows in their “altruistic” data sweep that you do not require their services. Qwant is European-based so must adhere to much stricter privacy standards. Just waiting for a qwant-like alternative to you-tube to be completely free of Google.
2
As long as our personal data is used primarily to see what we can be made to buy, no supposedly legitimate use for our benefit can be of any value.
For efficiency, "Don't be evil" has now been truncated to "Be evil."
Like any opinion piece from a CEO, this is carefully crafted propaganda to maintain Google's public image as our lack of online privacy becomes more concerning. The publication is timed to coincide with the Google I/O conference in which privacy changes are expected to be announced. The reality is that we cannot trust Google to follow any regulations, and the crafting of such regulations will only be bent by a hoard of in-house lawyers to Google's commercial advantage.
"Don't be evil" and the concept that rank-and-file engineers have some power over the company's decisions are laughable. If engineers or the public objects to a policy, Google will simply bait and switch. They will publicly act as if they have made a moral choice but in the fine print they are continuing business as usual. They will fire employees that object and hire more obedient ones.
Great, Google claims not to sell our data to companies. Putting aside the truth of that statement, how does Mr. Pichai justify violating the privacy of the billions of Chinese people that may use his search engine, if and when the secret “Dragonfly” project is implemented? That would be an interesting article to read.
1
Sorry, I've ditched all Google and Facebook products...
They are getting rich by stealing the privacy of their users.
Sorry. Not going to give you a thing for free anymore.
We're supposed to believe you after you've gotten/forced us to part with personal information, after you've tracked us all over the web, etc? I think that this will continue and your new "tools" to protect our privacy are window dressing.
I miss the old fashioned fold up maps. I miss phone books. I miss card catalogues. I miss being able to be anonymous. You can never return what you took from all of us: our feeling of security that our identities were ours and ours alone.
5/8/2019 11:58am
2
Surprising to see that the NY Times did not disclose somewhere around this Opinion piece that the company has a business relationship with Google that includes paid posts and hosting of their infrastructure in the Google cloud.
10
violating privacy and mapping the world and all of the "things" in it (including people) for the commercial benefit of Google, is the business model. This essay simply tells us what Google is doing to correct past sins. It says nothing about how Google will stay ahead to continue its information grab. They are trying to avoid EU fines by stating: look at what we've done to solve this. We'll never know what they are doing until it is too late. Google is a rich/powerful business built upon sharing our lives with vendors. That won't change. Nice words. Still don't trust it.
It would help if the Times, with all its privacy articles, was more disciplined to distinguish what *could* happen vs. what is *actually* happening. What is actually happening is right here in this article: a CEO fairly seeking to balance user concerns and a viable model for his business. The result is pretty good: users have more control over their data. The privacy issue *could* lead us down other paths, which I sense is what many people are really afraid of, but let's not take it out on the author here today. Give him credit where due.
3
This presentation is so full of, at best, misleading statements, and, in reality, lies.
One example:
"Third, a small subset of data helps serve ads . . . that provide the revenue that keeps Google products free and accessible."
Oh, really? You do not amass and sell our "user experience" into dossiers and so "provide the revenue"?
Then why, when I click on a link supposedly to the source of the results of my search, does it go first to Google and only then to the actual site?
You collect and amass our data, and sell it.
3
It is highly irresponsible of the Times to provide a platform for and enable Mr. Pichai to disseminate his corporate propaganda. Google has been sued by several countries for failing to justify its use and retention of user data, and has consistently fought for the right to collect and retain as much consumer data as it can; this is the foundation of Google’s business model and why it is one of the wealthiest corporations in history.
Executives can talk as much as they like about respecting consumer privacy and how they’ve provided tools to help people manage their information and it’s use (and abuse), but their actions are fundamentally opposed to these actions and sentiments.
For the Times to serve as a mouthpiece for a hugely powerful corporation without any hint of critical analysis is a serious lapse in integrity.
5
Reminds me of the tobacco companies' C.E.O.s testimony before Congress regarding cigarette safety. When it comes to corporate credibility, every generation of consumers unfortunately seems to need to rediscover the wheel.
As long as people are willing to buy snake oil, there will be other people profitably selling it.
Which begs the question: why in the world does the Times give all this free ad space to Google? It's not like Google can't afford to get "its message" out or that Sundar Pichai is the victim of a concerted effort by the government to restrict his free speech rights.
3
This presentation is so full of, at best, misleading statements, and, in reality, lies.
One example:
"Third, a small subset of data helps serve ads . . . that provide the revenue that keeps Google products free and accessible."
Oh, really? You do not amass and sell our "user experience" into dossiers and so "provide the revenue"?
Then why, when I click on a link supposedly to the source of the results of my search, does it go first to Google and only then to the actual site?
You collect and amass our data, and sell it.
A personal example: A while back, my S.O., who makes little handicrafts -- walker bags, dog clothes -- that she sells at craft shows, was asked to make items using certain school emblem fabrics. Such fabrics are made under license from the school. So, I searched extensively through Google for information about such, since she was concerned if, by selling those items, she was supposed to pay yet some additional copyright fees.
I used to play at a play money poker site, which obtained its revenue by showing ads. I logged in there with my email address – well known to Google, they host my email account. Lo and behold: A week after my extensive searching, I was being presented only ads from fabric.com, showing me only school fabrics!
Just how did that come pass, if Google did not use my interactions to compile a dossier it sold to fabric.com? Or was that just some random coincidence?
This presentation is so full of, at best, misleading statements, and, in reality, lies.
One example:
"Third, a small subset of data helps serve ads . . . that provide the revenue that keeps Google products free and accessible."
Oh, really? You do not amass and sell our "user experience" into dossiers and so "provide the revenue"?
Then why, when I click on a link supposedly to the source of the results of my search, does it go first to Google and only then to the actual site?
You collect and amass our data, and sell it.
A personal example: A while back, my S.O., who makes little handicrafts -- walker bags, dog clothes -- that she sells at craft shows, was asked to make items using certain school emblem fabrics. Such fabrics are made under license from the school. So, I searched extensively through Google for information about such, since she was concerned if, by selling those items, she was supposed to pay yet some additional copyright fees.
I used to play at a play money poker site, which obtained its revenue by showing ads. I logged in there with my email address – well known to Google, they host my email account. Lo and behold: A week after my extensive searching, I was being presented only ads from fabric.com, showing me only school fabrics!
Just how did that come pass, if Google did not use my interactions to compile a dossier it sold to fabric.com? Or was that just some random coincidence?
3
Is this a joke? Google literally commoditized our privacy.
Mr Pichai - I don’t trust you and I don’t trust your company and neither should the regulators who are clearly being targeted with your self-serving essay. Google has a long-standing, deeply embedded culture of not respecting people’s privacy. It’s in your company’s DNA because your rivers of cash depend on it and you’re not prepared to compromise that flow of money.
If you were deeply respectful of people you would start by stopping your products from being so addictive and by allowing hateful messages and behaviour to proliferate. You would also stop false and misleading advertising via Google AdWords.
Your piece is disgraceful in its hypocrisy.
1
Nice marketing pitch for privacy concerns, Sundar. You'll probably get a stock bonus for this one. I hope you get regulated like in the EU.
1
I’m a dirty old man and I search “bikinis” and am adorned with pics of beautiful girls in bikinis in every ad.
Thanks guys.
2
Google's credo used to state: "Don't Be Evil"
Because I use Disconnect in my browser, I know I've successfully blocked 12 trackers on this page of the NYT site. 2 of those are Google's..wonder how many trackers my software missed..
Mr. Pichai claims that Google doesn't sell your personal data to anyone. But does Google repackage it and sell that? You betcha'. That's how their business works - the collected data of all of us is their primary profit stream.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Baidu are the four largest intelligence agencies on the planet. Alibaba and Tencent are closing fast.
Always remember: If the product is free, *you* are the product.
By the way, Mr. Pichai, how's the Dragonfly project coming along? Baking in privacy for Chinese citizens, too, are we? Good on you. Bearfly on the drawing boards?
America needs General Data Protection Regulation now.
"Don't Be Evil" is really, as Jimi Hendrix would say from time to time, "..blah blah woof woof."
1
Google Quant.com. European-based search engine. Thank me later.
@Citizen
it's actually qwant.com
They do? Since when?
Why this guy was given a free platform by the NYT I don't know. Just say no to Google. It can be done. If you can't at least press your representatives to rein it in, along with Facebook, Apple, and all the other behemoths, or you may discover exactly what kind of future Google and AI have in mind for you.
He's a liar plain and simple not to he's our enemy as well and Google has NEVER protected us which is another lie. They've been lying since they were founded and put lying into high gear after the Snowden incident where we found out that Google is the enemy.
I finally get it! By invading user privacy, Google is expressing its Great and Mighty concern for user privacy. Google is the new Wizard of Oz.
1
BALONEY! I am going on a trip soon. I have made some of my reservations using gmail. Now when I open the Google search app miraculously “news” articles about my destination are displayed before I even enter a search. Google knows about my trip and is trying to sell me stuff based on that. It’s downright creepy.
I have searched about information concerning certain watches. Now I see unsolicited ads offering to sell me those watches. I have searched about certain art works. Sure enough, I get unsolicited ads on unrelated searches offering to sell me art like the art I previously enquired about.
Google’s claim that it protects users’ privacy is a gross distortion. It knows what you care about. If you use Waze or Google maps it knows where you live and who you are and it targets you accordingly. Big brother IS watching you and if anyone believes that your privacy is not for sale then you’re just the kind of sucker that Google and Facebook use to make their billions.
4
As soon as I heard "mission statement" you lost me.
Can I have mine back?
19
Of particular concern is that the data Google obtains ares combined with data from the real world such as data from credit card statements, retail store rewards cards, and whatever data are available to improve behavioral predictions. And now the plan is to extend the data haul to the internet of things. Already most TVs for sale are smart TVs meaning that they are being used for obtaining behavioral data. And this extends to monitoring devices that are worn to obtain physiological data. And recently there have been reports of facial recognition software being employed. It certainly sounds like the US is turning into a surveillance society nightmare which people are actually buying into with the promise that it will optimize their lives. People seem to be willing to give control of their lives over to the algorithms of capitalists all for the sake of optimization. It all sounds like science fiction but it is actually occurring at rapid speed.
2
NYT - Why did you let the CEO of Google write an uncritical advertisement for his company which stays in business by selling our data? I thought this was the Privacy Project. Google cannot survive without our information. There were so many things even the most basic reporter could have pushed back on. Why isn't privacy the default for google products; why is it something that has to be opted into? If Google prides itself on the availability of Search, why did they work with China to make a censored search engine? This is really infuriating.
238
@Kentucky Female Doc: Technically, from everything I've read and what this article says, I don't believe the sell data. Meaning they don't give your data over to some other party and get a payment for it. However, they do monetize your data by serving up ads based on what the data they have collected about you. That is how they earn revenue to offer you the services for free.
5
“NYT - Why did you let the CEO of Google write an uncritical advertisement for his company which stays in business by selling our data? I thought this was the Privacy Project.” I agree. I’m on the founding team of a little known startup in beta called Goaloop, now a client of Yale Law School’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Clinic, and among our founding motivations to build Goaloop was privacy concerns. We convened a privacy panel before we deployed a line of code, and have welcomed the public’s involvement since. Goaloop’s model reconciles that we humans often want privacy for ourselves yet transparency from others. 98% of our users have verified identities. We are pre-revenue, and know that when we do generate revenue, it will be because of our community and we therefore are committed to seeing Goaloopers profit with us. This is only right. In many ways, Goaloop’s team is a proxy for the public, building a solution for the public’s ‘disharmony’ with modern technology. Our entire platform can be seen as an extensive conscientious objection to society’s present relationship with digital technology – including on use of private data.
Goaloop helps you reach your goals and connects the world through goals. Got a goal? Goaloop it! Like YouTube is for videos, and Amazon is for products, Goaloop is for goals.
NYT, will you please allow me to author an opinion piece as well? I’m the CEO/Founder + Site Architect of Goaloop. Many on our team have connections to Columbia University.
2
It seems like most of the commenters here are surprised to find that Google isn't a charity or funded by tax dollars.
By some estimates, a subscription to Google's services would run over $200/year in order to offset the advertising revenue. My guess is that the same people complaining about Google's advertising practices would balk at having to instead pay such a fee.
I think it's hard for some to remember the world before things like YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Docs (and even Facebook) permeated our lives, and now everyone feels entitled to them. But were Thanos to snap his fingers and disappear all of these things, then the same folks that were complaining about their data being used to target ads would beg for things to go back to how they were.
5
I’m pleased to see that Google would like to see a US version of GDPR privacy controls. But can we really believe that they would not try to shape these to their own advantage? And, Google, why wait until this is legislated?
Why not institute one change immediately: the right to be forgotten. Make it simple to remove every bit of data about yourself from searches, from Google’s ad business and analytics. Do that, and we’ll start to believe you really care about privacy.
3
yes privacy shouldn't be a luxury good. every company should take it serious ...
at the end of the day it is a business model question. Apple sell you a product, for Google you (the user) are the product. this has nothing to do with luxury, it is about how you design how you make money as a company.
3
Extraordinarily too little, extraordinary too late. Mr. Pichai and his twins, the Google founders, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Mr. Dorsey at Twitter, and upgrade genius Tim Cook of Apple own the world's future and all of these companies had no early plan about what would happen to us if their products dominated our lives with such rapid speed. The goods are great - fantastic. The problems they have created are societal dystopian and in Facebook's case, led to murder in Asia and political havoc in the US. Each time these men speak, they come across as one-dimensional business savants with little all-around knowledge of the world - they don't speak of art and literature or ideas, except for the insipid insights by Mr. Dorsey on meditation or something equally vapidly approached and passed as experienced "wisdom." Even if the entire world disarmed and violence miraculously ended, we are all slaves to their products and it feels like a nightmare episode of "Dark Mirror."
2
@CarlenDay The products themselves, like Facebook, led to murder in SE Asia? Mmmmm, I think the people firing the guns and setting off bombs led to murder. Speech is not the problem.
The future of the internet/computers, problems such as privacy/surveillance, continued developments in biological science/genetic engineering, and projected psychological fate of humanity?
Probably only the cutting edge of technology/science and personnel of the highest security (closely guarded intelligence) within the most advanced nations are getting a glimpse of the fate of humanity in a technological/biological sense, but they certainly must be shocked at this point by the psychological changes which will occur, as the whole point of the most closely guarded intelligence is to preserve a realm A from penetration by a realm B by any and all means, which in our era already means advanced surveillance, advanced reality alteration, mutual attempts to entirely disorient and control, with result that (eventually and by progression) it becomes absurd to speak of preserving any fixed point of conception/material reality in time/space and humanity is hurled into a confusing reality improvising project from moment to moment.
Plenty of SF novels and films already hint at the issue, Bester's Stars My Destination, Budry's Rogue Moon, films such as the Truman Show and the Matrix. Probably society will come to approximate a person on threshold of powerful psychedelic experience, millions desperate to control/preserve little ego, while others, those like spies and artists and elite military personnel will adapt to a free floating, unfixed, constant change, creative state of mind.
Besides living in France where I actually must agree in a active and positive way to the cookies on every non-EU Web site I visit, I make use of ad blockers and information tracking gob-stoppers. They all work within limits. You have to update them occasionally like all software. Sometimes you have to over-ride them to access the sites you're visiting, and you can do this on a site-by-site basis. Also, you can use alternate secure, non-tracking search engines like DuckDuckGo. You can use browsers which are more secure and on which information you provide is encrypted. A simple search will lead you to them, and they're free, just like Firefox. I highly recommend this action. It may serve to make you feel less victimized by the social-media-search-data hoovers. I do not use Facebook or other social media sites in any active way. Their downsides became obvious almost instantaneously, and I quit after brief dalliances.
1
You collect data and aggregate it. You sell some of it, with personally identifying information removed, in theory. Yet the full set of data exists and you have been hacked in the past. You have failed to put safeguards in place to prevent your own employees from accessing this data, in the past. You ask me to believe that some future regulations, passed by a government that has exposed my personal data, in the past, and implemented by you, with a bad track record, will somehow give me confidence that you are doing the right thing. You sir, should try starting a religion, because that much faith operates outside the bounds of logic.
4
Let me "Google that for you!" Hey Campers! Try these search strings:
google sells email data
google sells my search history
google has been hacked
Then try the same search strings on a search engine that is not Google.
3
@Mark McGee
Great suggestion. I did, and it's very revealing.
1
I love google. I just don’t trust it.
22
@alec:
You may not realize it, but not trusting it isn't enough.
Even if you don't trust Google, it's knows nearly everything about you -- using only two of their products: an Android phone, and their Chrome browser. With both, they know the GPS location of EVERYTHING/EVERYONE in your life, from your dentist's and pediatrician's and gynecologist's info, what bed you sleep in (and affairs you're spouse had, if they slept in more than one bed), where you work, what places you frequent during lunchtime, who your friends are, where they live, how much you earn/they earn/your house values, who you hate (whomever you've blocked), everything you've bought online (your shoe size, if you searched for shoes?), where you buy groceries, what car you drive (by the dealership you visit or dealer websites/searches you've run), who your family are, where they live (addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, anniversaries). They know your SSN (and those of your family) since you have to enter it online for many transactions, all of your credit card and banking info (if you do any buying/banking online)...
In fact, not trusting them doesn't really matter.
Google doesn't care.
Because they have everything they need from you, without you ever disclosing much. There's very little the average user can keep private from them.
11
We get to use Google services for free. If we do not want to be tracked, we have a choice DO NOT USE them. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Companies are there to make money for their shareholders otherwise they would not exist. Would you prefer to pay $100 per month to use the best search engine available? Furthermore, I appreciate ads targeted to what I want rather than random ads as it saves me a lot of time. I would be totally against government control - especially with a President and his base who think he is above the law.
2
It’s so simple, isn’t it, Mr. Pichai? We let you have our data... and you can use it forever, worldwide, for any profitable purpose, without paying us or even telling us how you’re using our data, let alone giving us any control. Even after we close our google account, you retain all those rights. Storage is _cheaper_ than dirt, so we know you save everything. That’s Google’s policy on our photos and likely everything thing else you take from us. Such a good man you are.
3
@Me Did someone make you use Google?
1
So who protects us from Google?
3
Pichai's noble-sounding plea reminds me of the tobacco companies' C.E.O.s' testimony before Congress regarding cigarette safety. When it comes to corporate credibility, every generation of consumers unfortunately seems to need to rediscover the wheel.
As long as people are willing to buy snake oil, there will be other people profitably selling it. Caveat emptor !!
Which begs the question: why in the world does the Times give all this free ad space to Google? It's not like Google can't afford to get "its message" out and pay for the space, or that Sundar Pichai is the victim of a concerted effort by the government to restrict his free speech rights. Maybe he's somebody's brother-in-law.
5
No, this is all PR.
Google is an advertising company and Android is an advertising platform.
When you do not pay for it, you are the product.
7
Please tell us Mr. Pichai why so many in your industry keep their children away from the products you sell to all of us. As you well know, invasion of privacy is not the only issue. Add to that, device addiction, gaming addiction, manipulative algorithms, bots, and so on. In many ways y’all are worse the than the dope pedaling Sackler family.
4
Even ignoring the privacy roasting (I won't add to what almost every other comment is on here) I find that accessible to everyone hilarious.
Where are Google apps on my Desktop Gaming PC? Where were Google apps on Windows Phone? On Swordfish OS? On Amazon Fire Hardware?
I can rely on Microsoft's software because Office, Outlook, OneDrive and so on truly are wherever I need them, whenever I need them. How can Google claim accessibility when they exclude devices and ecosystems (and those who prefer to use them)? This article stinks of lies and covering one's backside amongst recent privacy scandal, I sense no honesty here.
1
My goodness between google and Facebook we have nothing to fear. These companies are protecting your privacy and we just don’t realize it. The public is perceived as ATM ‘s who exist to enhance the shareholders of Google, Facebook.
The Europeans are not playing the American capitalism / legislative game of do nothing but going after these stealers of our privacies.
Hopefully one day America wakes up and holds these technologies accountable to ensure that the privacy of American people are no longer the property of these companies and the world.
We are all sick and tired of the tech CEO’s ,continual flow of lies and how they are going to do better.
Europe has seen the light I pray we do before we can’t ever get our privacy back
1
Google does not protect my information, it steals it. Google removed all the names from my carefully scanned old family pictures and placed the names of long dead relatives in my phone. Google gave my private information to Face Book. Google's business is to take private information and trade or sell it to other companies or use it itself. I find this business model disgusting.
book
2
Two plus two equals five. Got it.
3
I am certain the level of "privacy" I have on Google goods is far less than yours, Mr. Pichai.
1
Yesterday I sat through a sales pitch on targeting. It was harrowing. Since 2017 marketers can target you based on everywhere you have been and everything you've ever watched, clicked, called, posted, bought and now even spoken about. You are targeted by what you like, what you dislike, your political inclination.
This information is tied to you, your SSN, your address, phone number, where you work. It's hidden behind a personal ID number, not your name, but all your information.
When it is purchased by a company, an intermediary trades the buyers PID for the sellers PID (that PID is you). The buyer uses algorithms to find you and inundate you with messages tailored to who you are, not just as a consumer, but as a person.
Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, ATT, Verizon, they all sell their data to make this very personal targeting robust and intrusive.
These industries have been unregulated for way too long, both as media companies and data warehouses.
2
It's not at all odd that with releases of public relations statements like this that you trust Google less.
1
Oh please, stop with the lies. Google, like all corporations is in business for one purpose, to make money. If you're concerned about the privacy of individuals, stop gathering information and offering it for sale. The solution is simple, change your business model to protect the privacy of individuals rather than exploit it.
3
Remember when google's motto was "Don't be evil"? Seems like somewhere over the last 20 years the they decided to drop the "don't."
3
The worse part of this discourse is that Mr Pichai actually believes the dribble he is feeding us.
Google does not need data from users, but it is a voyeur who is forever hanging on my shoulders... without my permission, without any right and sees, locates and traces what I do, who I email, what clothes I buy, what news articles I read, what literature I read... all the time pretending to better my world.
I do not need that from you Google, I don't.
So stop pretending.
2
Well, it certainly is nice to know that Mister Pichai's Google is protecting my information.
Of course, that doesn't explain why after I did a recent Google search for slippers, I got a two-week flood of online ads for shoes.
Nothing makes you feel more secure about your privacy than Google telling (read: selling) interested companies what I search for.
And though Pichai wrote that "Privacy must be equally available to everyone in the world," he didn't mean that it would entail Google giving anyone –anyone at all– any actual privacy.
________
"Now I ain't one to gossip, so you didn't hear this from me."
-- Benita Butrell, from In Living Color
4
He says he will do something. The doctored photograph seems real. His words? Not so much. But I give him the benefit of doubt. Let us see what google does.
1
I feel so lied to by Google when I read this article and compare it to the one the NYTimes wrote a about two weeks ago about Sensorvault.
The NYTimes wrote "a Google database called Sensorvault — a trove of detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide"
Ref: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorvault-location-tracking.html
3
“We watch you to keep you safe.” -Big Brother.
4
my data is being sold and tracked with every click i take
1
People commenting on this article should disclose the phone they use. If it’s an iPhone then I can freely pass their comments by.
1
Please invite the Electronic Frontier Foundation to give a rebuttal.
Google (and Google AI) is the entity that I want privacy from.
1
This opinion piece is a weird tangled bit of hypocrisy.
In paragraph 3, the assertion “everyone defines privacy in their own way”. However, in paragraphs 5&6 (to paraphrase) “Google decides what privacy is for everyone”.
In paragraph 9: “…data makes the products and services you use more helpful to you.” Really? Who gave Google the right to decide what is helpful to me?
In paragraph 10: “a small subset of data helps serve ads that are relevant and that provide the revenue that keeps Google products free and accessible.” Boy is that an understatement. Google’s ad business is wildly profitable. In fact, Google /Alphabet makes almost no substantial money from anything else. It makes enough money that it can pay high level executive sex offenders with millions of dollars while at the same expecting that no one outside of Google/Alphabet is going to notice.
“The choice is yours and we try to make it simple.” Tell that to your Chinese customers you are helping the Chinese government to control with project Dragonfly.
3
Ironic that the Times has this feature op-Ed about privacy protections and its front page story today is about Trump’s leaked (stolen?) tax returns.
1
After watching the recent 60 Minutes segment on ransomware attacks, which now seem poised to start appearing on your smart phone, I’m reassessing my whole relationship to digital tech. The class action suit, just announced against major telecoms, for selling your location data, is a bridge too far for me. Discussing this with my sister, I said, “I’m about ready to wipe my iPhone, except for photos, camera, and Notes, buy a flip phone, and get a Garmin GPS for my old truck.” If two Iranians can launch a massive ransomeware attack against businesses and municipalities, even by just renting the software on the dark web, what happens when the power of quantum computing elevates all this exponentially. Quantum even has the power to decrypt encryption software. This goes beyond just privacy. What happens when you see a skull and crossbones on your smart phone and “they” want $500 (in bitcoin) to unlock it.....with no guarantee they won’t do it again, or that someone else will do it. I don’t want that to happen even once.
2
Tech CEOs lie to themselves and then to us.
2
Everyone in this comments section sounds like complete hypocrites. Everyone of you uses Google's Maps application to get home, YouTube to entertain or enlighten yourselves on any subject you choose, and Chrome to navigate to this very web page and spew your vitriol at Sundar's obviously heartfelt call for privacy legislation that strikes the right balance.
Surely even us average folk without the kind of disposable income to buy a Secure Enclave, T2 security chip and the phone that goes with it deserve a chance at living an online life that gives us as many opportunities as those to the manner born? And that's what Google gives us in my opinion.
Google democratizes life online for the have nots of us, who nonetheless needs to have a smartphone to communicate with loved ones, employers, government bureaucracies and anyone else that we depend on to get through every day.
Good on you Sundar, for laying things out in a way that demonstrates in stark relief just how unfair life online can be, and how Google is trying to do something about it.
85
@Jay
I totally disagree with your sentiment. Surveillance Capitalism and the GWOT came up into the world together and both have gone too far.
The false dilemma between privacy and function is a consequence of deliberate engineering decisions. This tech literally feeds off the have-nots.
18
@David This is true, but what are you suggesting as a solution? I think the main risk of all this is whether control of data falls into autocratic hands. Even if Google has genuine good intentions, which I think it does at this point, if the U.S. government becomes a full-on dictatorship (Trump would love to lead one), or is subverted even more than it has been by malefactors in Russia, China, Saudi, etc. autocrats will hold Inquisition II. Putting control of Google's services in government hands, as one person suggested, wouldn't help because it would only make it easier for the autocrat to use. To me corruption is at the root of all autocracies, thus whatever we can do to create a society that does not condone corruption is what we can do to enable the internet to be more good than evil and stay that way. Be cynical all you want, but frankly the internet has given us a lot of benefits, let's try to keep them.
11
@Jay
The "average folk" need to learn to bargain harder, and not accept a lousy deal because they don't have a high income. Google offers great benefits (and makes fabulous amounts of money in the process). That doesn't mean Google gets to invade our privacy with impunity. We can get the benefits at a lower cost courtesy of a bit of effective regulation.
In times past, a king or feudal lord could demand the right to sleep with a bride on her wedding night. No doubt, he offered the serfs some benefits, but that was a lousy deal. The serfs eventually revolted. Time to revolt again.
5
Gee, Sundar, is that why YouTube keeps a list of every video I clicked on and whether I watched it or not, going back literally years? Is it why it is impossible to email Google or get a phone or snail mail contact? Because you think elites like you and your advertising marks like me deserve the same privacy?
"You can view YouTube as a logged-in user or in Incognito mode." Yup, and you bleed together the preferences and suggestions between the two, which makes it difficult to believe you have an algorithm that asks itself, "What would this user want to watch if we knew who he was?" and has no idea about the logged-in user data?
"You can view YouTube as a logged-in user or in Incognito mode." Yup, and if you purchase an e-book from Google Books, it doesn't give you a choice, it permanently stores your credit card information whether you want it to or not, and the sales information and it hasn't heard of Incognito mode since Google Play first started.
The New York Times needs to police their op-ed pages for free advertisements posing as opinion columns. Especially when they have so many "collaborations" with Google to do cool video and charting pieces they put on a page called "News" where they aren't supposed to be in the pocket of their business partners.
So far, "The Privacy Project" has been a total bust. Nothing that couldn't be learned in 20 minutes on Ars Technica, and lots of opportunities for junior lawyers to get their names on a non-peer reviewed "article".
2
Oh, I get it. *Now* privacy is the concern, many many years after the damage has already been done. Privacy could have been the main issue 15 years ago, but mega-bucks beckoned, and the silicon wiz kids were all too eager to find new ways to collect and sell our data, as we were mostly unaware, or lied to.
Sorry Google, you *are* evil.
5
Right, I am not even sure what to say to that. It's like Trump saying "There is no collusion. It's all a witch hunt!"
22
Google's model is fundamentally opposed to privacy–your information is their life-blood. Of course they will try to spin themselves as good stewards of your data–they really don't have an option.
It's a bad business model at its core. Just because they make really good software doesn't mean the trade-offs are worth it.
2
Whitewash! With Google (and Facebook and ATT and Verizon and so on), privacy is only for those who have the time, patience and technical savvy to navigate the maze of privacy setting. Until privacy is an opt-OUT and not an opt-IN feature, it will remain a luxury.
4
oops, by "opt-IN" I mean their default settings, not "opt-in to keeping things private"
Then Show me my file Google. Show me my Google dossier. And btw even if you choose not to receive targeted ads, Google is still collecting the same info. They just aren't showing you targeted ads. So you'll feel better but it's illusory.
4
@M You can do that yourself via this link - https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en
But you don't protect our privacy. You've sold our information off to the highest bidder at every turn. To you, we aren't really customers, we are the product. Advertisers are your customers and when push comes to shove and competing wants/needs clash, you're siding with the folks who pay the bills.
In other words, this is damage control because people's trust in you has eroded as they better understand what Google is all about.
7
Who cares what google thinks?
The basic problem is a question of property rights: who owns personal information? Um, how about the person whose information it is.
Google and the other tech companies have no more right to a voice on data privacy, than tobacco companies on whether smoking causes cancer. They are systemically incapable of truth at this point.
It's insane to let Google and all other companies determine their own "privacy policies". We need to strengthen the laws surrounding data and privacy.
Here's a start: Personal information is personal property.
Google, like all other information merchants, simply assume ownership, because there is no way to stop them.
Like 'Climate change' and other externalities, personal data is seen as 'free for the taking', and only justified after the fact.
5
So Pichai has joined Zuckerberg in publicly respecting individual privacy while his company and others in the data sales business make billings by slicing, dicing and selling your data and even recording conversations with family members in the privacy of your on home. The only way to truly guarantee your privacy is to opt out of predatory "services" that are too intrusive.
4
I have to applaud Google for any steps it takes to guard data and support privacy. Let's give them the full benefit of the doubt (for argument). The fundamental principle is what concerns me -- expressed in the claim that Google tech products "...take the friction out of daily life..."
Here's the problem. Friction is a necessary affordance for our interaction with the world. What happens when life gets too slippery? Why aren't we asking about the premise that less friction is necessarily better?
Less friction means you can drive social movement with fake news... Until you get a lunatic shooting up a pizzeria demanding to see the baby-killing cult in the non-existing basement.
Less friction means you wait for information to come to you, and lose the drive to pull it in yourself. Your "searches" identify your "interests" and build an internet bubble around your intellectual life... a feedback loop that fuels isolation, cultish tribalism, and shouting in favor of dialogue.
Less friction means organizations and hackers can more easily exploit the data that drives this ecosystem. Exploitation ranges from identity theft to grand social manipulation that would make propagandists of the past blush.
If you think the Russians are the only people out there trying to manipulate your world view, think again... If you can muster the friction to perform that kind of exercise.
5
I’ll know that the Google and Facebook guys are serious about privacy when they make NOT storing my personal data the DEFAULT instead of the opposite.
9
I want to know what privacy steps google employees use.
5
"Google products are designed to be helpful."
~Whilst being surreptitiously invasive.
"They take the friction out of daily life and give you back time to spend on things you actually want to do."
~In exchange for exploiting your digitized identity or make unfair use of for it for their own benefit.
Mr. Pichai spins an uplifting and delightful picture of a organization striving for platinum level corporate citizenship; In which user privacy is continuously welded into its product suites and launches. Were you, the user matter, you really do; and your digital foot prints are a mere by-products of your activities.
The article spin is an illusory. It is pretense assembled on untruths and deception. Only three things matter to Google. 1.The users uninterrupted consumption of the 'your privacy matters to us' kool-aid concoction; 2. Their precise methods of monetizing your digital identity to its fullest. 3. Increasing Ad revenue and lifting global/ regional user numbers across product lines.
Sad. As former employee of the company that espoused a motto of honor and integrity... "Don't be evil". Is now gone. .
Not long ago, big tech lauded innovation; now the playbook is scorched earth tactics domination of the tech landscape; And out of public view are the behind scenes battles between tech behemoths battling for your digital soul, resulting in the collateral economic and social rubble that are sure to come of it.
4
This is straight up propaganda, many false or misleading claims here. Google's business model requires that they collect more and more behavioral data that we generate, with their ultimate goal being full information awareness about us so they can predict what we're going to do now, soon and in the future. Any notion that they have privacy in mind is a complete lie, and totally counter to their entire business model and their extraction imperative.
Google popularized the Surveillance Capitalism business model, starting a massive way of companies invading your privacy. Giving Google a platform to talk about privacy is like giving Exxon a platform to talk about climate change.
7
The main insight I draw from reading this essay and then most of the reader comments is that we are suffering the death of trust. Whether that is completely warranted or not, the fact is that our society is predicated on some level of trust, some level of common purpose, some level of shared responsibility for one another. If we lose that, and each day it appears to slip further from our grasp, we have lost everything. What could possibly be worth that?
8
I’ve been amazed to see the recent paranoid mobs attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and Google. In all the fevered furor I’ve yet to see proof that any person has been harmed by intentional, or even unintentional, actions. All the outrage regarding privacy seems to boil down to advertisers showing items of special interest to me. Sorry outraged folks, I don’t feel damaged and I’m grateful to take advantage of Google and Facebook’s freely available services (Microsoft, not so much).
In fact, the main motivation for these attacks seems to be hatred for anyone who makes money.
4
I left every single Google service almost one year ago, moving to more privacy-driven ones.
There are a tons out there, from ProtonMail to Searx, they’re as good as the G branded version. Even better I dare to say.
Living Google-free feels better, trust me.
6
@Alex I know what you mean when you say you an survive without google services. However consumers like us don't realize that google servers are being used and we can rarely even use the internet without letting the big tech giants from collecting some data about is.
https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500
1
A full-page ad for Google services (which I use every day) with thoughtful reassurances mixed in. I was expecting more from the chief executive.
6
I suspect that all of those clicks we can supposedly make to delete our data or change our privacy settings are like placebos, or the close door/open door buttons on an elevator. They’re just for show.
4
Until there’s enough public will to hold them to account.
2
As a local guide working for Google Maps I’m aware that Google tracks your location to provide the best possible experience with accurate directions. Giving information to Google requires trust. If they used your information for another purpose the company would go out of business.
1
We keep track of your every move, every web site you visit, your every click or its absence, and we know every physical location you've ever been to, but trust us, we do it for the greater good. You won't be harmed, and your information will be safe with us. Really, we mean it. Just trust us.
The Privacy Project summarized.
20
If you ask GOOGLE to take into account consumers concern/reservation and integrate that into their future products .... they can't , they are unable. They can't articulate because people as well textbook minded as Sundar can't think outside of the box they are welded into the textbooks that taught them. It is this hard headed culture beat into our people from our part of the World bring to USA.
On the other hand GOOGLE's success is on chance of being at the right place at right time with investors willing to trust them.
So any concern that consumers have with the way GOOGLE and Facebook acquire their users information will fall on deaf ears.
It is another startup at the right time and right place with investors willing to trust them will bring about the change not GOOGLE not Facebook.
5
Google, Facebook and the other platforms whose business models are based on surveillance-honed targeted advertising are would be diagnosed as suffering from Sociopathic Personality Disorder if actual persons.
What would you call a "buddy" who offers to be your best friend, a virtual Boswell who observing and recording all of your actions, knows you better than you know himself. He promises to do all kinds of great stuff for you (and some of that is really attractive), but he also ways, "by the way, hope you don;t mind, I'll be using what I know about to help other people who don;t have your interest in mind to get you to do stuff that's actually against your interests."
You'd rightly call him a sociopath.
7
Are we to believe that a company that deals in death as an ambitious partner to the US Government's drone programme, is entirely benevolent?
9
More importantly, can we trust a company that benefits from a close relationship with the government to then then them away when your data is wanted.
Pure misdirection written by a team of writers in PR and wetted by company lawyers.
Issues that will haunt the company are censorship, manipulating search results, undeclared in kind contributions worth tens of if not hundreds of millions dollars to the Democrats, and loosing all semblance of neutrality the same way news outlets have.
Republicans will retaliate by taking away legal protections in regard to content and forcing a choice between being a publisher and search and platform service provider. To avoid that fate Google needs to tip the scales during elections which will feed the vicious cycle.
5
This is a thoroughly disingenuous article. Google has been dragged kicking and screaming toward a partial and grudging respect for privacy. Sharing data with third parties isn't the issue. It is sharing data with Google that is the problem.
I haven't tried the "one-click access to privacy settings" that the author tells us was introduced just last week. I do know that attempting to set privacy settings in the past has been a multi-hour exercise, with most of the time spent trying to find them. My first attempt only covered one category of ads. There was a second category hidden from view.
I also know that Google maps nags me to enable collection of personal information and I know that just this week I have been sent two emails from Google directing me to use the Gmail app on my phone instead of the third party app that I have been using. That Google monitors my application use and uses that monitoring as a basis for spamming me with ads for their application is offensive to me. I chose the third party application solely to limit (every so slightly) the information that Google has on me.
Sundar Pichai is spinning furiously as a response to public disquiet about privacy in the hope that Google can fend off serious government regulation by pretending to care about privacy. Years of demonstrated contempt for user privacy mean that no one should take the current professed concern for privacy seriously. Google will respect privacy to the extent that it is forced to, and no more.
18
Data Science has become the newest Science. By definition, Science is organized knowledge and anyone who is for advancing science should support science. Not so fast. We would all like to protect our information or more often information that one has acquired by research or by paying someone else for acquiring it. Can we take take Sundy's (Sundar Pichai) words of promise and defense of Google's intentions at face value?
Google has become the foremost search engine that most humans go to find answers and gain information for most of the time and while most information is fairly accurate there is also a lot of misleading information and objectionable unsubstantiated information which I call "Google garbage" that Google has no easy way to clear out. Wikipedia on the other hand is more responsive to removing garbage information.
It takes 2 to tango. Part of the responsibility of protecting personal information and how it is used remains with individuals whose information could be compromised. For that reason people have become reluctant to even acquire information and have lost trust in Google and Facebook and 23and Me (DNA testing and analysis). A Google search suggests a connection between Google and 23andMe. To those not familiar with 23andMe, it was co-founded in 2006 by Wojcicki, who at the time was dating Google co-founder Sergey Brin. I advocate 23andMe for getting information about genetic predisposition to many diseases but only if privacy can be protected.
3
I like google products. They're well designed and easy to use. But reading this article makes me wonder, why do people feel comfortable asking a corporation questions they wouldn't even ask their friends?
6
Sadly, the answer is that the corporation is more likely to give reliable information without judging you.
1
Perhaps better education on privacy would help the under-educated.
They are being taken advantage of by the tech-companies. But the question is how to educatie one-self in this complex world where there is no time to go deeper into important issues.
Knowledge and understanding of privacy on the internet seems to be fro a happy few and a vast majority is far too busy surviving day to day problems, diverting attention to not to complex forms of entertainment.
4
Privacy on the internet and in general the psychological challenges humanity faces with development of technology of communications to point of telepathy, reality manipulation, and of course surveillance?
It appears to me humanity faces an extraordinary psychological challenge with all these technological developments, a psychological challenge which perhaps in the long run favors those who have weathered severe mental illness, secret agents who operate under duress, all outsiders of society (artists, scientists, dissidents) and freethinking people who are used to reflecting that their thoughts and actions have a high probability of being considered problematic to the people around them, yet soldier on knowing that not only are they probably watched but that any number of efforts are made to distort the reality around them.
But in the short run these developments appear to favor those with an obsessive focus on wealth and power, with careful and social climbing thought, speech and action, and with a paranoid, controlling mentality. Psychological states and precursors to these developments appear to be all highly stressful thought/action situations such as dogfighting an aircraft where framework of thought and reality itself constantly shifts and there is not ever a fixed, permanent point of rest. Naturally it appears to be with all these challenges any number of efforts are being made to assure the public that it exists in a state of perfect and happy harbor of thought.
This entire opinion piece demonstrates that Silicon Valley operates in a vast echo chamber, reinforced and affirmed by all the monetary rewards. Pichai hasn't figured out that surveillance capitalism is the problem, and the damage it can create is not mitigated by empty claims of 'working the same for everyone'. It is stunning to consider that Mr. Pichai's opinion likely passed through several Google PR and legal people before submission.
11
Apple is still miles ahead... and it got there without doing what Google has done.
Don’t confuse ‘privacy’ with a lack of data collection. Google is only going to get worse with collection. Oh, and the stakes for a security breach are going to be even higher.
9
And that largely makes the point, doesn’t it: Apple is for those who can afford the products.
1
You think there is a free lunch with Google or Facebook? They sell you to advertisers who jack their prices up accordingly.
That’s on top of the public’s widespread ignorance of how extensive, wide ranging and lengthy the efforts of these companies are to collect information about you and data-mine it.
It’s so simple, isn’t it? We let Google have our data and they can use it forever, worldwide, for any profitable purpose, without paying us or even telling us how they’re using our data, let alone giving us any control. Even after we close our Google account, the company retains all those rights. Storage is _cheaper_ than dirt, so we know Google saves everything. That’s Google’s terms of service on photos and likely everything thing else.
7
Anybody else see the study that found many smartphone health apps say in the terms of service they don’t share your data but were nevertheless seen sending data to Google and Facebook?
6
Regulation of Google by this Congress? Where most of the members don't know where it's money comes from, or how (or why) to use its simplest apps? As if.
4
"They take the friction out of daily life"
Speaking of privacy you'd truly take some friction out of our family if you allowed us to 'unblur' our house image. Someone maliciously requested that (and my neighbour's house too) and with robberies not uncommon here it sticks out as if owners are hiding something. We'd happily pay to have it repaired but Google never even answer let alone help.
Anybody (with zero verification) can request a blurring of anything, yet Google never assist owners with that, it's not right.
1
Mr. Pichai writes the "correct" words that may assuage many readers but not this one. There is a direct relation between the ability of Google (or any other business in the e-space) to gather data and link it to selling other products. Plain and simple.
What these companies need is tight enforceable regulations. There is no other way around it!!
6
"Google products are designed to be helpful."
~Whilst being surreptitiously invasive.
"They take the friction out of daily life and give you back time to spend on things you actually want to do."
~In exchange for exploiting your digitized identity or make unfair use of for it for their own benefit.
Mr. Pichai spins an uplifting and delightful picture of an organization striving for platinum level corporate citizenship; In which user privacy is continuously welded into its product suites and launches. Where you, the user matter, you really do; and your digital footprints are mere by-products of your activities.
The article spin is illusory. It is pretense assembled on untruths and deception. Only three things matter to Google. 1.The user's uninterrupted consumption of the 'your privacy matters to us' kool-aid concoction; 2. Their precise methods of monetizing your digital identity to its fullest. 3. Increasing Ad revenue and lifting global/ regional user numbers across product lines.
Sad. As a former insider of a company that espoused a motto of honor and integrity... "Don't be evil". Is now gone.
Not long ago, big tech lauded innovation; now the playbook calls domination with scorched earth tactics upon the tech landscape; Out of public view are the behind scenes battles between the tech behemoths battling for your digital soul; the result... collateral economic and social rubble that are sure to come of it.
7
Mr. Pichai's solemn promises to keep our data safe may all be true. But the real problem is the enormous accumulation of data in the hands of a single operator like Google. Google can change its privacy policies overnight and not tell anyone or the company could be sold to people who have other ideas, or government could force Google to share its data. We have no protection against that. The real intelligence lies not in amassing huge reservoirs of data but how they are used and by whom. One has a disquieting feeling that the eventual outcome of that will not be positive for us human beings. I have flashed my phone with a completely different operating system to avoid both Google and Apple bigbrothering on me.
8
Here's the thing -- google can offer what it provides at some amount of less profit -- if it does charge (guess like youtube premium). But it won't because the power from ads and their targeting is too strong...both for google and advertisers. It's a publicly traded corporation. It pays its employees in stock and it relies on quarterly profit growth to be successful. Selling our data has gotten it to be very much so. Note, even in the byline it states "Yes, we use data to make products more helpful...." It would have been nice if he said "your" data....if they viewed it like that. Listen, the larger issue the vast majority of the public could care less that this level of data mining is happening because of the convenience it brings. I actually like targeted ads as they are more useful!
3
@Cool Dude
Good points there. I'd gladly pay for Gmail or Street View for greater functionality and control.
2
In a perfect world (to some folks) we would only see ads for the things that we want and the advertisers will never know who we are.
But, the problem is not the lack of privacy; the damage is that there is a whole industry built the feeling of "wanting." We see an ad. We want it. So, we buy it. There is a short spike or pleasure. And then the letdown.
I used to be a creative coder in the ad business. It was incredibly fun. We would create a kind of poetry of the thing. But, the purpose of that poem was to create a void -- a void in which to fill with a product.
Now, imagine being exposed to thousands of ads every day. thousands of feelings of emptiness to be filled by product. Every. Single. Day.
Privacy is a rather new invention. We used to live in tribes where everybody knew what each other is doing. But, now someone, I don't know, can target my deepest fears and insecurities to get me to do something, which makes them some money, but makes me feel worse. It does not matter if they know my name or not. The damage will be done.
What is amazing to me is that I can be perfectly anonymous and still have my privacy violated.
9
@Iko - lol, I think you give commercials/ads way too much credit. As soon as one pops up, I hit mute. I give everything a thumbs down and if I have to answer any question, I make everything up as we go along.
If you were to track me online you would find that I am a black white male female straight gay person of color who identifies as transgender who has a degree but does not and speaks at least three languages. I met myself in a bar one night - didn't even recognize me.
3
Beware complex regulatory legislation endorsed by Google, Facebook, or the like. If they like it, it isn't doing anything to fundamentally hurt their unethical business model.
Probably, it will be worse than that: by being burdensome and complex, small competitors will struggle to stay compliant while Google and Facebook can easily check all the boxes. This is called regulatory capture.
What we really need is legislation that they would hate. We should make it illegal to target ads and amplify addictive behavior by tracking individual users.
4
I want the chance to not opt in for the chance to have them sell me something I do not want,rather than having to opt out when I do not want my information shared.
2
The fundamentally most important issue underpinning this article is that people the world over, not just Americans, still pretend to themselves that there ever can be such a thing as a secure, private internet.
The tech companies, with almost universal government connivance (ironically, some partial exceptions in autocracies), profitably go about the business of selling heroin to junkies, candy to infants. And no more than telling a little kid that lots of candy is bad for her or a junkie that heroin is bad for him, will telling people the internet can never be secure, private, or reliably honest change their addiction to it, especially regarding (anti)social media, the fentanyl of the internet.
How many people who vehemently condemn interference in American elections, especially that of Russia, through phony online stories and ads, as well as through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and the like, nonetheless use and proclaim their indignation on these very same platforms, thus contributing to their "legitimacy" and profitability? At the least, one might hope that junkies, whether drug or electronic, would acknowledge their responsibility as enablers of the addiction peddlers and the carnage they create.
As Tom Lehrer aptly sang decades ago:
"They give the kids free samples,
Because they know full well,
That today's young innocent faces,
Will be tomorrow's clientele."
7
@Steve Fankuchen I don't think you're alone in seeing the hypocrisy. Most people use these platforms because, well, everyone else does, so if you want to communicate, it's the easiest and most effective way to do it.
So I'm a bit more optimistic, as I think there's pent-up demand for two kinds of solutions: (1) legislation, not the kind Sundar Pichai wants, but the kind that make existing business models illlegal; and (2) alternative platforms that are built around improving human discourse and are treated as a public good, not as a mechanism for making money, a la Wikipedia.
6
I'm old enough to recall the anon internet.
Don't backup work or personal phone books into The Cloud. My Gmail address is throwaway. Personal email and domain on rented server. I've no illusion of privacy, but I'm not willingly giving Google my life in exchange for "free" email.
I was not surprised when stories came out saying Google Home and Alexa had microphones always on. Really ? The only more insidious thing was the Alexa commercial where Daddy leaves college student the speaker in her room in case she needs anything. There are still a few ways to limit your exposure. The internet has become TV but targeted. I miss the older internet, where you needed some money and some smarts to be there. Now the street has Samsung and intelligence is replaced by carnival barkers
3
@Casey - I am still spooked out thinking that KellyAnne Conway could be watching me in my kitchen through my microwave. I always wear pants in the kitchen just in case.
4
I called the notion that privacy is a luxury good several years ago. I recognized that not only am I not interested in fostering big tech data harvesting data on my life and my family, but I am willing to pay a significant sum to ensure it doesn’t happen. Significant. By trade, I am a data focused worker at a big bank.
2
I can understand a bit if some advertising or some data collection was necessary to for the business to be profitable. But come on! Google made 8.9 billion in profits last quarter. The amount Google pays to companies like Apple for Google to be their default search engine was $7.4 billion.
By the way based on the 7.4 billion number, contrary to their advertising, Apple does not care about your privacy either.
1
Selling or using personal data to push products is not a new idea, at least in the US.
Soon after we bought our first home in 1985 (pre-internet, pre-AT&T break up) we started receiving calls from agents wanting to sell us a life insurance policy. Apparently data on new mortgages was available for sale and did not require mortgagee's consent. There was no public outcry about this invasion of privacy.
There were companies that had a databases of all US households which drew economic and demographic data from public and private sources. These companies would filter the data to satisfy the information needs of their paying customers- telemarketers and mailers of promotional material.
Advances in technology have made this process more surreptitious, extremely accurate and subject to very sophisticated analysis. "Internet of things" will make it more
pervasive.
Google is no charity. It needs to make money to sustain its R&D and deliver products and services that appear to meet non-paying users' needs quite well. Those objecting stridently should stop using Google for a week and see if they miss it. If they do, settle for a compromise. If they don't miss any of the benefits of using Google they can delete all their data and files and close their Google accounts.
If the government is drawn into this issue, the solution imposed may be worse than the problem. Remember that the current administration is rampaging to gut consumer protections in the financial services.
7
@Jerseyite
Of course they will miss Google if they stop using it for a week. Why should they then compromise? Google is fabulously profitable and will remain extremely profitable if its privacy violations are outlawed (or if, following Paul Romer's suggestion, targeted ads are taxed https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/opinion/tax-facebook-google.html).
As for the government solution being worse than the problem, that depends on who the government is. Any solution to any problem that comes from Donald Trump is likely to make the problem worse. So don't vote for Donald Trump. Vote for a liberal Democrat.
1
If you wish to know the truth about Google's commitment to your online privacy simply try to connect to Google Search from a TOR connection.
TOR is the only way to anonymously browse the Internet and Google refuses any such connections since they won't tolerate your privacy, and their loss of revenue.
11
Privacy exists in other side of Atlantic, not here, this side of pond. Lots of people will be out of business/ livelihood if we put too much importance on privacy. Still there is lots of privacy in express manner, but in implied way there is no privacy here and DON'T ASK FOR IT.
1
Reminds me of the tobacco companies' C.E.O.s testimony before Congress regarding cigarette safety. When it comes to corporate credibility, every generation of consumers unfortunately seems to need to rediscover the wheel.
As long as people are willing to buy snake oil, there will be other people profitably selling it.
4
What self-congratulatory claptrap.
I want a search engine. I want a web-based email account. I may want some other things.
What I don't want, and what I don't think most people want, is a giant corporation taking the content of my emails and my searches to construct a profile of me that they make available to advertisers trying to sell me things.
It is creepy and invasive and I hate it and so does everyone I know.
Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on need to be broken up under Anti-Trust laws and subjected to far more stringent regulation. Or else they should be nationalized and turned into public utilities.
Their current practices make them a sinister and corrosive force in this society. They must be defeated and dismantled as soon as possible.
15
@Christopher
How do you propose that the companies providing your (presumably free) search engine, web-based email account, and "other things" will make money? Do you hope they will operate as charities? Are you willing to pay a possibly-substantial subscription fee? What price would you pay for Search and Gmail if they had a completely-anonymous ads-free option?
3
@Alex I pay monthly fees to a variety of services that (mostly) are free of ads. I intentionally avoid using Google services directly but often do not have an option. Google services are not free, and if they are making money with my data, then I should get a share of it. The claim is that I get the 'free' use of their services in exchange for the data -- but I don't have an option there, do I? Now Mr. Pichai is telling me it's all for my benefit.
2
@Alex
The search engine DuckDuckGo serves up ads based on what you search for, without tracking you or maintaining a database on you. Google could easily do the same.
I am happy to pay for services. I have Gmail accounts so I can give an email address to annoying companies and websites who demand them, thus quarantining correspondence from these companies/websites from my main (non-Google) email address.
2
"We’ve worked hard to continually earn that trust by providing accurate answers and keeping your questions private." And yet it is all available to law enforcement - now being usurped by a self-serving tyrannical government, not in China but right here in the USA.
I DO NOT WANT MY DATA PROCESSED! Especially when it is being processed to target and manipulate me.
Even with paid for services, privacy violations for profit are still an added revenue supply for data companies like Google. We can't even pay for privacy. Incognito - except for those willing to pay extra for our data while in Incognito.
Google, like Facebook, stalks me everywhere I travel on the web - even if I am not using a Google service or have ever signed up for a FB account. Like recording every NY Times article I read and comment I make. It's not only customized TARGETED ads that bother me most. It is all the data that is being used and abused for other purposes behind my screen and behind my back in the real world - and not for my benefit but for someone else's. How am I supposed to delete data after it is sold or traded to a third party?
5
Agreed, it is far worse that Facebook sells your information to everyone, than Google using it to target only their own ads. Think about it.
5
@Will Hogan Ah but target ads are probes.
I specify white, male age 65, with demonstrated interests in particular medical subjects for my ads.
When a subject responds, I label him with those attributes.
Then I sell that profile to the data brokers.
So Google nominally doesn't sell its profiles except as expressed through ad targeting. But the collected information get redistributed and repurposed anyway.
4
@Will Hogan
Either way, pigs to slaughter. How ethical are the code writers who work for Google et al.? Not. Let me guess, they're all self-serving Bay Area Cultural Marxists.
Listening to the CEO of one of the most massive and lucrative data mining enterprises in history talk about privacy, is like listening to the cat talk about how much he really values canaries.
33
More of the typical obfuscation from Google. Here Pichai is trying to claim that Google makes products for us. Give me a break. Google makes products for one reason, to obtain our personal data or group data, analyze it for predicting behavior, and then sell the result to companies so they can run targeted ads. That is their business. Even if the data are aggregated there are other companies that can analyze the data to identify our personal data. It is often surprisingly easy. Google and the other companies that take our data are trying to keep what they do as secretive as possible and this article appears aimed to achieve that objective. I think it is clear that companies like Google need to be regulated but how to do so is a very complex issue and the first step for Congress should be to try to understand what companies like Google are actually doing and then once there is sufficient understanding attempt to draw up regulations. Google has hired a large team of lobbyists to fight regulations so it will be an uphill battle.
10
I was thinking back to the origins of Google and recalling, didn't they have a motto "First, be nice"?
So I searched for it (on DuckDuckGo) and discovered the motto was "Don't be Evil".
In any case, they dropped that motto a few years ago, and clearly never looked back.
11
"Legislation will help us work toward ensuring that privacy protections are available to more people around the world. But we’re not waiting for it. We have a responsibility to lead."
For that statement, Mr. Pichai deserves the comedian of the year award.
18
@Mike M Google does no evil. That's why it has one of the largest lobbying operations on K Street.
3
@Mike M
Shouldn’t it be: “Legislation [that our lobbyists will write] will help us work toward ensuring that privacy protections [as we define them into oblivion] are available to more people around the world. But we’re not waiting for it. We have a responsibility [and are entitled] to [mis]lead [the public into believing that what’s bad is good].”
1
If Google offered a paid version of Gmail where they just provide email service and do not scan my mail for serving ads or some other reason, I would subscribe. This is much easier than transitioning to my own email service and maintaining it. The same is true for FB, Twitter and other social network services. Will they do it? I doubt it but I can still dream.
Which is why I have minimized to the vanishing point the usage of FB, Twitter, reddit etc. In fact I have deleted FB and Twitter from my mobile devices.
14
The problem is There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
There are enough people out there who willingly give up their privacy for rewards, coupons, and ads that interest them - for Google and other search services to offer every service with Opt-In “I’ll disclose some info in return for providing private service to those who DON’T want records kept.
Additionally, we need to close loopholes in laws that exist now - that divide “personal” information obtained from the mythical “impersonal” PC and phone data that companies silently are able to collect due to the inherently insecure nature of the ‘net.
Most PCs and phones have but one user. Therefore, the idea that the net ID burned into every network-capable machine, and the address one connects to a site from is not personal is about as accurate as saying fingerprints aren’t personal.
It is time for legislation saying no Internet service provider or web site may obtain any data or track a person through bigs placed in web pages they choose to view without the user’s deliberate opt-in permission, stating, without exaggeration, what benefits they will receive for granting permission.
8
At the end of the day, when it comes to privacy it all boils down to this: if you aren’t paying for the service, you’re the product.
While the fact that these organizations are collecting this data is a huge concern, the bigger concern is what happens when (not if) this data is inadvertently exposed.
People are more honest in a Google search than they are with a therapist. We ask Google our most personal questions - everything from our sexual preferences to political identity. Imagine if your entire search history was laid bare for the world to see. I’m confident this would make any rational person uncomfortable.
Google may promise not to sell your data, but there are governments and individuals that are right now trying to actively pry this data from their servers. Google has to get it right every time, while the attackers need only get it right once.
10
Anyone who has read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism " knows better than to believe a word of this. Google cannot survive without monetizing personal data. And that data is expanding to include emotions and thoughts accessed through facial analysis.
87
Google can survive - perhaps with lower profits and fewer services, through an “opt in’ model, giving people the freedom to be followed, like an old fashioned AC Nielsen family, in return for benefits like coupons or sale notices.
Google spends millions on very dubious projects, like digitizing obscure out-of-copyright books for university and other libraries- and offering them free* to the public.
Of course the *- search the books only after identifying yourself so Google can sell lists of people with particular interests.
And I’ll bet Google reduces its taxes, if not by claiming the service a donation to the library, or through showing the program as a “loss” though the data enters its general individual users’ profiles.
4
@Kathy Yes, I too, would recommend "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" to all. Google isn't in the business of selling ads, rather they exist, as Shosana Zuboff explains, to extract everything about your behavior & experiences - search, e-mail, texts, photos, songs, messages, videos, locations, communication patterns, attitudes, preferences, interests, faces, emotions, illnesses, social networks, purchases, ad infinitum - & CLAIM POSSESSION (i.e., dispossess individuals) of it all. With this vast knowledge taken from every individual they monetize the ability to predict, influence & modify our behavior.
They're in the "behavior prediction futures market" - selling predictions about what we will buy, watch, do, etc. And the competition for predicting our future behavior requires VASTS AMOUNTS OF DATA (surplus raw material) about each of us individually. Merely tracking search in the virtual world is not enough, they need to extend their extraction of raw materials in the real world - they want your bloodstream, your bed, your breakfast conversation, your commute, your run, your refrigerator, your parking space, your living room, etc. Again, they TAKE this from each person & USE it as they see fit.
The fact that Zuckerberg & Pichai (at long last) are trying to sell us "they care about and will protect our own privacy" (or the pretense that they give a hoot about it) is telling. They know their unregulated plunder is under threat and perhaps might end soon. Godspeed.
6
@Kathy But Kathy, you don't have to buy what the advertisers are trying to sell to you (via a tip from Google).
I use Google everyday for myriad purposes,
I never read the ads on Google products.
I only buy products locally with cash or debit card.
The only item I buy on-line is Kindle e-books.
I think the solution to your angst is two-fold: Ignore the pop-up ads and avoid buying products and services through on-line apps.
2
I do not put much stock in claims that Google cares deeply about my privacy. But I do believe that Google's business model - right now, at least - involves utilizing that data itself to sell ads more effectively than any of its competitors, rather than selling it to a third-party I trust even less (looking at you, Facebook).
I also believe that Google's rank-and-file employees are holding it to at least a little adherence to its "Don't Be Evil" motto, which is also more than I can say for many of its competitors. And I definitely believe that Google's leadership understands the importance of keeping that rank-and-file engineering talent happy.
That's a lot of very faint praise, and it's a thin line between where we are now and the Orwellian place we'd be in if the company with Google's power in our lives didn't have those small incentives to behave a bit more in its customers best interested than it might otherwise.
25
Google struck the “Don’t Be Evil” motto from their employee handbook this year.
2
I am on an iPad. I cleared all website data and rebooted. Using Safari, I went to google.com. Immediately, there were three cookies. Google, gstatic, and doubleclick. I searched for New York Times and clicked the organic result for the home page. I logged in. Checked my cookies and there were 11. Went immediately to this Opinion piece to enter this comment and there are 19. Mr. Sulzberger, in his opinion piece kicking off the Privacy Project, was quite transparent regarding his discomfort surrounding all this tracking. I can only hope that he becomes increasingly uncomfortable. I am a paying subscriber and I think it is wrong to be tracking me to this extent.
138
@Tom Hollyer
And that's not even counting the tracking pixels.
16
@Tom Hollyer
Tracking cookies have been around since the first Netscape browser in the early 1990s. You can delete them as often as you desire with the realization that there will, for some, be certain other inconveniences. There have ben numerous articles (and now disclaimers by many websites themselves) in the intervening years regarding how cookies work so, I'm just not sure why all of this is such an epiphany. The real discussion is the search and browsing history that may be stored with the search engine provider such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. themselves.
6
@Tom Hollyer
After about an hour or two I usually get about 300 cookies.
1
Uh. How bout a little journalism to highlight all of Googles many privacy violations.
44
Hypocrisy at its best.
38
Truth doesn't smell like this...
13
I'm sorry, but you've got to be kidding me.
You've coerced most educational institutions with your shoddy free software and "cloud" services. You add to the rat race and you a giant sieve for information. I don't trust you. Not one bit.
You are megalomaniacal, and you know it. Own it or be regulated properly, I say.
43
@Ro-Go. Regulate them, right. And who'll do that again? Congress, right. Lol.
Free services such as email, maps, search, etc.,that are provided by companies like Google should ideally be provided by a public utility organization like US Postal Service that uses open source software that can be verified. Otherwise, it is hard to verify what a company does with the personal data it collects, and the temptation to misuse is hard to resist since there is little chance of being caught.
40
@mds
And who, exactly, is going to pay for that? For the coders and engineers and developers? For the AI experts and the UX folks and the billions of computer cycles to do the work? Google products work because Google can afford to develop them and have things NOT work, and not go under while they get it right. Remember, the US government couldn't even get the ACA WEBSITE right... It took help from industry to make it right.
3
@mds This 'make it a utility' response profoundly misunderstands tech. Utilities provide vital but simple services you can sum up in one sentence, and which don't change much over time. You do utility style regulation if you want to freeze a market in place and think change is by definition bad. Electricity (from the consumer's perspective) hasn't changed in a very long time. Tech evolves beyond recognition every ten years. Regulation is needed, but that particular kind of regulation would completely strangle this industry, rob us of all the good it might do, and freeze the aspects you don't like in place indefinitely. Anyone who thinks regulating tech will be easy isn't paying attention. It's like regulating financial services, but even worse.
1
One writer characterizes Mr. Pichai as disingenuous. I think that’s too kind. These blithe reassurances are no more than deliberate lies. The manner in which Google, among others, mines your personal data to enrich itself, and it’s executives, is the scandal of our age. Sadly we will do nothing until the oversight agencies and legislatures are wrested away from the corporate apparatchiks and money grubbing plutocrats of the Grand Old Party.
46
Oh that's rich. I just bought a Moto 5 phone that had to be rooted because every single aspect of the phone is tied to Google and its tracking of every single thing that happens on that phone. Disabled the Google account and all of a sudden I couldn't use any of the apps on the phone. Contacts? Gotta be logged into Google for that. etc.
Then today I went to login into Gnail - I use it as a spam account - and they wouldn't let me login without me giving them my cell phone number. When I declined and asked for another option I was told I could use a tablet. that has Google software and a Google account they can track me on. No option to send a security code to another email. To use any of their services they want to know everything about you and feel entitled to do with that information as they please.
Google protects nothing. It sells everything. It datamines everything. It is evil. It - along with Apple, FB, etc. all need to be treated as utilities and heavily regulated from this point forward. That's the only way to ensure consumer protection.
89
@Sparky
Android phones (and iPhones too, for that matter) have required accounts for more than 10 years now. A legitimate phone account (in addition to email) is really, as it currently exists, the only reasonable "two-factor" authentication method.
5
The few examples cited here to assuage our potential privacy fears and concerns is disingenuous at best. Highlighting some mythical benefit trade-offs that consumers receive for Google's (and others) unregulated, unprecedented, and unchecked harvesting of personal data and digital exhaust is a wild oversimplification of what is really happening. Make no mistake, there's is a highly skilled, organized and developed hidden (in plain sight) surveillance operation that seeks to hijack and monitor each of our digital indexes for a wide array of uses (that we have zero agency over). To frame the issue as a simple tradeoff of convenience for some mere ad revenues is laughable. This is one of the most important and deeply troubling issues of our time, with myriad facets, layers and wide ranging socio-political implications for our future. Read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff and then come back and read this op ed. - you will be stunned by his infantilization of an unwary public.
19
Your pitch for privacy, I believe, is sincere, and Google has kept it's word: to serve the public in as honest a way as possible; not only that, without Google's search engines, the world would be the poorer; so you get my support and my thanks. Still, however paradigmatic you may try to be, you still depend on advertising, needed for the company's sustenance; and advertising has a function, inform us what is available; but hopefully not embellish the product or even distort it's benefits for the sale, a fine balance that, I suspect, may not always count with sensible regulation and public supervision. Oh well, no one is perfect, but it pays to keep trying. As you are!
5
The great majority of commenters, having had their moment of high dudgeon attacking Pichai here, will go back to using Google products constantly. This is just another one of the benefits of Google: you get to feel righteously aggrieved for free.
24
@dan
I don't just FEEL righteously aggrieved, I AM aggrieved, and that is NOT a benefit.
2
The hypocrisy you’re attacking here is far, far less troubling than that of Mr. Pichai, an oligarch who has profited hugely by exploiting the private information of billions of people.
It’s not wrong or contemptible to condemn the lies and hypocrisy of a powerful entity and still continue to do business with that entity—google is effectively an unregulated public utility at this point, and many people lack a realistic alternative to the services google offers.
I despise Xfintiy and their virulent anti-consumerism—and my local electric company engages in some highly questionable practices. Is your solution that I go without power and basic connectivity in order to criticize these institutions from a place of unimpeachable self-righteousness?
3
@dan, not much choice, is there? That's what the word 'Monopoly' means. It isn't one of the levels of western paradise in the Libertarian sect, contrary to popular belief.
1
I wonder why he didn’t mention this little nugget in the OpEd: “January 21, 2019: Google has been fined nearly $57 million by French regulators for violating Europe’s tough new data-privacy rules. Google failed to fully disclose to users how their personal information is collected and what happens to it. Google also did not properly obtain users’ consent for the purpose of showing them personalized ads.”
55
The sound you're hearing Mr. Pichai is the sound of my laughter - all the way from the other side of the country. It's like I'm rereading statements from Mark Zuckerberg a couple weeks ago about how Facebook was going to totally remake themselves as privacy advocates for their users. I don't think I'll ever stop laughing over that. Good luck with your so-called responsibility and humility.
25
He mentions some new features, so I am going to check them out. With Google, you do get all kinds of free services - but the company also has to make money too to keep providing them at no cost. So there is a tradeoff, and it's going to be different for everyone - this issue of privacy is here to stay.
Btw, that's an absolutely terrible picture of Sundar - odd choice for a NYT Op piece.
2
@Ash
It is a terrible picture, dystopian like something out of "Mr. Robot" designed to make him seem the "boogie-man".
We need to take talk of privacy back to its roots and examine it principally against the technologies of the 21st century.
Pichai is simply running with the idea that privacy is relative, and that is a dangerous road of thought to travel down. Also, Pichai seems to be solely concerned about privacy in the context of advertisement and revenue for Alphabet. This is no way to develop a robust conception of what it means to have privacy.
Let's return to the basics and begin with Warren and Brandies and their works on the notion of privacy. We won't get anywhere by positing privacy as something relative and different in kind from the sort of privacy we expected before the most recent technological revolution.
6
Google:lack of privacy in digital services is a problem, this is how we're not part of the problem, legislatures should really solve this problem.
Thanks Google, I'm sure the new home device you introduced today with built in facial recognition is a step in the right direction, especially since your PR team specifically failed to acknowledge whether the information the device gathers will be harvested by the company (a Google employee said it wouldn't but was directed by the PR team to not make such promises).
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We protect your privacy--except for that time we exposed the personal information of 500,000 Google+ users and tried to cover it up instead of disclosing it.
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The current array of privacy issues at Google are not about what they do right. The problems relate to what they do wrong and those assessments need expertise beyond the general public. Google has enormous market share and its closely guarded algorithms are not in favor of the little guy, no matter what they insist. Google needs better regulatory control by outside experts who know the business. Leaving them to their own devices--by accident or not--is a bad idea.
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Good to hear — there is probably a lot more that can be done, nonetheless, good to hear.
F P Reagan is famously remembered for having quoted to Michail Gorbachev the Russian proverb "Trust but verify" frequently in negotiations which resulted in the ending of the Cold War.
Seems to this observer that this piece forcefully embodies Google's request that the world trust it. All that appears to be needed now is Google's undertaking to aid each of its users in understanding and implementing each of the protections enumerated. That would seem to be in substance the verification the proverb calls for.
2
"In the future, A.I. will provide even more ways to make products more helpful with less data."
Yeah, as long as you say so.
Some years ago we had a local beverage, Vernonrs Ginger Ale, that was made with sugar (ok, settle down). Then corn syrup was used instead.
It did not taste as good as it did when sugar was used.
But the advertisements said it had the same great taste. So it must have had the same great taste.
AI will do wondrous things much better. You betcha.
The assertions regarding Google interest in privacy made here do not appear to be correct . I am a professor and just today one my students put a large document with figures on Google doc and e-mailed me the link. I could not, using the link see it or download it because I was not signed in using a Google account. Why does Google need to know who recipient of a document is when the sender has sent a link ? This does not look like the actions of a company keen to protect privacy.
I walked over to my students's lab desk and got the figures and text on a thumb drive.
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@Ravi
After reading your comment, I tried sharing a doc through a link. It worked without signing in. Please try: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12i1ngsEaHMNxsbCNk6EUR0zjDDEjHXespG6ND7i-LDA/edit?usp=sharing
I hope it works.
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@Ravi your student shared it with you and you only. That's why you had to sign in so Google knew it was you, before letting you read the doc.
I feel so protected by your privacy policy I deleted google maps- it has been shown to continually collect data. The bigger the billionaire- the bigger the lies, except of course for the White House .
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Except that the surveillance economy is such that they collect your private information from you phone company, your banking information, read your emails, Facebook collects your private information from every internet page you visit with a share button... etcetera, etcetera.
Deleting google maps is not protecting your privacy.
5
Sandar, would you consider this alternative model as an option? To wit: I acknowledge the value of your services, and am willing to purchase a subscription for them, just like I do for the NY Times. I prefer to pay for your applications with cash, not with my privacy.
Until then, I've turned off every Google location and data retention control, and use a browser set to delete cookies after every session.
Google should be compensated for its brilliant software. Please give me the ability to do that instead of assuming I want to trade my privacy for your ad revenue.
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Then, with a paid model, you exacerbate the digital divide and inequality.
Let me try to explain. Because your American private information is worth about 10 to 50 times more valuable than a user without fungible resources, should you pay 50 times more to use Facebook than someone in a developing country? (In fact, you are effectively already paying more than that without your consent or permission.)
We need to redefine how we prosecute monopolies, we need to redefine privacy and start over again. Breaking up these companies with their surveillance-based business models intact will only cause the same problem to grow again.
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@Mark. The first sensible comment in this comments section.
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@Mark
Based on about 300MM of us, and Goole revenue of 110Bn in 2017, that's about $330 a head, or $1,320 for a family of 4.
Are you still buying in?
Google seems to strike the right balance. Tons of great services for free, and in return I see ads that are more relevant instead of ads that are less relevant. Works for me.
5
How about for me?
I have a violent ex who has previously almost killed me, who I live in constant fear of finding me and sending someone to hurt me.
Privacy is a basic American human right that my life actually depends on.
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Mr. Pichai, why don't you give me your entire browsing history, so I can better assess whether I want to do business with you?
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No doubt Mr. Pichai believes what he says. But as is so often the case, powerful people are always more than willing to lie to the general public and assuage their fears and concern so as to continue to pursue their aggressive business models that take advantage of consumer ignorance. This article is, at heart, a typical misdirection approach straight from the "bread and circuses" playbook. We get thrown the bones of "free" apps and an "easier" life, while Google and their ilk reap billions and avoid taxes on their riches. I will be much more willing to believe Mr. Pichai about his claim to support privacy legislation when I see that his company has pulled every single lobbyist it employs out of Washington.
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I don’t care if you help me spell “YOLO”, I’d rather keep my data. That’s a horrible trade off.
8
Everything about that company makes my skin crawl.
It may sound hysterical, but I view them as an attack on everything that is glorious about being human.
I don't use Google, therefore I am.
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"Yes, we use data to make products more helpful for everyone. But we also protect your information." I believe the rest of the paragraph should be: "and we will respect you in the morning."
38
Sunday Pichai's philosophical side pose and his apologia is not going to seduce anyone who has a double a digit IQ and is concerned about privacy.
Google, Facebook and other tech companies will put East German Stasi to shame with their global surveillance machine.
Even when the applications are not open and not being used, people are being tracked every single moment of their waking and sleeping lives. This Faustian Bargain that has been imposed on the people is damaging the world.
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@Sameer Exactly, Stasiware, that's only nominally "opt in." Now that the economy as a whole (through adtech incentives) has become addicted to surveillance economics, an individual cannot really opt-out without opt-ing out of society. Sure, there's value in building machine learning predictive analytics when the goal is to benefit you. But predictive analytics perversely, help to maintain the status quo -- because their predictions become feedback to the next iteration. FairIsaac, founded 1955, arguable the first algorithmic predicitive engine silently helped to redline the country -- in advertantly, preventing the accumulation of intergenerational wealth by black people, while enabling tax-advantaged mortgages for everyone else.
Pinchai is smart enough to know all of this. It's rather repulsive that instead of coming up with a business model that isn't dependent on selling out it users, he says privacy shouldn't be a luxury good.
3
I am not drinking that Kool-Aid. This piece is riddled with misinformation. For one example, before you can even request that Google stop spying, you have to create an account and hand over personal data to them. Why does Google track people by default? If they had even the slightest concern about privacy it would be an opt-in system, not opt-out. Furthermore, what evidence beyond their own say-so is there that Google even honors the privacy settings chosen by users? I will stick with DuckDuckGo, thanks.
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@Camille Also excellent: startpage.com, formerly known as Ixquick. Totally private searches.
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@Camille
Totally agree about the opt-out default, but I haven't heard anything about Google violating privacy settings. They would face pretty significant civil liability for privacy violations and false advertising/deceptive practices if they did so it seems unlikely. And if we are just assuming that everyone lies about user data, who's to say that DuckDuckGo honors privacy settings either?
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@Sam only true if they are caught violating privacy. They are applying AI not get caught. Are governments using AI to catch GOOGLE violating privacy? Only loser here are the cónsumer.
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The clear meaningful choice that I, and no doubt others, want is not to be surveilled by Google, and not to be advertised at.
I just don't want people I don't know or don't respect to have surreptitiously acquired information.
Unfortunately the choices of others to be monitored in this way day and night has, to some degree, wiped out the competition that I would choose.
The intellectual gymnastics attempted here, is meaningless to me, it's obvious "fake thought".
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@MJG You have a choice. Just don't use any Google (or whatever company you don't want collecting your data) products. There is plenty of competition for every single product of Google. E.g., paid maps, encrypted email services, even search.
If you choose to use Google's services, the implicit acknowledgment is that their product is better.
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@Logic That's not possible when you use the internet. Almost every website sends your tracking data through the "free" google analytics to google itself, so google tracks your every move without you using google services. Of course, with the YouTube monopoly on videos, google's not avoidable in that regard. There are other search and mapping and mail and cloud collaboration services, but YouTube is a monopoly.
2
If you really value privacy then don’t type your personal information on a computer connected to the internet.
Personally I don’t care.
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@Mark Marks dude you don't get it. Google knows everything about you. Where you live, where you work, how old your kids are, where you like to shop and eat, what illnesses you have, what your fears are. They literally have a file on YOU and all of this information. Then they sell it for money.
1
Sundar, you want legislation that benefits your business model. Please agree to that in theory at least.
Legislation which requires small businesses to have “consistent and universal protection” for consumers means everyone storing all of their data in the cloud.
Storing everyone’s data is a hedge against bankruptcy. If Google’s model ever fails (think ad-blocking tech), you have the world hostage. Releasing all google searches publicly would devastate most relationships. Google should be broken up.
5
Oh if only this were true! I long too believe this mendicity.
4
Mr. Pichai, you say that Search works the same for everyone “whether you’re a professor at Harvard or a student in rural Indonesia.” What about the student in rural China?
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What point is being made here as it relates to Google? Google is blocked by China’s firewall. Baidu has the majority market share there.
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@Grayson Webster
Currently, my understanding is that you are correct re the blockage. But there are multiple credible reports that Google is still actively working to build a a Search product that will conform to Chinese censorship restrictions. Google it. :-)
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@Grayson Webster Pichai's statement is empty. Ostensibly, the public roads, transit systems, and sidewalks work the same for everyone, too. Electricity, natural gas is delivered the same for everyone as long as the bill is paid. And they're all publicly regulated. Google services working the same for everyone isn't a public benefit they can take pride in, it's a marketing plan.
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You have to wonder about a company who had to say fo rtheir motto, "Don't be evil."
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@Roy they dropped that motto a while back.
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@Josh Ruby
Waaaaay back.