Evil or Just Reckless? Google's Disregard for Personal Data Protections Still Proves to be a Cash Cow

Google is huge -- monopoly-level huge. The company’s original motto, “Don’t be evil,” has been a cornerstone of the company philosophy or years, built on the premise of using its immense power as the premier search engine of the internet for the purpose of good instead of evil. Users have long been charmed by the simple inviting logo (modified on holidays and significant dates with engaging google doodles), drooled over the google glass demos and self-driving cars, and we’ve all enjoyed a shared photo of an unfortunate moment (i.e. nudity and/or alcohol-related mishaps) captured by the global google mapping project Street View.

Regardless of how well-intentioned a corporate philosophy is, however, becoming a global worldwide multichannel conglomerate of all media services everywhere can inevitably lead to some conflicts of interest. It’s obvious that this has been top of mind in the public consciousness lately -- when current CEO Larry Page stated in early November that the company may need to move away from its original mission statement, (which, by the way is “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,”) the intertubes practically exploded with articles asking whether Google was now deciding to officially and publicly “be evil” (Newman, 2014)

This knee-jerk that spawned a thousand retractions demonstrates the anxious attitude that the tech community holds toward the information giant. Though Google’s motivations may originate from the simple desire to gather as much data as possible, the company has stepped over the line countless times, and either been sued or sanctioned in countries where the violation occurred. Examples of some of Google’s more egregious privacy violations follow.

The European Union and Google Search

In February of 2010, the European Commission launched an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google was using its dominant market position in Europe to manipulate search results. This is a particularly unfavorable situation for Google as, unlike their counterparts in the United States, antitrust regulators in Europe can impose penalties without first winning a court order. A company can appeal to a court but usually must comply in the interim (Kantner, 2012).

By May of 2012, the European Commission had determined that Google was in violation of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Article 102, with regard to the following four issues:

• Deceptive display results of its own vertical search services, such as Google shopping, YouTube and Google Maps versus that of its competitors
• Unauthorized content scraping of content from competing vertical search services and reuse
• De facto exclusivity in advertising agreements with partners
• Portability of ad campaign data from its AdWords platform to the platforms of competitors (fairsearch.org, 2012)

The antitrust chief for the European Union, Joaquin Alumnia, has attempted to negotiate a settlement between Google and the complainants (mainly EU content publishers), but four years since the launch of the original investigation the case is is being reopened due to an inability on both sides to reach resolution. Additionally, a separate antitrust case may now be added due to privacy violations stemming from Google’s Android mobile operating system and the implied monopoly created by the restricted ability to use only Google services on Android devices (Arthur, 2014).

US Antitrust Investigation into Google

Around the same time in the new world, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was launching a full-scale antitrust investigation into Google’s search dominance. Beginning in 2011, the FTC began examining Google’s practices based on claims that the company was selling adwords to illegal businesses.

In another claim, the FTC found that Google violated its own consumer privacy policies with the launch of Google Buzz, a microblogging and sharing site introduced as a competitor to Facebook and Twitter, incorporated into the Gmail platform. From its introduction, Buzz would allow public sharing of personal information from Gmail by default, and quickly gained criticism from users who preferred to not have the content of their email publicly exposed (Helft, 2010).

Additionally, in 2012, the FTC in combination with a number of State Attorneys General opened investigations based on the Google search engine bypassing user privacy settings when used within Apple’s Safari web browser, and eventually collected a $17M from Google for privacy violations (ftc.gov, 2012). Considering Google’s advertising revenues alone in 2012 topped $46B (Google.com, 2012), the Safari boondoggle likely paid for itself many times over.

Other Investigations

Investigations into Google’s practices exist worldwide – India, Brazil, Argentina and even South Korea currently have claims against the Information giant –– due to their anticompetitive stance regarding search results.

In January of this year, another privacy case was filed regarding a Google plan called Emerald Sea, which existed on Android phones in 2010 and would enable google apps to share information between one another and across platforms. As this was a clear violation of the individual privacy policies associated with each of the products at the time, Google chose to pull all public information related to Emerald Sea and in March of 2012 implemented a universal privacy policy covering all of Google’s products.

As innocuous as this might seem initially, Google’s eventual goal was to create a “Digital Dossier” of its users “exceeding even Facebook’s granularity of detail” in order to maximize ad revenues. Google can now associate your information from your gmail, your searches, your maps, your google+ profile, your blog, your phone and even your chromecast all in one place (Rosenblatt, 2014). Google probably knows exactly what you’d like to see, even if it’s not exactly what you asked for in your Google search.

Summary     

In Google’s defense, the company has long created new “embryonic” concept products and released them to the public through their Google Labs project, presuming that consumers are the best test subjects and can help modify the product into a valuable commodity. However, when you are the largest search engine company in the world whose profits are largely derived from targeted advertising to your loyal users, you can’t legitimately rely on a defense of ignorance to shield you from consumer rancor over continually committing the same offense.

For example, when the Google Street View cars started capturing every street in the world back in 2007, not only were the camera cars collecting photographs, but MAC addresses and Network SSIDs, as well as intercepting WiFi traffic (including passwords and email content) of unlocked networks in association with the location information -- a strict violation of several countries’ wiretap regulations (epic.org, 2010). By 2010, Google was forced to admit their wrongdoing; but according to their own blog it was still attributed to a “mistake in the code,” rather than intentional data collection (Eustace, 2010).
Google behaves like the internet is the wild west until they are caught by tradtional antitrust or privacy laws, then they pay a fine and modify their business practices; never failing to turn a profit with every piece of the business in the meantime. Google is constantly pushing their boundaries, both in their creative offerings and their legal obligations, but as long as they keep us entertained with new tools and features and upgrades, we as a society are too distracted by shiny objects to realize the company is warehousing every detail about us.

References

Arthur, C. (2014, Sep 08). European commission reopens Google antitrust investigation. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/08/european-commission-reopens-google-antitrust-investigation-after-political-storm-over-proposed-settlement

epic.org. (2010, Jun 18). Investigations of Google Street View. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from Electronic Privacy Information Center: https://epic.org/privacy/streetview/

Eustace, A. (2010, May 10). WiFi data collection: an update. Retrieved Nov 2014, from Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html

fairsearch.org. (2012). Global Scrutiny: Law Enforcement Agencies Around the World are Investigating Google. fairsearch.org.

ftc.gov. (2012, Aug 9). Google Will Pay $22.5 Million to Settle FTC Charges it Misrepresented Privacy Assurances to Users of Apple's Safari Internet Browser. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/google-will-pay-225-million-settle-ftc-charges-it-misrepresented

Google.com. (2012). 2012 Google 10-K. San Jose: Google.

Helft, M. (2010, Feb 12). Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service . Retrieved Nov 30, 20014, from NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/technology/internet/13google.html?_r=0

Kantner, J. (2012, Apr 24). Change of Tone Could Help Google in European Antitrust Case. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/technology/change-of-tone-could-help-google-in-european-antitrust-case.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Newman, L. H. (2014, Nov 3). Google is Moving Away from Its Original Mission Statement. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/11/03/larry_page_says_that_google_needs_to_move_on_from_its_don_t_be_evil_mission.html

Rosenblatt, J. (2014, Jan 17). Google Accused in Suit Again of Violating Privacy Policy. Retrieved Nov 30, 2014, from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/google-violated-privacy-policy-users-say-in-new-complaint-1-.html