Google does care about your privacy. Really. There are videos to prove it.
Just saw this item about a new video series that helps Google users who are concerned about their privacy. “The Google Privacy Channel” on YouTube offer various hints about things like:
- How to unlist your phone number from Google
- How to get rid of objectionable StreetView images
and my favorite:
- The Google bloopers reel, which shows the usually-smart and frequently-rich Googlers making mistakes and looking occasionally awkward. (see below)
The Google privacy debate is ongoing, but these videos are timely considering recent objections and concerns about new social networking features that are being added to Google Reader, Gmail and Google Chat.
Incidentally, the most popular videos (according to the number of people who have viewed them so far) are about the following topics:
- Unsubscribing your phone number (2,089)
- Using Picasa (1,892)
- Removing images from Street View (661)
- Controlling your history settings (400)
- Managing your Google calendar’s share settings (322)
Here’s that Google blooper’s video for your viewing pleasure:
Tags: Google, Google Reader, Picasa, Privacy, Social networking, Street View, The Google Privacy Channel, YouTube
December 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I just watch the privacy search video. And I noticed some unclear point.
About the aim of gathering personal information, they argue that “without this information, our search engine wouldn’t work as well as it does or be as secure”. While I agree about the utility of personalization, I don’t see the point about security. More important, they do not say that they use it for ads. So clearly they could add a comment “our company wouldn’t be as rich as it is :)”.
In the second video, they pretend to remove every personal information… just after saying they keep the IP address which I consider as a personal and very sensitive information. Why can’t we manage ALL our information and erase our IP address as well? I’m not sure search results and ads will be less relevant if we remove some sensitive information. I hope the last move of ASK will convince Google.
Until then, I’ll keep developing a privacy enforcement add-on for Firefox. More information on my web site.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I requested the picture of my house be removed from StreetView, I really think it’s only been removed when I view it from home (IP address will show me as in the ZIP code). I can still see it when I view it from work. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for a few days, it could be one server is updated and one is not.