Google privacy controls: Most people won't care

Google's biggest threat is no longer Microsoft. It is itself.

As the company harvests copious quantities of personal data, it becomes dramatically better at serving customer needs...

...and at freaking them out over privacy concerns.

In other words, Google gets stronger with every Google Doc created, every Google Voice call dialed, and every Gmail e-mail sent. It becomes stronger because data is the heart of the Web's biggest businesses, as Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady implies.

But in so doing Google also becomes more threatening to the very consumers it is trying to serve.

Google Dashboard is meant to change this by putting consumer data back in the hands of consumers. It's a move that follows on Google's earlier pledge to "open data" and its Data Liberation Front.

Yes, but will he give me better search?

(Credit: U.S. Army)

As CNET reports, Dashboard lets people review the personal data Google has stored for them, delete it, and alter future collection policies. It's a great way for Google to mollify concerned users, putting control back in their hands.

Still, it's almost certainly never going to be used by the vast majority of Google users. Ever.

Why? Because for all our hand-wringing over privacy--and for good reason--the reality is that most of us, most of the time, really don't care. Or, rather, if accessing useful services or getting work done more efficiently requires some privacy concessions, we gladly concede.

It's not that we don't value our privacy. It's just that in many contexts, we value other things as much or more. We weigh the risks versus the benefits, and often the benefits trump the privacy risks.

It's the same thing with file formats. For years we've been agonizing over Microsoft's lock-in of customers through proprietary file formats (.pst, .doc, etc.). Now Microsoft is opening up the specifications for file formats like .pst (Outlook file format), and yet it will almost certainly change little to nothing in what products most people use most of the time.

People don't use Microsoft Office because they're forced to. They do so because it's convenient. (Yes, an argument can be made that it's convenient because Microsoft has forced network effects through lock-in.)

This, incidentally, is exactly the reason that Wednesday night I declared a ban on Microsoft Office in our family in favor of Google Docs--and didn't opt for OpenOffice (which we also use). I got sick of having to recover documents and perform other IT tasks related to a locally installed office suite, open source or proprietary. And I find it easier to let Google handle the back-end IT operations.

I wasn't trying to evade lock-in. I was trying to increase personal happiness.

Am I concerned about Google snooping on the documents we write and store in Google Docs? Let's just say I worry more about my time fixing Office than whether Google gleans any information from my 12-year old's seventh-grade essay.

Dashboard leaves Google in the prime position of being able to honestly say that it doesn't control user data, while still delivering increasingly beneficial services based on that data. It will not change the way that the vast majority of consumers use Google, but it just might change the way they think about Google.

A very smart move by Google, one that all data-driven businesses should emulate.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[noesnoesnoes]

This tool simply displays what you can see by going to the applications themselves. It seems like pure marketing from Google, to try and ease concerns that it might be acting nefariously.

[lycanr1]

If banks were ruled at one time to distribute proceeds from it's profits on consumer deposits via savings accounts, then well, Google needs to start distributing profits to the information deposits via email, content, blog accounts, search requests etc. But then again, how do you honestly value information? Information as a currency is unpredictable.

If Mr. Asay has troubles supporting Office, I then find a serious problem with any article Mr. Asay publishes. Office is one of Microsoft's most successful products, and it can be used very productively if one takes the time to learn and use styles. Most of our business partners install Office, and forget it. Windows Update (whether on corporate networks or at home) takes care of the rest. I find any tech reporter that has an inability to update their own machines -- that reporter should find a box, pack up their office, and find the exit.

As for Google, I use it for search -- because it doesn't have visually breaking advertising and does not have horizontally interrupting columns surrounding the primary results (that's it). I like Google finance because it's the ONLY finance website without a glut of ads, but they have a very serious problem with spam that has not ever been remedied and the fact that your email addresses are always partly visible is a problem.

[ThinkBeforeYouPost]

You must not use Office very much. I work with lawyers who may have several large documents open at once, use change tracking extensively, or run large spell checks. Word constantly crashes without telling you why, sometimes it loops trying to save 'normal.dot', which then gets corrupted,sometimes it loses formatting, etc. And that's just Word. Supporting Office for users who do more than 2 page memos and simplistic presentations is a lot of work. Banning it from his home, where he is not forced to use it by corporate lemmings, makes this reporter more credible to me.

[aecooper]

From what I read, Mr Asay didn't say he had troubles supporting Office. It seems he was using it up to Wednesday night. He simply quit using it because he found a product that was more convenient. Sounds reasonable to me. I make my living as a Windows software developer and IT professional but at home I don't have a single Microsoft product on any of my PC's. Not because I'm ideologically against Microsoft but because I've found other products to be less expensive and more convenient. It's a free market and Mr. Asay and I have made perfectly valid choices in terms of which products to consume. I fail to see how that would reflect on my abilities as a software developer any more than it would speak to Mr. Asay's ability as a journalist/writer.

[pentest]

Any serious amount of writing and presentation will make Office(and any word processor) gag.

That is why Latex is still going strong. You just can't beat it.

[George-Anthony]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I am pretty sure all of this info was already available, no? I just finished logging into the "new" Dashboard (side note: great Modest Mouse song), and none of the info provided was new to me or not previously available whenever I logged into "settings/account." Someone please enlighten me.

[sporge]

There are plenty of reasons not to support office in my mind. There was a time microsoft provided it with its OS already nearly a monopoly with that alone. But companies and people learned to use office, and suddenly they only provide trials and expect you to buy it, most companies require it because it is what they were already using. I currently use open office, but I might give google docs more of a try, I end up emailing most of my documents anyway.

[michaelselliott]

Ditto to lycanr1 - who spends time "fixing" Office? I've had Office for a decade installed on dozens of personal machines and never had to "fix" it. Sounds like this IT reporter really has poor IT skills, crappy hardware or just generally poor maintenance on his computers. My 12 year old also writes her essays on Google Docs (so she can share them with distant relatives, etc.) but I'm certainly glad she has Word on her machine for serious tasks. Anyone that things Google Docs and Word are "equals" doesn't do any serious word processing tasks anyway.

[pentest]

But if you only need to fix it only if you have poor IT skills, and Matt surely doesn't, then Office does break and it needs constant(or near enough) maintenance.

If you use Word(or Google Docs, or Open Office, etc), you are not doing serious word processing tasks. If I have a 100 page document and I want to change all 48 subheadings to a different font and size can I do that in Word in 2 seconds by a simple 1-line edit? No? Then it is not for serious work.

[Mysteryunknown]

This may be nothing more than an attempt to slow the use of the AI browser toolbars that perform random searches while you are browsing in order to corrupt any meaningful data being obtained by such data mining techniques as Google uses. Even if Google could develope a method to determine whether a search is real or random on the current level of privacy insurance programs, they are bound to get more sophisticated as time goes by, face it, data mining is on the way out, and very unreliable.

[ALSPCMAC]

um, most people have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide, dont use anything digital, dont write anything down and never store any records of any kind. This story isnt real news its hyperboil, scare tactics, nonsense. The author later points out that he's using Google Docs. Well I guess privacy isnt a concern after all. Bottom line the local hacker thats been monitoring your wireless connection has way more personal info on you that Google will ever have. If you are scared to use Google, then DONT its that simple. Its like: If FOX news bugs you, turn if off. DUH!!!!! The end user has full control, always has. I could further back my assertion using the use of a phone analogy. Oooh, Oh, somebody could be listening. Well, then dont use it if you are that scared. Jeeze, come on. The paranioa....

[pentest]

Everyone has something to hide, it is called their private life.

If you have nothing to hide, then you will have no problems with me installing cameras throughout your house and posting your address, phone number, bank accounts, credit cards, favorite sex position, SSN.

Oh, I guess you do have something to hide.

Our private lives is the only thing we have of any real value only an idiot would willingly give that up. Matt has already said that he will give everything up to a corporation if he gets convenience in return. I guess you are another.

[jrepenning]

Most people don't discover they care about privacy until theirs is violated. Then, of course, it's too late. Making privacy and control information more convenient is a significant step, even if it was already available elsewhere, just as more people lock the doors on their houses now that they can do it with a key or knob, instead of a 100-pound log.

[SeeNETT]

I recently abandoned Office for Open Office, simply because open source software is generally more reliable (and it also doesn't hurt that Open Office is free). As for computing in the cloud, I do like to keep my data close to home rather than on someone else's server. Nothing against Google, but the idea of storing all of my private and professional information on someone else's server requires a level of trust that I have not yet developed for my closest relatives, let alone an enormous corporation that mines data for a living. But then again, there are all kinds of threats to the security of one's personal computing environment, so perhaps "secure" and "close at hand" are not synonymous; maybe Google can do a better job than I can at keeping my data from prying eyes, and I should trust them more than I trust myself. That's what the city of Los Angeles recently decided when it entrusted its email services to Google. The company has credibility, but still, possession is nine tenths.

[rtripathi]

I'm using Google Docs more and more and MS Word less and less. Me and others can access it from anywhere and can be modified by any participants. Doing this with word is painful as constantly sending email attachments becomes difficult to keep up.

[spacydog]

Once Microsoft gets its Office apps hosted and more people are using them similar to Google Docs, will people still not be concerned with Microsoft scanning their documents as Google does with theirs? Or are people comfortable with Google "doing no evil" and no one else?

[WraithTDK]

Yea, so what happens when you need to make a document, but don't have internet access?

[deniceels]

yea... especially on the plane... or the middle of ocean? or driving down the countryside with someone behind doing some work. Yea, one consideration.

What happens your account online got hacked? Free-for-all? School work or groccery lists, I'm not too concern, but your private schedules, contact lists, legal matters.... oh, how about your next blockbuster movie script being leaked? I'm certain these groups of people won't want such leaks to happen.

I have two comments really. The first is that the protection of privacy and the right of anonymity are critical boundry issues. It may well be that the majority of users don't, and probably shouldn't care about the majority of the banal content that they or their friends and associates produce...especially on cloud services. That does not make the protection of privacy any less imperative. For those in anti-democratic countries, for those with socially unpopular ideas, for those who may be socially stigmatized privacy and anonymity are a necessary precondition for democracy and freedom. That's why journalists and bloggers should be at the front of the line explaining why this is so, instead of poo-pooing these concerns in favour of their convenience.

The second point is simply that privacy is an externality, and that users are not presented with fair choices. A recent, and well researched, paper demonstrates that Americans do not want targeted advertising, and would send violators of their privacy to prison if they could. The realities of the marketplace are making it difficult for companies to 'do the right thing' (http://michaelzimmer.org/2009/11/05/cuils-privacy-policy-no-longer-protects-privacy/). If you are a complete free marketer, then this is just a matter of 'getting over it', but for most of us this points to a necessity for regulation either by the advertisors or my regulatory bodies if necessary.

[Hokulea]

As Cade Metz so succinctly describes, this is just simply more "Google Privacy Theatre". I suggest reading his Register article on Dashboard:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/07/cerf_on_google_data_collection/

... and this one from Consumer Watchdog:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporateering/articles/?storyId=30797

If you store your data and documents in the cloud then it's no longer yours. When you delete something in the cloud, it doesn't necessarily mean it's gone. It just means you can't access it. The physical location of the server(s) your data is stored on has a great deal of bearing regarding your legal rights to privacy. Laws protecting individuals vary from state to state and country to country. In most cases, you probably won't know where the server storing your data is located. In short, storing anything in the cloud requires a great deal of trust on your part. Just figuring out who or what you are placing your trust in may be very difficult if not impossible.

I am a bit puzzled over "IT tasks related to a locally installed office suite". Perhaps it's because I am the only user of my Office Suite that I don't have to do any IT tasks regarding it. I've been using various versions of MS Office for well over a decade and have had very few problems. The ones I did have were insignificant.

I have a Word document that I imported from Office 2003 to Office 2007 that I regularly work on with multiple apps running concurrently. It's over 268 pages long and takes up 33 MB. I've never had to recover it, nor have I had any problems opening or saving it. This is on a Core i7 system with 12 GB of memory, so perhaps some of the problems people have with Office in general, or Word in particular, stem from inadequate system resources.

[DrKevorkian]

I don't use anything from Google, they are Big Brother and they can take their privacy-invading apps and shove them up their ass.