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July 23, 2007
Google’s recent privacy snafus must be a bigger deal than the search company is letting on. Why? Because Mountain View’s competitors have all joined the privacy train and started making changes to the way they handle our information. Are they all making changes to try to one-up Google? Are they trying to avoid the government probing Google is currently undergoing on two continents? Whatever the reason, the search companies have hit the ground running:
So just to recap, here are the major privacy changes made in the past few weeks across all of the search engines:
In addition to announcing policy changes, Microsoft has joined with Ask.com to issue an industry-wide call for the development of standard privacy practices among search engines. It’s curious that Google and Yahoo! weren’t included in the call… but that might have been intentional. It sure looks good for the underdogs to call out the big boys and apply a little pressure. Regardless of the motive, these developments should be welcome signs of change to every Internet user. Even though I think Ask.com is the only search engine going far enough by giving users complete control and making anonymous search possible, I’m glad to see that the other search engines are all working on ways to limit the information they collect and store. To be fair, Google was the first of the search engines to make such changes. While some of the other search engines have gone a little farther in response, Google deserves credit for starting all of this. Now if only Google could play a little catch-up and implement something like AskEraser. But that’s not likely to ever happen. For those who would like to impose their own limits on Google’s data-mining practices, CustomizeGoogle is a nice Firefox extension that lets you limit some of the information Google collects:
More discussion of search privacy announcements at Techmeme
Comments:
4 Comments posted on "Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask.com Jump on the Privacy Bandwagon"
RustyS on July 24th, 2007 at 8:44 am #
I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for them to get more aggressive pursuing this angle. For the moment, this seems to be one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from Google. Google’s dominance isn’t going to drop off anytime soon and I fully expect they’ll try to match most of their competitors policies. But they have reached that monolithic size now where some people naturally begin to grow wary and look for alternatives. That audience may not be big enough to make any of the alternatives a viable threat to Google, but it can make a huge difference in the battle for second place.
Derick on July 24th, 2007 at 8:53 am #
I actually expect Google to be the laggard in terms of privacy policies. Yes, they seem to have prompted this “movement”. But for all intents and purposes they waited until they were under the microscope to make a move. Hopefully you’re right and Google will follow suit with more data collection control put into the hands of users. But since their bottom line is so intimately tied to that information I’m not so sure that will be the case. Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask.com (IAC) are all multi-trick ponies that make money from a variety of services and properties. Google’s fortune, on the other hand, is dependent on that user information-driven data so I think they’re going to be less willing to give it up. But I hope I’m wrong.
RustyS on July 24th, 2007 at 9:51 am #
They’ll be reluctant to lose that information for sure as they’re most heavily-dependent on it. But if other markets (such as browsers, OS, etc) are any indication, most people usually go with the default choices and seem content to do so. Losing the data from *probably* a small minority of users who likely were their lowest performing customers from an advertising standpoint might seem worth it if they think it can help them maintain a stranglehold on marketshare. Only gradually have we seen dents emerge in the market leaders in the OS and browser markets as people pushed back looking for an alternative. Search has become a utility in much the same way as those two platforms. And as Google continues to diversify into other areas (how long before they’re a telcom?) I’m sure they hope to be increasingly less-dependent on any single area - like they currently are.
Derick on July 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm #
That’s a very good point about folks using default settings. I doubt most Google users 1) know or 2) care about the information Google is collecting on them. And not because they just don’t care… but because they’ve never really stopped to think about it. Maybe the increased attention to privacy on all fronts will start to change that. Thanks for pointing that out to me! I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective before. Post a comment
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