[LINK] Google Secret Privacy Document Leaked

[Roger Clarke]

>Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead
>By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
>The Wall Street Journal
>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413553851854026.html

[This is easily the worst article I've read in the WSJ for a long time.

[It's a meandering, waffley review of a dated document, and far more 
like an advertorial than a respectable paper should ever publish.

[And it perpetuates the falsehood about Google having a motto about 
'Don't be evil'.  See: 
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Gurgle0604.html#Conc (2006)

"An examination of Google's alleged motto is instructive. Google is 
emphatically not built on the normative statement that 'the company 
should not do evil'. Two variants are evident on the web-site. One is 
merely as number 6 of 'Ten things Google has found to be true' [1], 
and the statement is actually descriptive, not normative: "you can 
make money without doing evil". The other variant is the statement 
"Our informal corporate motto is `Don't be evil'". This is vague and 
completely non-binding. It appears as part of a so-called `Code of 
Conduct' which, firstly, appears in the `investor' part of Google's 
web-site [2] rather than being communicated to customers, and, 
secondly, omits any form of protection for the company's users. (The 
Code arguably provides far more protection for cats than for users, 
in that para. IIe flippantly warns them off Google Inc. premises)."

[1] http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
[2] http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University