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May 3, 2011

Tuesday, May 03, 2011 12:00 AM/EST

Google Collects Location Data to Drive Location-Based Ads

Google and Apple are at the center of location privacy kerfuffles on Capitol Hill. Google needs location data to improve its search-based Web services and advertising.

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September 13, 2010

Monday, September 13, 2010 10:56 AM/EST

Facebook, Google Arrogance Points to Sociocultural Ignorance

Zuckerberg's casual attitude toward user privacy is borne of ignorance, which is certainly preferable to the idea of an evil CEO trying to, say, lure children with free ice cream while siphoning their personal data. Like Google.

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August 19, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010 11:55 AM/EST

Google Maps Biking Directions Cover 80 More Cities

Google added bike lane and trail data to cover an additional 80 cities for its Google Maps biking directions service thanks to the help of 10,000 users who submitted 25,000 suggestions for improvements.

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April 2, 2010

Friday, April 02, 2010 10:38 AM/EST

Ex-Googler Falls Prey to Wonderful Privacy Flaw of Google Buzz

Andrew McLaughlin, formerly Google's top lobbyist and currently the deputy CTO in the White House, where he advises President Barack Obama on Internet policy, apparently was aghast to find his contacts exposed by Google Buzz. The result was a horse pucky storm of rumor and conspiracy theory.

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February 22, 2010

Monday, February 22, 2010 1:26 PM/EST

Privacy Snafus Threaten to Make Google Buzz Beacon 2

Google Buzz users won't be happy until they have total, granular control over their privacy; they have a fundamental right to it. So keep complaining and telling Google what you don't like. All of this brings back memories of Beacon, that disastrous Facebook advertising effort that worked great until people found it revealed things about them they had no desire to share with certain people (like gift purchases).

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January 28, 2010

Thursday, January 28, 2010 8:38 AM/EST

Google Airs Privacy Principles, Sets Itself Up for Ridicule

To celebrate, International Data Privacy Day published the five core principles that inform its approach to building Web services and applications. In a video, Google explains how it uses info from our search history to disambiguate between similar queries and how it provides an off-the-record chat feature for Google Talk, among other measures.

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November 14, 2009

Saturday, November 14, 2009 4:13 PM/EST

Switzerland Drops Legal Hammer on Google Street View

Switzerland is suing Google over its Street View feature in Google Maps, which provides 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic street-level views of 100-plus cities all over the world.

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November 5, 2009

Thursday, November 05, 2009 2:00 AM/EST

Google Dashboard Lists Account Info to Calm Privacy Critics

Google made another move to assuage the concerns of privacy critics Nov. 5, with the Google Dashboard, which provides a summary of the application data associated with Google accounts. This is a fine feature, particularly for folks like yours truly who use a swath of Google Web services and want a faster way to manage them.

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September 30, 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:51 PM/EST

Google's Matt Cutts Calls for Disclosure in Tailored Advertising Report

Google's Matt Cutts wants the disclosure to reflect the bias of Chris Hoofnagle, one of the sponsors of the report. I'm of two minds here. I think it's best to disclose everything to head off any attempts to discredit or undermine your position. But I also think the players lobbying against the behavioral advertising that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft do are pretty established. They're not hiding anywhere.

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August 12, 2009

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 9:19 AM/EST

Onion News Network: Google Opt-Out Village

The Onion News Network has posted a video that should go down as a classic for all Google Watchers: the 22-acre Google Opt-Out Village is for users concerned about Google collecting too much data from their searches and Gmail use.

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