Google's CEO Clears the Air

prostoalex writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with PC Magazine to discuss some of the current issues swirling around Google, such as China and censorship, growth of the video content on the Internet, Microsoft's planned move into online ads, working with AOL and Internet neutrality." From the article: "Schmidt was quick to say that the acquisition of Writely was not meant to create a competitor to Microsoft Office, which he said solves a complicated and important problem of work productivity. Writely is a server-based editing system where you can move your files around, he said, and there are places where a rich text editor is useful in Google."

Comments

Creepy:

[naught]

from tfa: "He said Google ads are very targetable, because Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail."

not to mention possibly what crimes you've committed. i find myself suddenly not wanting to ever search on the word 'torrent' again.

Google Acqusistions

[Grant29]

Google keeps acquiring lots of small companies. Who wants to bet that these things are all inteneded for a much larger product that we all assume? Looks like they could eventually captalize on many different markets. Search will probably eventually become what they're least known for.
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Privacy concerns

[Baseball_Fan]

One thing that will increase advertising effectiveness, he said, was better targeting of ads. He said Google ads are very targetable, because Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail. This he said was true not only of text ads, but for display ads and eventually for video ads as well.

Am I the only one who does not like Google collecting surfing habits or using email to decide what ads to send my way. What other ways can this information be used? Will Google one day sell this information to employers? Will there be enough data that Google can link surfing habits to a real person, not a virtual internet user?

Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?

Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person? Can that data, when taken as a whole, be used to predict things like how much a person will cost in health insurance, and that data be used to not hire a person?

Re:Privacy concerns

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There are already a number of companies building profiles of data about everyone and selling it. Unless we get privacy laws passed (fat chance) this will continue. So your bank, ISP, and employer will be collaborating on building a profile of you and they almost certainly will use it in hiring decisions. When employers become large and consolidated, the only way to bargain fairly is for labor to organize and consolidate. This leads to some serious inefficiencies and lots of room for corruption, but it is not like their are any better options.

Re:Simple Survey

[ajs]

I trust any company less than the identical company with 100 fewer employees, so my answer to that question would have to be "yes". However, I'd also have to point out that when compared to ANY OTHER FOR-PROFIT COMPANY OF ITS SIZE, I trust Google far, far more. This relative trust is highly significant to Google's business, and until they do something to violate that trust (no, censoring Chinese content doesn't violate that trust because it provides more information to the Chinese than they would have had if Google had refused), I will continue to use their products over Microsoft's, Yahoo's and their other competitors'.

Re:Simple Survey

[MrNougat]

I would say that over the last year, I have seen Google put in some interesting situations. They've made those situations fairly public prior to deciding what to do about them, taken time to make a choice, chosen what could arguably be the lesser of evils, and made that public, too.

Examples: Google gets beat up all the time for tailoring its web searches to suit the Chinese gov't on google.cn. What about Yahoo and MSN? I'm sure that they tailor search results at teir China sites, too. Google gets beat up for having to turn over data to the Justice Dept, and yet they're the only ones who made any noise about it. I'm sure those same requests were made of other search engines, and that those engines happily turned over the requested data without informing the public at all.

Do I trust Google more now than I did a year ago? Yes, I do. Because they are public about situations of which the public should be aware, while their competitors are uncannily silent.