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Google Mobile-Payment Patent Raises Privacy Flags
bizwriter writes "Google has been interested in the mobile payment business, with rumored service tests coming soon. Now the rumors have some more tangible back-up in the form of a patent application that not only describes a versatile payment system, but one in which Google would obtain details of purchasing that are normally unavailable."
Reader Batblue points out a related article about how the temptation of 'big data' is leading businesses to draw us closer to a surveillance society.
I hate to break it to everyone but the last time I ran an online store the Merchant Account processors required that I submit everything. The persons info, CC# ISV, list of items being purchased, etc. I was running a lab supply company and the Merchant Account processor would review my sales every month and cut off my ability to process CC's. Seems that Petri dishes, syringes, and beakers are considered "Drug Paraphernalia" and if they see them they cut you off. In a 1 year time I went through 4 Merchant providers and the only suggestion that was given was to shutdown the online site and publish catalogs and do mail order only as that processing does not require you to submit the items being purchased. Needless to say, I shutdown the company. I dont trust the CC processors (Merchant account processors) There needs to be something done about them.
"A patent isn't a product."
Patents have only one power. To prevent others from using what you patented. You don't have to do it. You might not want to. You might not be able to. So why file for a patent on something you'll never use?
Strategy. If you figure out two good ways to make something, but one is slightly better than the other, you patent both. But you're not going to bother making something the less desirable way, you just don't want a competitor to either. Or maybe for moral reasons, you don't want anyone to do it (lobotomy ray gun, whatever).
Or maybe you can't do what you patented for practical reasons. Patent interference, market conditions, the law (i.e. bald eagle killing machine).
If and when Google actually implements the patent everyone is commenting on, then you can worry. Until then, a patent isn't a product. It's just an idea on a piece of paper.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
My point was literally that "Do no evil" is an impossible standard, whereas "Don't be evil" is a lot easier to live up to. I even called it a catch phrase, instead of insisting it was a motto or whatever.
As I've pointed out a number of times before, it's neither.
See their S1 filing with the SEC. It's actually a well defined bound on their business practices which they call out to investors in order to ensure that they can bring their business practices in line with that bound and not run afoul of stockholder lawsuits.
For practical purposes, the problem with Google's "don't be evil" is that they take it as a given in everything they do, thus they engage in a broad number of practices which appear to be dangerous precursors to the abuse of public trust. It's not that they are abusing that trust, it's just that they're putting themselves in a position where they could. I think the Google experiment is a fascinating one, and I really wonder how it will play out. If they continue to gather potentially sensitive user data and continue to shepherd it with user controls and transparency, Google could potentially serve as the model on which we develop (here, in the U.S.) our analog in the data world for the financial world's concept of "fiduciary responsibility." Other countries have begun to try to formulate this on their own, but the U.S. has been highly reluctant to place such controls on data.
I'd very much like to feel as comfortable giving Google every detail of my personal data as I feel in giving my life savings to, say, Fidelity Investments. I don't worry about what Fidelity could do with that money because we have about 300 years worth of law and precedent that have worked out what a fiduciary should and should not do. With data, we're just starting to walk down that path, so paranoia isn't a bad thing. it's just that we should keep in mind that the companies that are forging that frontier are no more our enemies than a bank or other fiduciary. Those institutions can do the wrong thing (as evidenced recently) as well, but we punish them when they misuse our money, not when they file a patent for storing or transferring it.