Google and Privacy PSA
In a good transparent move, the official Google blog discusses the idea of Google and privacy. One thing though that any user of any system, no matter if it is Google, Microsoft, yahoo, any Web 2.0 web site, or otherwise is that they want to know how their customers use the web site.
They not only want to understand their customers better, in effect by using their web site, we make it easier for them to learn about their customers. Businesses work best when they know what to give to any particular customer based on previous habits, and while full blow prediction is not quite available yet, the wealth of knowledge we give businesses as we surf their web sites, is something that we should all be aware of.
. But they’re not always easy for non-techies to understand. Google is committed to being transparent about our privacy practices. We’ve been thinking about different ways to help people understand the technical aspects of online privacy, to improve transparency, and to empower you to make informed decisions about how you want to use our services. Today, we’re launching our first experiment to explain basic privacy concepts via video on YouTube. Source: Official Google Blog
Overall this is a good public service announcement that basically breaks down the process for non technical people to understand exactly what is and what is not happening when they do their search query.
While most technical folks, most legal folks, and just about everyone who is familiar and comfortable with the internet, and what happens on the server side of the business will fall asleep when watching this. The converse side of this is that for folks who are very unprepared should be watching this video, and then making more informed decisions about what they will and will not do on the internet.
The idea of privacy and anonymity on the internet is somewhat of a misnomer because of the trails that we leave behind, this at least is a good informative PSA for people who have not quite come to the realization that we leave a lot of data behind, and you should only do on the internet what you would do downtown.
The video is right here:
[…] you missed the first PSA (Public Service Announcement) from Google about privacy, you can see it here. Google tonight released a second PSA that should help out in dealing with Google and Privacy. This […]