Come clean on DoubleClick, Google told
p2pnet news | Advertising:- Texas Republican politician Joe Barton wants Google to explain privacy issues, “stemming from its acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this year,” says Online Media Daily.
Last December he gave Google a week to answer 24 questions relating to privacy, eliciting a 19 page .pdf from Alan Davidson, senior policy counsel and head of the company’s US public policy.
Among other things, Google/Davidson stated >>>
Transparency: We believe in being upfront with our users about what information we collect and how we use it so that they can make informed choices about their personal information. We have been an industry leader in finding new ways to educate users about privacy, such as our Google Privacy Channel on YouTube (which you can find at www.youtube.com/googleprivacy) where we feature privacy videos that explain our privacy policies in simple, plain English.
Choice: We strive to design our products in a way that gives users meaningful choices about how they use our services and what information they provide to us. Many of our products, such as our Search services, do not require users to provide any personally identifying information at all. When we do ask for personal information, we also endeavor to provide features that give users control over that information. For example, our Google Talk instant messaging service includes an “off the record” feature that prevents either party from storing the chat.
Security: We take seriously the protection of the data that our users entrust with us. Google employs some of the world’s best engineers in software and network security and has teams dedicated to developing and implementing policies, practices and technologies to protect this information. with answers. You’ll find the responses in this PDF file. It’s the weekend, so I’m off and leaving a deeper analysis until Monday. Google is providing the PDF file to media outlets that asked for it. I think we’re the first to have done so. Below, the contents of the letter in HTML format:
Now, in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Bartonwants Google to provide details about how it’ll use data about consumers from DoubleClick, says the story, continuing:
“It is critical that Google’s and DoubleClick’s policies and procedures for handling this information be transparent, and that every effort is made to protect consumers’ data,” he wrote.
DoubleClick isn’t all Google needs to come clean on.
It’s just announced grandiose (even for Google) plans to become online host to the world.
“Through Gmail and Gchat, Larry, Sergei and Eric have a direct line on everyone you’re in touch with,” p2pnet said, among other things, going on:
“Google owns YouTube, through which a significant portion of the online world gets its video jollies and not-jollies, Feedburner, possibly the most used news feed management application, and Blogger, one of the largest blogging platforms.
“And more. A lot more.
“It even has a Public Policy unit through which it seeks to, “do public policy advocacy in a Googley way”.
A ‘Googley way’?
Barton’s three-page letter, “contained a host of pointed privacy-related questions, including whether Google plans to merge cookie data from DoubleClick, whether Google will continue to let users opt-out of DoubleClick’s ad-serving cookie, and the length of time for which Google will retain information about the IP addresses of users it serves ads to,” says Online Media Daily, adding:
“Barton also called on Google to clarify information about DoubleClick’s contracts with advertisers. The companies have said that existing agreements prohibit DoubleClick from sharing information about users’ Web-surfing activity with Google, even though Google now owns DoubleClick. Barton pressed for further details about those agreements and also asked whether Google intends to renegotiate those deals.”
This time, Barton gave Google a June 6 deadline.
.
.Stumble It!
Online Media Daily – Lawmaker Voices Privacy Concerns In Letter To Google, May 23, 2008
p2pnet – Google – online host to the world, May 22, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Old people trying to wrap their mind around teh internet. I love it.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Connecting to sites such as Google through these filthy info collecting services wastes enormous amounts of time and bandwidth
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
A “Googley” way … that’s apt.
I have some of my own questions about Doubleclick — issues raised before and now come back again with the advent of NebuAd. But these are old, old issues.
Google is big — as big as Jon says. But I seem them as Friend, not Foe. I think that concerns about privacy WRT Doubleclick ought to be answered in a complete and transparent way — but I also point out that Doubleclick is not new, has never been really warmly welcomed by consumers, and is probably better off in the hands of a Google than they are in the hands of _____________________.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:10 am
^^ “But I seem them as Friend, not Foe.”
Once upon a time, I saw them in the same light — as Do No Evil, a large company operated by a genuinely concerned people who were out to prove corporations could be corporations and still have a conscience.
That may have been how it was in the beginning, but that isn’t the way it is now.
Cheers!
May 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
The problem is that the purpose of a company is supposed to be about serving the public and the society and they are supposed to make money this way.
This is still true for most small company.
Unfortunatly this is no longer the case for most big companies who act like bullies and parasites.
These companies must be destroyed: Vivendi/Universal, Sony/BMG, EMI, Time Warner, Fox and others MPAA companies, AT&T/Bell, Comcast, Aliburton, Black Water, Microsoft, Apple, . . .
Who else?