Google's CEO Clears the Air 147
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."
Similar article on the BBC (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4816848.stm [bbc.co.uk]
was made based on the same meeting....
Re:Privacy concerns (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. You're the only one who has ever had any misgivings over it. I'm so glad you finally said something, because certainly nobody else has ever thought it before.
Seriously - is your tin foil covering your entire body now? Or are you just that much of an egotist?
Will Google one day sell this information to employers?
Not without either violating their privacy policy [google.com] or significantly changing it. But don't let that get in the way of your paranoia.
Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?
No [equifax.com] that [transunion.com] would [experian.com] never [choicepoint.com] happen [consumerdebit.com].
Sorry, I was too lazy to link every single letter to a different data mining company, otherwise I could've included ones that operate predominantly outside of the US (although the big 3 all have non-US operations).
Your concerns on this issue are about 50 years out of date. And, somehow, I doubt that you know that much about the system as a whole either (and yes, I do).
Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person?
A rather large amount of that information, particularly the financial data, is already available. See above. If I pull a report on you from the credit bureaus then I can already tell a great deal about you -- where you live, how badly you are in debt (or if you're not), how much you're paid (roughly), possibly what kind of car you drive.
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?
Not bloody likely. Even in Right to Work states you'd have a hard time pulling that one off. You might try, but if you were ever found out then you'd lose far, far more in legal bills than you'd ever gain in insurance savings. Not to mention that you'd get your ass sued off for invasion of privacy -- no matter what waivers you had employees (or potential employees) sign.
Re:An Open Question: (Score:2, Informative)
The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to give them what they want. The better you are at giving your customers what they want, the more they pay you.
Google's job is organizing and retrieving information. It's against everything to stand for to not keep local archives that they can analyze for further insight into the Internet's patterns.