The blogosphere erupted over the weekend after Privacy International released a scathing (damning) report declaring Google the worst of the bunch at protecting privacy – well, they used words like "ambivalent" and even "hostile." But critics inside and outside of Google are calling the report unfair and poorly researched.
Boiling down Danny Sullivan's response to the report to two or three words might be selling him short by about 5,000 words and 13 pages. And Google's Matt Cutts had more than a few choice words of his own. In a study that examined the biggest online presences, Google came out at the bottom and Privacy International (PI) was heavy on the shame. When Google heads accused the group of having too close a relationship with Microsoft, the indignation coming from across the Pond was so palpable that it was nearly French (gratuitous cheap shot, no emails please ;-) ).
From PI's
Danny went through the study's conclusions one by one, examining administrative details, corporate leadership, data collection and processing, data retention, responsiveness, "ethical compass," customer control, fair gateways and authentication, and privacy innovations.
After all that, Danny could only agree on a couple of points, mainly regarding Google's data retention policies.
Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well -- and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn't seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn't appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed. Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the wors[t]. That's almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren't so bad.
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