Google changed the way its search works yesterday by heavily integrating Google+ social media content into its search engine results. Now, advocacy groups are up in arms about potential invasions of user privacy. What, like you didn’t see this coming.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center announced today that it is considering filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding Google’s new “Search, Plus Your World”. Specifically the group believes Google’s actions violate antitrust statutes by exploiting its power in the search sector to better compete in social networking. As EPIC’s executive director, Marc Rotenberg, points out, “Google is an entrenched player trying to fight off its challenger Facebook by using its market dominance in a separate sector.”
Rotenberg goes on to say, “Although data from a user’s Google+ contacts is not displayed publicly, Google’s changes make the personal data of users more accessible” which could leave it vulnerable to tampering by malicious users. Granted, while Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which has content agreements with Facebook, employ’s its social information source in a similar manner, Google’s overwhelming dominance in search — handling nearly two-thirds of US queries — puts it under increased scrutiny. To be fair, though, Facebook currently has about 800 million users and a track record of stepping all over their privacy, while Google+ has just 40 million users.
What do you think? Is Google really overstepping its bounds by including opt-out social information in its search results, or is this another case of a self-appointed internet sheriff tattling to regulators about a company’s actions that it disagrees with? [LA Times]
Zwan
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 1:08 PMThere’s all sorts of dangerous stuff you can pull from search engines on people. You just have to be careful what you stick up there, and assume always that it will be public.
I’m just lucky I got a really common name. Hehe…
Blake
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 1:34 PMI’m pretty certain everyone saw this coming.
I think it’s going to scare/annoy people more than increase their market share though.
light487
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:06 PMWebsites similar to this search feature have been around for years.. why are these groups coming out now? Why? Because it’s Google, that’s why..
meh.
Greg
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:32 PMFacebook is selling their user data to bing and doing the same thing. Twiiter was selling public tweets to google (until last year) which is the same thing.
It’s very easy to opt out and or turn off the feature by default. Google has been cross promoting and integrating its various products for a long time, as regular user of many of Googles products I really appreaciate the integration accross their platforms.
From what I have read this is not the first over reaction from EPIC and the complaints from Twitter are laughable as they were charging for Google to have access to index their public tweets before they or Google pulled out of the agreement.
Womp
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:49 PMJust last week Google froze my Plus account because I was not using my real name. If Google are going to actively penalise people for taking even the most rudimentary steps towards protecting themselves online then Google themselves deserve the maximum penalty applicable when their policies cause harm.
Richard
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:13 AMPersonally I don’t have an issue with that course of actions. It’s a social network site aimed to not only allow you to find people but generally to allow people you know to locate you. I think aliases diminishes the value of a social networking site IMHO. In fact, I think it’s an anti social move and goes against the philosophy and purpose of the site.
Theres plenty of ways to communicate with people other than Google+, so if people are that hell bent on remaining anonymous I think theres better services available anyway.
Besides, you can block all other information, the name only really allows people to locate a profile, not do a lot more. A name alone isn’t going to tell anyone anything, theres many Joe Blogs out there and I cant imagine even those hell bent on identity theft are going to care about having access to a name and nothing else…may as well just open a phone book.
Richard
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:03 AM“Google is an entrenched player trying to fight off its challenger Facebook by using its market dominance in a separate sector.”
The two sectors are arguably very very closely related actually. While on paper, yes, they are two categories; the division is anything but black and white.
While perhaps a dumb example, everyone at some point has searched for themselves or someone they knew to see if they could find anything. By having search data based on your social profile theres a far better chance the “Richard” I search for will in fact result in a list of sites that have things related to me in some way or another.
Cinema searches or restaurant searches can benefit from having data on previous check ins etc.
I can see how this can be interpreted as abuse; but at the same time theres an infinite amount of reasons why this data is relevant for search results.
Franz
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:29 AMLe Sigh.
Penny
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 3:47 AMI t’s really just so they can pull your info when you do a search and stick on google ads that relate to your interests.