Privacy is not dead.
My friend and colleague Bruce Schneier wrote a column last week (See "Google And Facebook's Privacy Illusion") stating that a lot of major tech companies are declaring online privacy dead. Speaking as a
Google, like any company, needs to make a profit to stay in business. But we know the only way to stay in business is to give users what they want. They want useful products that make their lives easier--products that help them get to where they're going, keep in touch with their family or find the right recipe for dinner. Most users are willing to provide some basic data, such as their current location, their e-mail address and their food preferences, in order to find the information they're looking for. But users want more. They want real control over the data they provide and the information they receive. They want to make sure that their information remains private and secure.
In his column Schneier states that "privacy is about control" and that "people, even the younger generation, still care about privacy." He's absolutely right. In this day and age it's imperative for a technology company that wants to succeed in the long run to provide users with real control. In our fast-paced environment it's a continuous challenge to provide the best and most useful products for our users. It's also a continuous challenge to provide real and meaningful control--especially in the face of new technologies and increased sharing.
At Google, control means choice and transparency. For choice, we work hard to give users granular options for our different products. With transparency, users should know what information we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it and how we use it to improve the overall experience. If we fail to provide choice and transparency, we fail to provide real control. And with no control, our users will simply leave.
This is why we launched the Google Dashboard, which shows information connected to a Google Account for products like Gmail, Picasa and Search. It also provides links for users to control their own privacy settings, empowering them to decide what to share, what to keep private and what to delete.
In a different context, our Ads Preferences Manager lets people control the interest categories associated with the cookie used to serve them interest-based ads on Google partner sites. This provides users with the opportunity to have ads that are more relevant to their interests--ads, incidentally, that help pay for all the great content on the Web, so it can stay free of charge. And we've gone even further, building a way for users to permanently opt out of interest-based ads altogether.
Google's Data Liberation Front is a group of engineers dedicated to ensuring users rightfully have control over the information they store with us, empowering them to move or even export information offline altogether. Yes, it means users can take information they previously stored with us and then put it in a competing service, but that's what control really is about. Other examples include our Chrome browser, which includes an "incognito" mode for users to browse privately and our move this January to encrypt Gmail by default, becoming the first major email provider to do so.
All that said, we're not perfect. As Schneier mentioned, when we launched Buzz, we heard from some users that they were unhappy. So our engineers worked around the clock and within 48 hours we had made significant product changes. Now, instead of automatically creating a list of followers, we suggest people for Buzz users to follow. We also made it easier for users to block others from following them. And we added a tab to Gmail settings making it easier to hide Buzz or disable it completely. Earlier this week we took it a step further, when we sent out a confirmation page to early Buzz users giving them another opportunity to understand and reconfirm their settings. These are the kind of updates and improvements we are making to all our products all the time, from e-mail to search to mobile because control is what our users want and deserve. And it's what we want to provide.
But we can't and shouldn't do it alone. Ensuring real control in our ever-changing world is one of the most important challenges our society faces. But it is not a challenge that just one company, or just one government can solve. It is a challenge that will take all of us--companies, advocates, academics, policy makers and users--working together. Together, we must find new and better ways to guarantee privacy today and for the future.
Privacy is alive and well. At Google, we're working to keep it that way.
Alma Whitten is Privacy Engineering Lead at Google.
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