Google+: Step right up if you want to help Google complete its profile of you

Ear­li­er this week, Google final­ly took the wrap­pings off of the Face­book clone it has been devel­op­ing, spark­ing a pro­longed media fren­zy about its efforts to catch up with Twit­ter and Face­book in the social net­work­ing arena.

By all accounts, Google+ rep­re­sents the com­pa­ny’s most sophis­ti­cat­ed attempt to build a social net­work. It is a top pri­or­i­ty for CEO (and cofounder) Lar­ry Page,  and, con­se­quent­ly, its roll­out is being han­dled very care­ful­ly, as opposed to Google’s last social ini­tia­tive, Buzz, which is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be a fail­ure by tech pundits.

Instead of forc­ing Google+ on exist­ing users, as it did with Buzz, Google has crafti­ly made its new social net­work open by invi­ta­tion only, at least until it comes out of “field tri­al”. The exclu­siv­i­ty fac­tor has already giv­en Google+ some­thing of an aura, though intel­li­gent reviews of the site do exist that have doc­u­ment­ed a num­ber of flaws (such as this one).

Google claims that it devel­oped Google+ because “online shar­ing is bro­ken”. But that’s not the real rea­son it’s try­ing to build a social net­work. The real rea­son is that Google wants what Face­book has: access to per­son­al and sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about mil­lions of peo­ple, includ­ing their rela­tion­ships and interests.

Google has already tried to get access to some of Face­book’s data by ask­ing Face­book for it. Face­book has said no, repeat­ed­ly spurn­ing Google in favor of Microsoft, which it has an increas­ing­ly deep part­ner­ship with.

(Microsoft owns a 1.6% stake in Face­book and the two com­pa­nies have an exten­sive search and adver­tis­ing deal. Face­book uses Bing as its web search engine, and Bing uses data from Face­book to make search­ing social for users who are signed into both ser­vices. What’s more, next week, Face­book is report­ed­ly going to announce that it has inte­grat­ed Skype video call­ing into its platform).

So Google is build­ing its own new social net­work, hop­ing that this time, bet­ter exe­cu­tion will result in a prod­uct that peo­ple will eager­ly sign up to use… even if (as with Gmail) there are unan­swered ques­tions and pri­va­cy implications.

Those impli­ca­tions mat­ter to us. Con­se­quent­ly, we will not be estab­lish­ing a pres­ence on Google+, no mat­ter how pop­u­lar it may become.

We actu­al­ly began sev­er­ing ties with Google back in 2009 in response to what we per­ceived to be a hos­tile atti­tude towards the idea of user privacy.

We no longer use any Google prod­ucts to pub­lish our web­site, mea­sure our traf­fic, or host any con­tent … and we haven’t for some time.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, too many orga­ni­za­tions have moved in the oth­er direction.

Accord­ing to my Ghostery/NoScript/RequestPolicy stats, more than nine­ty per­cent of the web­sites I reg­u­lar­ly vis­it — includ­ing those of non­prof­its, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, or non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions — have Google Ana­lyt­ics or Google Adsense embed­ded. That’s a pret­ty high figure.

No com­pa­ny — or gov­ern­ment, for that mat­ter — should have that kind of reach.

Google has gone from being a quirky search engine to a com­mer­cial, for-prof­it ver­sion of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency. Lest you think I’m exag­ger­at­ing, here is a sum­ma­ry of the kinds of infor­ma­tion Google present­ly has the abil­i­ty to col­lect, in addi­tion to peo­ple’s web surf­ing habits:

• Names and con­tact infor­ma­tion. Many peo­ple vol­un­teer this infor­ma­tion to Google when they sign up for its prod­ucts. But Google also has a his­to­ry of col­lect­ing it from unsus­pect­ing fam­i­lies. For instance, inves­ti­ga­tions by sev­er­al author­i­ties in dif­fer­ent coun­tries have found that Google’s “Street View” cars har­vest­ed and stored com­plete names, screen names, pass­words, email address­es, and tele­phone num­bers in the process of tak­ing pic­tures for Google Maps. (This pri­va­cy breach has become known as the Wi-Spy scandal).
• Con­tacts.  Google has access to the address books of every per­son who uses Gmail, Google Talk (which is inte­grat­ed with Gmail) or Android.
• Doc­u­ments and cal­en­dars. Google can scan and index the con­tents of doc­u­ments and cal­en­dars cre­at­ed by peo­ple who use Google Docs.
• Pho­tos. Google allows users to upload pho­tos to its dat­a­cen­ters using its Picasa prod­uct. There also exist desk­top apps for Picasa which can scan and index all the pic­tures on a user’s com­put­er. Google exec­u­tives have also admit­ted the com­pa­ny devel­oped sophis­ti­cat­ed face-recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy (which could pre­sum­ably be used in con­junc­tion with Picasa), but it has nev­er been released due to fears of a pri­va­cy backlash.
• Mes­sages. Google can scan and index the con­tent of mes­sages sent and received by users of Gmail. Pre­sum­ably it can do the same with text mes­sages sent or received through Android.
• Voice pat­terns. Through its call­ing prod­ucts, includ­ing Google Voice, Google has the abil­i­ty to record its users’ voice patterns.
• Cred­it card num­bers. Google col­lects cred­it card num­bers (and stores them) when users buy some­thing on Google Checkout.
• Med­ical records. Google is actu­al­ly shut­ting down its Google Health prod­uct (which allowed users to upload their med­ical records to Google’s servers). How­ev­er, the clo­sure of Google Health does­n’t mean the com­pa­ny’s inter­est in index­ing med­ical records has waned.
• Loca­tion. Any phone run­ning Google’s Android oper­at­ing sys­tem has the abil­i­ty to report a user’s loca­tion back to Google. Addi­tion­al­ly, Google has apps for oth­er smart­phone plat­forms (Google Maps, Google Lat­i­tude) that can trans­mit loca­tion data back to Google.
• Search his­to­ry. Google logs search queries, through its search engine, through Android, and also through its Chrome brows­er, which is actu­al­ly not open-source (because it includes a pro­pri­etary lay­er, which con­tains Google’s data-min­ing mechanisms).

SEO­Moz, a local firm based here in the Seat­tle area, has a more com­plete and item­ized list encom­pass­ing all of the above.

So now, in addi­tion to all of the above, Google wants to start col­lect­ing the same infor­ma­tion peo­ple vol­un­teer to Face­book. That’s why Google+ exists.

That’s not a cyn­i­cal or para­noid char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. From the New York Times arti­cle about the launch of Google+:

Mr. Gun­do­tra and Mr. Horowitz [the Google exec­u­tives in charge of devel­op­ing Google+] said that know­ing more about indi­vid­ual Google users would improve all Google prod­ucts, includ­ing ads, search, YouTube and maps, because Google will learn what peo­ple like and even­tu­al­ly per­son­al­ize those products.

“To think we could achieve Google’s stat­ed mis­sion of orga­niz­ing the world’s infor­ma­tion absent peo­ple would be ludi­crous,” Mr. Horowitz said.

This real­ly should­n’t come as a sur­prise. Peo­ple for­get that Google is a for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion, not a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion. And Google’s busi­ness mod­el, or strat­e­gy for mak­ing mon­ey, depends on evis­cer­at­ing peo­ple’s privacy.

Per­haps for­mer Google CEO Eric Schmidt said it best when he talked to The Atlantic last autumn. He said (and this is a real quote!)

Google pol­i­cy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it […] We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re think­ing about.

Schmidt made sim­i­lar remarks on oth­er occa­sions while he was CEO. But none of his oth­er com­ments are both as suc­cinct and deeply trou­bling as this gem. In less than fifty words, Schmidt does a bet­ter job explain­ing why Google is not to be trust­ed or patron­ized than any of Google’s fiercest crit­ics ever could.

The intro­duc­tion of Google+ may moti­vate some peo­ple to will­ing­ly sur­ren­der more infor­ma­tion about them­selves to Google. We hope it will have the oppo­site effect on our read­ers. If Google’s busi­ness prac­tices both­er you as much as they both­er us, we urge you to join us in sev­er­ing ties with Google.

This isn’t as hard as it might seem. For instance, there are some great star­tups out there build­ing inno­v­a­tive search engines that excel at find­ing good con­tent and weed­ing out search spam — like Duck­Duck­Go and Blekko.

If you run a web­site, con­sid­er switch­ing to open-source alter­na­tives to Google prod­ucts, like Word­Press (for blog­ging), Piwik (for ana­lyt­ics) or OpenX (for man­ag­ing and sell­ing ad inventory).

This Fourth of July week­end, think about declar­ing your inde­pen­dence from Google. Open some doors and do some explo­ration. Take charge of your dig­i­tal life and lib­er­ate your­self from the clutch­es of a com­pa­ny that thinks there’s bil­lions of dol­lars to be made by destroy­ing pri­va­cy as we know it.