Privacy is not Google's issue but yours says Schmidt

Thu 10 December 2009 10:00, Bas van den Beld

If you do something "bad" and it's being out on the web, don't start complaining, you shouldn't have done it in the first place. That's watt Google CEO Eric Schmidt last week suggested in a CNBC Google special.

Schmidt's opinion is, to say the least, extraordinary. Schmidt himself doesn't reveal much and was found blacklisting CNET only four years ago for publishing info about him found through Google searches, which showed how much he made, where he lived, what his hobbies are and what political donations he made.

The remark of Schmidt doesn't really show he knows what the 'normal guy' thinks and knows. Many people will not even think about consequences, simply because they cannot estimate the consequences. That is one of the things you might expect from Google, that Google will inform the people what could be the consequences and hands them a way out. Schmidt takes the 'easy way' and points at others.

See below the part of the CNBC interview which handles on the privacy issue.

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Comments (2)

- Dennis Sievers
Sure, privacy mostly is a matter of ourselves. We control what we put out there on the web. The biggest problem lies in the fact that we don't always control what others put on the web. When I don't want other to know where I live, I don't publish it online. But when someone else does in his or her blog, its out there anyway. And then Google comes by and published it again, and Bing, and Yahoo.

So, Eric can tell us that its not Googles problem, but that simply is not true. We all are responsible for privacy-matters online.

Do 10 dec 2009, 13:04
- Jeroen van Eck
- [website]
I always get a bad feeling about these quotes. Google knows it plays a big role in the privacy on the internet. And Google should care.

They always say they want the best products for their users. But that includes user support.

Do 10 dec 2009, 13:57

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