There has been a lot of negative news circulating around Google lately. But oddly enough, the company’s stock price continues to climb (over $500 per share at last check) and its market share continues to grow. Ronald Reagan earned the title of “Teflon president” because nothing bad seemed to stick to him, judging from his approval ratings. Is Google a Teflon search engine?
It certainly seems as if all the bad news slides right off Google. Practically everyone I know uses the search engine, with only the occasional twinge here and there over privacy issues. It’s hard to argue with an important tool that just works so well when you need to do research, whether it’s for work, a personal interest, or something else entirely.
Still, if you’re going to use something so extensively, it behooves you to know the implications. This is why some women don’t want anything to do with diamonds unless they know that they’re not “blood diamonds” fueling violence in Africa. So what is your use of Google fueling?
Well, to judge from some sources, it’s fueling some pretty amazing invasions of privacy – many of them inadvertent. Let’s take a look at one of Google’s newest services: Street View. This version of Google’s online maps takes pictures at street level which often capture recognizable people. So when, as in one CNN story, Maer Israel and a friend played hooky from work briefly in San Francisco, it was picked up by Google’s cameras – and Israel found himself talking to an HR manager a few weeks later.
He wasn’t fired, much to Israel’s mother’s surprise. But the manager said to him “Do you know that there are cameras everywhere?” While those in the UK have lived with this reality for years, many in the US bury our heads in the sand rather than realize we have some of the same issues.
When it comes to being caught on camera, we know that banks have security cameras indoors and at their ATMs; that many retail outlets also have security cameras at least around the cash register areas; that casinos have security cameras nearly everywhere; and that at least some roads and tunnels have cameras to catch speeders and other lawbreakers. These cameras have specific purposes, and we assume that the images on them will only be viewed by someone doing a specific job for purposes of security. Anything else is likely to make us more than a little uncomfortable.
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