Over the last few months especially, online privacy has become a major issue. The big tech companies have taken quite a bit of heat over the NSA’s alleged PRISM program, among other secret government surveillance programs.
One of the companies that users put their trust in the most is Google. Most users’ searches, emails, images, and documents are stored in or pass through Google’s servers.
Google has a lot of responsibility. Most of Google’s users probably think that everything they do on Google is a secret or at least confidential. Both of those ideas aren’t close to the truth. Google has always had sketchy privacy policies. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,”
I remember hearing Schmidt’s words for the first time. They are still just as haunting to me as they were years ago. To think that a company like Google admit to keeping your sensitive information for some number of months incase authorities need to take a look, is alarming.
There is an easy answer to the question I raised in this article. I’ll let everyone decide for themselves.
No one will contest that Google is incredibly useful. It’s no doubt the most useful single company on the web. And by the way, I personally love Google.