OK, the previous post on this topic generated a LOT of emails. With excessive use of the caps lock. All the shouting aside, the responses formed two very distinct camps: those who welcomed the changes with open arms, and those angered to the point that their accounts will be deactivated within the next month. This apartheid is primarily due to difference in perspective rather than an actual misrepresentation of facts. Let’s break down the two mindsets so we can understand both sides of the equation.
Now it is clear that purely from a functionality standpoint (ignore the politics for just a moment), the changes introduced by Google are in an effort to consolidate the rules governing a number of their different platforms with the user’s ease in mind. Google’s business plan is anything but linear; its development process is more akin to the behavior of a hyperactive eight year old who has been hiding his Adderall medication behind the couch. View this change as if Google is actually growing up a bit and organizing the cluttered, monumental mess of products that resembles their bedroom. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a parent who isn’t delighted by this display of proactive behavior.
On the other hand Google is undoubtedly a company built on opportunity, which is illustrated through the behavior mentioned above. With so many side projects, acquisitions, and experimental programs, anyone would be hard pressed to successfully debate Google’s willingness to pursue a potentially favorable juncture of circumstances. And Google’s situation is exactly that: they now have the opportunity to try and play catch up in the data mining game pioneered by credit card companies and soon followed by social media sites.
My perspective on the situation lies somewhere in the midst of this rift. I believe Google’s intentions to first and foremost be benign. They wanted to consolidate an issue that plagues nearly every company with an overly convoluted privacy agreement. However, any public company is required to keep the shareholders’ best interests in mind, and this case was no exception. Google saw an opportunity to become more competitive and took it. Plain and simple.
A Solution?
An email by one of the readers spurred a bit of an idea which, combined with a dead iPod on the lift at Park City, gave birth to a little experiment that I’m going to try. In part 1 of this article, I mentioned that sites like Hotmail and Vimeo that have made no changes in how they protect your information will see a lot more of my traffic. But rather than ditch my Gmail account entirely I’m going to try and associate everything about my professional life with Google operated sites, while anything personal will stay with Hotmail, Vimeo, etc. By compartmentalizing the two aspects of life, theoretically the intrusiveness of Google’s new policy should become much clearer.
I’ll keep you posted…