Google Posts Advertising 'Spin Document' Online

Yesterday, we reported that Consumer Watchdog had obtained, and provided satiric annotations for, a "spin document" that Google had presented as a part of a June 18th hearing before Congress. At issue was Google's practice of "behavioral advertising," and the possibility that consumers would be given, as a part of government regulation, the opportunity to "opt in" or "opt out" of being surveyed by Google's invasive mining of user browser habits, which they use to serve up online advertising.

At the time, I remarked that "'Confidential' 'spin documents' on transparency and privacy are awesome monuments to irony." But hey! Google has now posted those documents online themselves, fresh for your consumption today! But, there's a tiny little twist: They've deleted the words "GOOGLE CONFIDENTIAL."

Here is the original cover page:

And here's what's been made available for public consumption:

Well, it's a good nod to almost-transparency, anyway. But just so you remember: They'd have preferred you not see these materials at all! And Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court remains concerned:

Google is becoming more Orwellian every day in order to perpetuate the myth they are an open and transparent company. In this case, they are rewriting history by only putting the presentation forward after the exposure, failing to mention the impetus and altering the documents in the process to eliminate the "confidential" and "proprietary" tag. It's hard to trust a company with our most sensitive data when they go to such lengths to twist the truth. Google owes us an explanation of who met on capitol hill with whom, and whether or not they were registered lobbyists.

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Comments

[Greywolf Borealis]

I dumped all things google from my conputers years ago when they blackballed my sites on their search engine for deleting googleads from my site. It would have taken about five years to earn $50. Google is becoming another moneymaking machine and I don't do business with moneymaking machines.

[JohnSawyer]

I hate to be conspiratorial, but what the hell--why not?

It would be interesting to investigate whether the CIA, etc. is involved with advertising companies like Google, credit information gathering agencies, etc. in any way--as secret owner/operators, or "merely" getting info from these agencies (either by arrangement or by theft). Huge amounts of personal data, behavioral patterns, etc. are assembled by credit information gathering companies, Google, etc.--exac­tly the kind of information that the CIA likes to have. Google claims they collect no personally identifying information except whatever their users voluntarily give, but why automatically believe them?

[Greywolf Borealis]

Under Bush, they certainly attempted to gain information from google as they did other communications companies and libraries. Big brother is watching. One way to lessen the info gathering is to refuse third party cookies.