Google CEO Suggests You Move If You Aren't Comfortable With Street View Cameras (UPDATE)

UPDATE: Google CEO Eric Schmidt has offered a response to comments he made during his appearance on the Parker Spitzer show last Friday.

Schmidt's statement reads: "As you can see from the unedited interview, my comments were made during a fairly long back and forth on privacy. I clearly misspoke. If you are worried about Street View and want your house removed please contact Google and we will remove it."

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During an interview on CNN's Parker Spitzer last Friday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt offered a word of advice to users concerned with Google's Street View cameras, which provide photos of cities around the world that are featured online on Google Maps.

Schmidt's statement on Street View was not included in an official transcript of the interview, but according to MarketWatch, here's what was said:

"Street View, we drive exactly once," Schmidt said, referring to the vehicles mounted with cameras sent out to take photos for the service. "So, you can just move, right?" After a brief, subsequent exchange with co-host Kathleen Parker, Schmidt laughed, making it unclear whether the remark was made in jest.

The executive added in reference to Street View that "the important point is we only do it once," and that "this is not a monitoring situation."

Schmidt continued: "We're very careful to not have real-time information about where people are."

Earlier this year, Schmidt dismissed as a "joke" a controversial suggestion he made during a Wall Street Journal interview that young people should be allowed to change their names upon reaching adulthood to escape incriminating information posted online during their youth. He has also said that Google's policy was to "get right up to the creepy line," but not cross it.

During the Parker Spitzer interview, Schmidt also addressed what information Google knows about its users. He told the hosts, "What we do know is we keep the searches that you do for roughly a year, year and a half and then we forget them."

But is that enough? "Privacy needs to be seen in its proper context is more important than how we're treating it today on online," Schmidt opined.

He added, "People have a right of privacy and they have a right of private behavior and that we need to respect that as a society."

See Schmidt's interview below. What do you think of his take on privacy? Do you agree or disagree with his perspective? Weigh in below.

UPDATE: All Things Digital has posted the clip showing Schmidt's "advice to the Street-View shy" during Parker Spitzer. A CNN spokesperson said of the clip, "Producers routinely make editorial decisions about what sound bites to include in their shows. In this case, the clip was posted on cnn.com and disseminated to other media outlets and was widely available."

Quick Poll

Schmidt's suggestion that people who dislike Street View "move":

was serious.

was a joke.

I'm not sure whether he was serious or joking.

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Comments

[alfredjr]

11:57 AM on 10/28/2010

I think he was misunderstood by the host. When Eric Schmidt says "you can just move," he is talking about the situation where you are a pedestrian. I don't think he means, go buy a new house. Of course, he's not answering the question correctly, in that case, but I really believe that is what he is talking about.

[freedom4allau]

09:19 PM on 10/27/2010

@ Eric23, apparently your reply isn't showing up for some reason - - ?Satellites take such pictures from even higher and, yet, I've not heard the widespread outrage about them from governments where it is alleged that was a violation of law.?

And I"ve been writing about that for years too - complaining. It's big brother no matter who is doing it.

[Scott Mattson]

03:27 PM on 10/27/2010

The Onion was prescient! http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/#next-page

[justin sane]

01:49 AM on 10/27/2010

Private information is just as much of a commodity as money these days.

[Vaish Words]

10:27 PM on 10/26/2010

There is a fine line between personalization to improve your online experiences and prying and being watched - the amount of information we are willing to share needs to be a individual choice...http://vaishwords.blogspot.com/2010/10/internet-privacy-and-prying-eyes.html

[MichaelMcKLA]

07:46 PM on 10/26/2010

Perhaps to Mars. Some folks are putting together a one-way trip to the Red Planet. Sign up!

[AlienPet13]

12:28 AM on 11/09/2010

"Quaid...! Start the Reactor!!!"

[MyTake]

06:24 PM on 10/26/2010

If Joseph Goebbels ever came back to life through reincarnation, he would look exactly like Eric Schmidt. They would have a great conversation about the techniques they use to rip the privacy out of a Nation

Since Schmidt and Google use international income shifting to avoid paying $60 billion in U.S. taxes, he could put this street view issue aside by offering the owners of all houses and business buildings money in order to park their address on street view.

Now if only we could get this guy to apologize for running all of the Google server data directly into those NSA massive population data farms that are processing the information into the Global Population Data Base which the elites, such as the international Bilderberg Group, plan to use in their Global Depopulation program once a single global government is achieved.

OMG, lost my head for a moment, Schmidt is a Bilderberg Group member. And Google host's Obama fundraisers which means Obama is a third party to the Bilderberg Group.

Oh, how the world turns!

[Robert MacEwan]

04:55 PM on 10/26/2010

Give the guy a break. Its not as if he runs a giant forkn company and stays busy & pulled in a million directs. Besides have you ever reread some of you own comments lately?

[Kuuba]

09:09 AM on 10/27/2010

You're defending this beady-eyed CEO, seriously?
Google is too invasive and Page and Brin sure didn't like it when people were taking pictures of where they lived. Hypocrites?

[fjpoblam]

01:44 PM on 10/26/2010

Eric Schidt (misspelling intentional) wants us to think Google respects our privacy. But he has already said, "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

I don't need anyone to tell me what I should be doing next.

[Charles Keledjian]

12:30 PM on 10/26/2010

My problem with Google is that their business model is to sell ads while giving the rest of us services for free. So we are the cattle, our information is their raw product and we are not their customers, the advertizers are. The only other business that follows the same model that I can think of is over the air TV. They give us content for free and is paid with ads. But first, TV companies cannot abuse ads because there is competition and they would just lose viewers. Imagine if over the air TV was monopolized by 1 company. We would have more ads than content. Second, TV companies don't have the power to get personal info like Google does. Therefore, I think it would be very dangerous to have Google grow further into a monopoly because we are not their customers, the advertizers are, we do not pay Google, we are their product, we are what they sell.

[jsgaetano]

03:40 PM on 10/26/2010

Google is simply a privatized version of the NSA, where you give up all your privacy in exchange for easier access to your own information.

[poster1122]

02:01 AM on 10/27/2010

I have a couple of problems with your arguments:

1) Nothing obligates you to use google or go to sites that choose to partner with it. You *choose* to navigate to their sites and use their services. Life exists apart from the Internet.

2) The information they collect is stuff you or someone you know posts about in some sort of public fashion or in plain view to the public square that any reporter or even private citizen can capture.

The difference about google is that they're very good at sifting through the data than their competitors. But that's the necessary consequence of being the world's index. A search engine is only good because it can sift through that data.

[VegetableMan]

01:08 PM on 10/28/2010

my search for information on breast cancer, gay rights, or jenna jameson is no one's goddam business but my own.

[Maarten Wentink]

12:10 PM on 10/26/2010

In my opinion GOOGLE has stepped over the "creepy line" already. What once was a progresive thinking company run by young forward looking people is now a mega corporation taken over by people who's only focus is the bottom line.

[lrobb]

11:51 AM on 10/26/2010

I have a simple suggestion for GoogleMaps. If anyone is upset because anyone on the worldwide web can now see exactly what someone driving down your public street sees, they should be allowed to opt their building out of the service.

Better yet, everyone should immediately spirffy up the front of their houses to increase their curb appeal on the off chance the google mapper does a drive-by. That should stimulate the economy like anything.

GoogleMaps does not photograph private streets and drives. If you are really concerned, just buy or rent in a gated community the next time you move.

[american-dolt]

11:43 AM on 10/26/2010

Someone put a foot on his head.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/25/rand-paul-supporter-stomps-head_n_773857.html

[LawrenceL]

11:38 AM on 10/26/2010

Eric Schmidt has some odious opinions. And considering that they recently confessed to "inadvertantly" capturing IP addresses, passwords, and other private information during their photo-trolling, their corporate slogan is a mockery of itself.

[jsgaetano]

03:42 PM on 10/26/2010

There's a reason they were doing this- the NSA wanted them to map out the locations of whatever wireless equipment they could see.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about Google... but the interesting thing is, the more you look into it, the more credible those claims become.

[Donns]

11:27 AM on 10/26/2010

Let's all stand outside at least once a day and salute Google with the raised middle finger salute. Sooner or later they will get it.