Schmidt out of Google's CEO Office, But Is Privacy in?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be leaving the CEO's office and founder Larry Page will be stepping in. The question is whether this is a signal from the Internet Goliath that Schmidt's missteps and misstatements about online privacy are no longer company policy.

It's not likely Google will embrace the "Do Not Track Me" mechanism suggested recently by the FTC, nor abandon its business model of collecting as much data about us as possible to serve us up to the highest paying advertiser. Nonetheless, there could be subtle changes in the Page era that put our privacy back in the minds of Google engineers.

Consumer Watchdog's satirical video below pointed out many of Schmidt's bloopers and was viewed by more than 400,000 people online.

When Page and Co-founder Sergey Brin started Google, they envisioned a company that was more socially conscious and responsive than most corporations. That outlook was famously expressed by Google's unofficial motto, "Don't be evil." In recent years, under Schmidt's leadership, the motto had become a popular punch line for a joke. Now consumers know how Google has tracked them across the Internet, stole information from private Wi-Fi networks with its street-view cars, and turned private e-mail addresses on Gmail accounts into public social networks on its Buzz service.

During Schmidt's watch, Google committed one of the largest privacy breaches ever, when its street-view cars sucked up private data from Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries around the world. The Wi-Spy debacle is under investigation by the FCC and is also the subject of a probe by more than 30 states attorneys general. Congress still needs to put Schmidt under oath and let the American people hear all the details of the scandal.

Schmidt may be out of the CEO's chair in April, but he still needs to be in the witness chair in Congress. Perhaps today's news makes it a little more likely that he will be called forth and sworn to testify in Washington, D.C., one day soon.

 

Follow Jamie Court on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RaisingHellNow

Comments

[RED66]

08:01 AM on 01/21/2011

JFK's line today would be

"Ask not what you can do to better yourself, but demand government take from others and give it to you."

[jabailo]

06:34 AM on 01/21/2011

Maybe it has more to do with them being unable to develop a new revenue source after hiring every "genius" in the world.

[Ralphiec88]

11:29 PM on 01/20/2011

I think this is paints a pretty extreme picture of Google. Take the claim that Google "stole information from private Wi-Fi networks with its street-view car" Google admitted that some wifi payload information was collected, which they attributed to reuse of some software code that had been used for another purpose. Whether you believe that or not (I do, what they collected seems of little value except to purveyors of 'Big Brother' story lines), all that Google could collect was what hotspots were broadcasting into the open air. "Stealing?" That's a reach.