With friends like Google...........

[marmar]

from Salon.com:


Google’s latest privacy attack
It makes nice with 38 states -- paying a $7 million fine. Then turns around and targets privacy laws and a key app

By Andrew Leonard


On Tuesday, Google agreed to pay a $7 million fine as part of the settlement of a case arising from massive privacy violations incurred during the rollout of its Street View mapping project. The announcement generated a wave of approving press.

The New York Times quoted Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen lauding the “new Google”:

“This is the industry giant,” he said. “It is committing to change its corporate culture to encourage sensitivity to issues of personal data privacy.”

But less than 24 hours later, Google kicked Adblock Plus, a popular app that blocks ads and prevents third-party tracking, right out of its Google Play app store. There are obviously some clear limits to Google’s privacy sensitivity, particularly when it comes to protecting advertising revenue on mobile devices.

Google’s $7 million fine is barely a rounding error for a company worth $270 billion. It’s also less than half of what Google spent on lobbying in 2012. And therein lies another story. While Google has been saying mea culpa over its egregious Street View privacy violations, the company is one of a handful of powerful Internet technology giants desperately attempting to disembowel a major effort in the European Union to significantly strengthen online privacy safeguards. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/googles_latest_privacy_attack/