Google fails to find fans of its policy

Google, already looked askance for recently proposed changes to its “privacy” policy (and, before that, for agreeing to censor Intent content to pacify the Chinese government, among other problems), stumbled again last week by bypassing privacy settings of competitor Apple.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was found to be bypassing settings on Apple’s Safari Web browser, which blocks third-party cookies by default and is therefore popular with people seeking to keep unwanted ads and other content from appearing on their Macs, iPads and iPhones.

Google explained that the automatic block was inconveniencing some of its customers, who wanted certain content to appear. So Google bypassed the block and slipped tracking files into Apple devices to enable that content to be delivered. That the tracking function spread to other uses and users was an accident, said Google. The company also promised that the tracking function does not collect users’ personal information.

At least one commentator, Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek, suggests that the contretemps is due partly to competition between the two companies, which may be maneuvering to gain market share by not supporting rival platforms. And he notes that, from one point of view, Google wasn’t invading “privacy”; instead, it was ignoring Apple’s policy.

Be that as it may, the privacy issue is what snared attention.

At least three congressmen want an investigation of Google to determine if its actions violate a privacy agreement the company signed with the Federal Trade Commission last year. Google had been accused in 2010 of “deceptive tactics” and “violat[ing] its own privacy promises to consumers.” The 2011 agreement “bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations.”

Google has brought this new round of suspicion down on its head by its own clumsiness. One would suppose that Google — after all its recent problems persuading the public and the government that it is committed to privacy — would have developed a heightened sensitivity to any actions that might trigger new complaints.

Apparently, it did not.

The latest Google brouhaha represents a number of Internet and high-tech problems in microcosm, not the least of which is privacy. Also there is the previously mentioned concern about the degree to which these mega-companies compete — or choose to cooperate, in order to grow the Internet and their own businesses simultaneously.

Finally, there is the issue of consumer knowledge, balanced against the great power of these large companies. In order to successfully manage their own privacy and access preferences, consumers need an increasingly high degree of sophistication and education in fast-changing technologies and policies. And in such areas, the companies will always have the edge over the consumers.