Zimmer, M. (2012). The ethical (re)design of the Google Books project. In iConference ’12 Proceedings of the 2012 iConference, 363-369. DOI: 10.1145/2132176.2132223

Today, the Google Books project is at a relative standstill — lawsuits against the project remain outstanding as the courts rejected a proposed settlement agreement. The failure of the original vision for the Google Books project to become fully realized presents us with a unique opportunity to ensure that whatever final form Google Books will take in the future, it is designed to support the values respected within the domain of information ethics. This paper will proposed an ethical re-design of the Google Books project, focusing on three core ethical values of primary interest to librarian and information professionals: privacy, intellectual freedom, and public access to information. Advocating for these values in the next iteration of the mass digitization service can help ensure that the informational norms of the library are embraced and upheld.

I few days ago, Facebook removed a photo of two men kissing from a user’s Wall due to an apparent violation of the site’s terms of service. Here’s the message the original poster received from Facebook:

Hello,

Content that you shared on Facebook has been removed because it violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.

This message serves as a warning. Additional violations may result in the termination of your account. Please read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully and refrain from posting abusive material in the future. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

The Facebook Team

This act of censorship has received considerable attention (some worthwhile discussions here, here, here, and here). Certainly, it is within Facebook’s right to try to control the type of content shared on its platform, and there are some social good to be gained through content filtering and censorship (i.e., you might want to censor child porn, or links to malware sites, etc).

But there are some fundamental concerns with this case, that point to a growing censorship problem within Facebook.

First, the message sent to the user indicated that “Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.” However, if you review the site’s much lauded Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, that particular language is not present. The Statement does include the directive “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence” (3.7). Again, this is probably a reasonable restriction (although not completely without controversy). That said, no where in the Rights statement does it prohibit, or suggest a prohibition, on “sexually suggestive” content. It merely restricts pornography and nudity. Therefore, not only does Facebook misquote its own Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to the user when justifying the removal of content, it misapplies said Statement.

Elsewhere, in the site’s Community Standards page (and I’m not sure how Facebook has resolved the attitudes and preferences of a “community” of 600 million users into a single shared set of standards), it notes that “We have a strict “no nudity or pornography” policy. Any content that is inappropriately sexual will be removed”. Again, the photo includes neither nudity nor pornography. How it violates the community standards remains baffling.

Second, let’s assume for a moment that the Statement does include mention of “sexually suggestive” content as mentioned in the warning to the user. Does the photo in question fit that description? Two fully-clothed adult men kissing in public? (FWIW, the two men are actors, as the photos is a promotional image from a popular British soap opera.) While the image does convey emotions and affection, and perhaps might elicit arousal for some, the image is really no different from the thousands (millions?) of similar images of male-female kisses that exist on Facebook. Why this is considered “sexually suggestive” to such an extent that it mandates removal is beyond me.

Third, it appears that this removal was done by a (at least one) human being, and not by some automated process or algorithm. The original contributor provides a screencap of a description in Facebook’s help page answering the question “Does Facebook remove everything that gets reported?”. The answer provided indicates that “No. A Facebook administrator looks into each report thoroughly in order to decide the appropriate course of action…” Based on this, it appears that a human took a look at that photo, and decided it was indeed sexually suggestive or pornographic, and then removed it. I think I’d almost rather it had been an algorithm, as it is quite troubling that a Facebook admin, wielding such power, would arrive at this conclusion.

Now, interestingly, the screenshot provided of this help page notes the URL string as “/help/?faq=17292″. If you visit this page now, the description has changed. Now there is no mention of a Facebook administrator, and the answer merely states “No, we remove content reported that violates our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities“. Did Facebook just change this language in reaction to this event? I’ll try to find out.

Fourth, if we assume that a human is indeed deciding what is “sexually suggestive” and removing photos based on his/her judgement, who is this person (or team of people), and what standards are being used? I’ve already done pretty simple searches on Facebook and found plenty of images much more sexually suggestive than this one (including nudity) — and these all remain. What does “sexually suggestive” even mean? Just suggesting the existence of human sexuality in general? Does a hug with a contemporary sex symbol count? Seriously, though, while the desire to restrict nudity and pornography is reasonable, a standard of “sexually suggestive” is almost impossible to define, and apply evenly across 600 million users, each with their own sexual predilections.

Now, there are reports that Facebook has apologized and restored the image. A statement from Facebook is provided in the Advocate: “The photo in question does not violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and was removed in error…We apologize for the inconvenience.” That’s it. No blog posts, press releases, or broader explanation by Facebook on how such an “error” happened, what kind of content review processes are in place, or any promise to take better care. This lack of proper communication and contrition is very disappointing, but not really surprising.

What makes this entire situation even more troubling, however, is the news that Facebook is reportedly in discussions with the Chinese government in an attempt to bring the social network to the China. And, like Google, Facebook will have to play by China’s rules to get this done. This means Facebook will need to implement a much more robust and aggressive content filtering and censorship policy to abide by China’s wishes to limit it’s citizens’ access to information (and I’m sure the Chinese government would love to have access to Facebook’s logs of user profile and usage data, especially related to dissidents, etc). Such a move would hardly be honoring Facebook’s mission to “[Give] people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”. In fact, Facebook has already noted that it is “allowing too much…free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before”. For a company dedicated to the open flow of information, expressing concern about too much free speech is counter-intuitive and problematic.

Google has struggled with its decision to engage in censorship within China, and ultimately left (although not really in a stand against censorship). Frankly, I’m not left with heaps of confidence that Facebook will be taking the proper path when it comes to global expansion into markets where censorship is the norm. If the way they treated a simple gay kiss is any indication, this could get messy.

UPDATE: I’ve reached out to a few contacts at Facebook with the message below, specifically seeking comment on whether the FAQ page has changed in lieu of these events. I’m awaiting a reply.

Dear Facebook:

While investigating [1] the recent controversy surrounding the apparent removal of a photo of two gay men kissing, I uncovered a possible change to the content within a relevant FAQ/help page, and wanted to seek confirmation and comment.

Note in this original blog post (4-16-2011) about the controversy [2], the user posts a screenshot [3] of a help page describing how reported content gets reviewed. The answer provided indicates that “No. A Facebook administrator looks into each report thoroughly in order to decide the appropriate course of action…”, and in includes the URL string of the help page: “/help/?faq=17292″

However, if I visit that page today (4-21-2011), the text is different [4]: “No, we remove content reported that violates our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If a violation has occurred, then you may receive a warning or become disabled, depending on the severity of the violation.”   There is no longer any mention of a Facebook administrator looking thoroughly at each page.

This prompts a few questions:

(a) Can you confirm that there has been a change to the text in this page in recent weeks.
(b) If so, can you describe the internal discussion and process that led to this change.
(c) And finally, have any other pages, or internal processes, been changed in recent weeks due to these events.

Thank you,
Michael Zimmer

[1] http://michaelzimmer.org/2011/04/21/facebooks-censorship-problem/
[2] http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/hey_facebook_whats_so_wrong_about_a_pic_of_two_men_kissing/
[3] http://www.dangerousminds.net/images/uploads/facebookscreenshot.jpg
[4] https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17292

–
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
e: zimmerm@uwm.edu
w: www.michaelzimmer.org

Section 3.7(e) Google’s Exclusion of Books

Google may, at its discretion, exclude particular Books from one or more Display Uses for editorial or non-editorial reasons. However, Google’s right to exclude Books for editorial reasons (i.e., not for quality, user experience, legal or other non-editorial reasons) is an issue of great sensitivity to Plaintiffs and Google.  Accordingly, because Plaintiffs, Google and the libraries all value the principle of freedom of expression, and agree that this principle is an important part of GBS and other Google Products and Services, Google agrees to notify the Registry of any such exclusion of a Book for editorial reasons and of any information Google has that is pertinent to the Registry’s use of such Book other than Confidential Information of Google and other than information that Google received from a third party under an obligation of confidentiality.

Google Book Search is a massive undertaking.  Its goal is to provide unprecedented access to digital copies of all kinds of literature – a vast library of material the likes of which has never before been assembled in a single resource.  However, the project has been criticized, not for what it is including, but for what it isn’t.  Because Google Book Search has the potential to be such a widely used resource, it has the responsibility to reflect an equally diverse range of opinions and perspectives in its collection.  The editorial decision to not include a book in this project could be considered censorship and sufficient justification for such exclusion should be required of Google.  Censorship of this kind could come in two forms – first in the decision to withhold a digitized book from display in the database or, second, by choosing not to digitize a book in the first place.  The first form has already been discussed in Michael Zimmer’s blog, so the second will be the focus of this piece.

The Google Book Search Amended Settlement Agreement carves out space allowing Google to exclude certain books from “Display Uses” for both editorial and non-editorial reasons.  Alexander Macgillivray, former Google employee and head of the legal team spearheading the settlement, has gone on record assuring the public that this exception merely reserves Google’s right to exclude, but that Google has “ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS to remove any books for editorial reasons” (emphasis in original).  Despite this assurance, Section 3.7(e) implies that if, for any reason, Google does exercise this right then notice will be provided to a registry maintained by the Publisher’s Guild.  What Mr. Macgillivray and Section 3.7 do not address is the ability of Google and participating libraries to editorially exclude books from the digitization process in the first place.  Specifically, Section 3.7 discusses the exclusion of books from “Display Uses” which are defined within the Amended Settlement Agreement as “Snippet Display, Front Matter Display, Access Uses and Preview Uses” (Article 1, Section 1.52 at p. 8).  Each of these terms is further defined as display and use of material after it has already been digitized.  Again, there is no mention of the possibility that either Google or participating libraries may withhold certain books from the initial scanning process for editorial reasons.  Additionally, no requirement exists for the provision of notice to the registry for such exclusion of books from digitization.

It is conceivable that books may be excluded from the scanning process for completely legitimate reasons.  Perhaps a book is too fragile or irreplaceable to risk scanning it.  Perhaps the print is too faint or pages are missing.  These are all reasonable, non-editorial justifications for omitting a book from the digitization process.  However, it is equally conceivable that a book may not be scanned because it is too controversial, too outdated, or simply too unpopular to merit digitization.  One could easily imagine a librarian or Google scanning technician setting aside a copy of Little Black Sambo or The Anarchist’s Cookbook in order to preemptively avoid controversy.  To date there is no evidence that these books have been omitted from the scanning process, the point is that such exclusion based on the mere anticipation of ruffled feathers amounts to a priori censorship.  Without a reporting requirement similar to that included in Section 3.7, there is no transparency in the process.

Although this possibility may seem somewhat alarmist and is certainly hypothetical, a close reading of the Settlement Agreement should give one pause.  For instance, the Agreement clearly allows Google to pick and choose books from a library’s collection.  Even the definition of “Collection” within the agreement implies a certain amount of cherry-picking: “’Collection’ means the Books held by a Fully Participating Library or a Cooperating Library that have been Digitized or are targeted for Digitization pursuant to a Digitization Agreement between Google and such Fully Participating Library or such Cooperating Library, which Books may be some or all of such Fully Participating Library’s or such Cooperating Library’s holdings” (Article 1, Section 1.30 at p. 6, emphasis added).  Because these Digitization Agreements are not part of the public record, it remains unclear why only “some” of a participating library’s collection is being scanned and how such decisions are made.

More insidiously, in the final analysis Google Book Search is primarily a commercial enterprise.  Therefore, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that controversial, outdated, or unpopular material may be preemptively excluded from the scanning process because the potential market for such works is small or nonexistent.  Such exclusion may also shield Google from potentially costly litigation.  The alternative argument could certainly be made that Google has historically been inclusive of unpopular speech in its search index and that, “Nearly all known instances of the removal of content from Google’s index were, in one way or another, legally required” (see Zimmer blog post).  Mr. Macgillivray’s public statements also seem to indicate that this policy will extend to Google Book Search and that “Google does not plan to omit any books from the service, just as we have not omitted any books from our scanning based on their content or copyright status”.  While this promise and general policy of inclusion are reassuring, past practice is in no way a guarantee of future behavior.  Additionally, the inclusion of a website in Google’s search index costs almost nothing.  Google’s massive expenditure to refine the scanning process and the considerable per unit expense of digitizing a book may affect the calculus of inclusion.  Again, without some sort of public reporting requirements, we have no way of knowing if books are being excluded, why they’re being excluded, and how those decisions are being made.

If Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and if Google Book Search aspires to that goal, then the threshold for not digitizing a book should be quite high indeed.  Google and the Amended Settlement Agreement have created what amounts to a de facto monopoly – they are the sole online provider of these books.  No one else has the resources, technology, or access to material that Google does. Therefore, the threshold for exclusion should certainly be higher than commercial considerations of a book’s potential value in the marketplace or fear of controversy.  If, for some reason, a user is not able to access the totality of material at Google’s disposal then some justification should be required.  Public notification of these justifications should also be a necessary component for transparency – anything less is simply censorship.

It is important to realize that before Like.com was helping people find shoes and watches online, its technology was the core of Riya, a photo sharing and search site that allowed users to upload, tag and search images based on facial recognition technology. Users simply uploaded their photo library to Riya, tag faces in a handful of the photos, and then Riya’s facial recognition technology took over and attempt to automatically tag different faces it “recognizes” so that you don’t have to. Riya’s vision was to expand this facial recognition beyond an individual’s library, and eventually reach every digital photo scattered across the Web.

Over 4 years ago, I wrote about the privacy implications of Riya’s facial recognition technology here and here. I warned then:

Sure, it would be great if I could easily search for pictures of me on the web, but do I want others to be able to do that as well? Could this provide a useful tool for stalkers looking for a particular person? Abusive partners trying to track down their victim? (Note that Riya also uploads and indexes all the metadata related to your photos, including the date and time is was taken, when it was uploaded, etc. Users can also tag and search photos based on location). …there are externalities once all of the images of our daily lives (and their related metadata) are uploaded to the Internet, indexed, searchable, and accessible to all.

Google almost bought Riya back in 2006, but acquired Neven Vision instead, and soon integrated basic facial recognition into its image search results, and, later, into Picasa and Orkut.

With the purchase of Like.com, Google obtains the original Riya technology. Coupled with other recent social networking related acquisitions, Google appears poised to make a run at Facebook, with Riya providing the means to automate photo tagging at a scale Riya could only have dreamed of. What remains to be seen is how carefully Google will consider the privacy implications of unleashing powerful face recognition technology on throngs of users.

Google’s explanation was that this privacy invasion was a mistake, and happened because some code inadvertently made its way into the Street View vehicles’ software. While I trust Google that this was a mistake, and that the data wasn’t used for anything, it reveals a significant lack of control over what its fleet of vehicles are doing — and what they are capable of doing without Google apparently knowing. It also reveals yet another example of how Google failed to recognize and address possible privacy issues related to the the fact they are deploying an army of vehicles to harvest information about the physical (and now wireless) terrain.

But not to be left out of the recent spate of dotcom executives making ignorant statements about online privacy, Eric Schmidt, Google’ CEO, had this response when asked about possible EU charges against Google for the WiFi privacy invasion:

“no harm, no foul”

and

“Who was harmed? Name the person.”

and

it was “highly unlikely” that any of the collected information was “useful” and that there appeared to “have been no use of that data.”

So, once again, we have the person in charge of a dominant Web company, a company in control of huge amounts of personal data about millions of users, defining privacy concerns solely in terms of the potential (or real) harm that could occur.

Schmidt’s harm-based conception of privacy supposes that so long as the data can be protected/prevented from being used to cause harm, the privacy of the subjects is maintained. Since no one was hurt, Schmidt appears to say, then what’s the big fuss?

Such a position ignores the broader dignity-based theory of privacy. This view recognizes that one does not need to have a tangible harm take place in order for there to be concerns over the privacy of one’s personal information. Rather, merely having one’s  information stripped from the intended sphere (personal WiFi network), and amassed by passing vehicles operated by the world’s largest search engine becomes an affront to the subjects’ human dignity and their ability to control the flow of their personal information.

But Schmidt doesn’t see things this way. Why? My theory is because he’s an engineer, not an ethicist. To an engineer, if the data has no obvious use-value, and no one was hurt, then all is good with the world. To an ethicist, harvesting personal information from the spheres of one’s personal WiFi network (whether the network was open or closed) is a privacy violation.

Until the computer scientists and engineers running the companies that possess so much of our personal information start to understand online privacy from contextual and dignity based frameworks, our privacy remains in peril.

[image source]

In January of this this year, Google was the victim of a cyber-attack that originated from China. In its description of the attacks, Google noted that the ultimate target of these attacks included human rights activists, with the apparent intent to surveill their communications on various Google platforms. This, along with what Google described as “attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web”, prompted Google to announce that it was “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”.

This appeared to a major breakthrough, as numerous attempts to get Google to end their censorship of the Web and to fully embrace a commitment to protecting human rights had all previously failed.

Over three months have passed since this announcement, and today we finally learned Google’s “new approach” to China: pack up and move to Hong Kong.

Starting today, users visiting Google.cn will be redirected to Google.com.hk, Google’s Hong Kong search portal, where search results will be provided free from the filtering Google had previously been performing on Google.cn. Google is touting this as ending censorship in China, but, as Siva Vaidhyanathan has pointed out, that really isn’t the case. It’s an end-around. A slight-of-hand.

Google is simply routing customers to the Hong Kong site, where it — presumably — doesn’t have to abide by China’s laws regarding censorship (to get a .cn domain, you have to agree to comply with all applicable laws, regulations and policies of the China’s governmental agencies and the China Internet Network Information Center). So, while Chinese users will now be able to access unfiltered results at Google.com.hk, they could always do that simply by going to Google.com. The Chinese government can now simply block access to individual websites through its firewall like before. We’re back to square one.

There have been suggestions that China must now decide whether to censor a Hong Kong-based service, something it has been hesitant to do. I don’t see it this way. China doesn’t need to touch the Google.com.hk site; all it needs to do is continue to block access to the sites it doesn’t want people from Chinese IP addresses to view. It matters little whether the link was clicked from a search results page on Google.com or Google.com.hk or even Baidu.com. China won’t need to tread onto Hong Kong’s quasi-independence to continue its censorship.

A final point targeted at Google’s apparent skirting of its ethical responsibility. By refusing to stay and fight Chinese censorship directly (such as how Wikipedia has tried to stand firm), Google is waking away from any influence it might have towards ending oppressive censorship in China. When it first announced its cooperation with Chinese censors, Google defended its actions at a hearing before the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives by saying this:

If Google were to stay out of China, it would remove powerful pressure on the local players in the search engine market to create ever-more-powerful tools for accessing and organizing information. Google’s withdrawal from China would cede the terrain to the local Internet portals that may not have the same commitment, or feel the competitive pressure, to innovate in the interests of their users.

Apparently Google is now content with ceding the terrain, and leaving Chinese Internet users at the mercy of “local Internet portals” like Baidu, who has been described as being “the most proactive and restrictive online censor in the search arena.”

I know Google is trying to do the right thing here, and it hopes it can deliver unfiltered results to China from Google.com.hk (or force China to take some kind of action against the Hong Kong site). But I fear this move will instead result in further failure to serve the interests of Chinese Internet users, and another lost opportunity to fight oppressive online censorship.

UPDATE: As predicted, China is now blocking some access to the redirected Google.com.hk site, as well as some of the linked sites.

[image via hunxue-er]

Search engines have become the center of gravity of our contemporary information society, providing a powerful interface for accessing the vast amount of information available on the World Wide Web and beyond. The audacious mission of Google, for example, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Attaining such a goal necessarily results in significant changes to the ways in which information is created, stored, retrieved, and used. This course will critically examine the nature of search engines and their role in our information society, and reveal the unique challenges they bring to bear on information institutions, information policy, and information ethics.

The full syllabus is available on my teaching page, and I’ve pasted the weekly breakdown of topics and readings below. I will be assigning Alex Halavais’s excellent text Search Engine Society, chapters out of my edited volume Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, and will rely heavily on work by James Grimmelmann, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and other preeminent search engine scholars. Let me know if you have additional suggestions for readings (the course is intended for advanced undergraduates and MLIS students).

This will be a very fun class to teach!

Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.

Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.

Make the collection of personal information transparent.

Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.

Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

The principles are further explained in a video on the Google Blog (interestingly posted by an engineer, not one of Google’s legal/policy folks).

I like these principles; they are something every organization should commit to and strive for. The problem is, Google hasn’t adhered to them quite as closely as they’d want you to believe. Let’s consider each:

1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. This isn’t so much a privacy principle as it is a disclaimer for what Google purports to do with all the data it collects about its millions of users. Google tracks what we do in order to know whether our search for “Paris Hilton” is about the blond or the hotel. This principle merely presents the value proposition for Google’s potential violation of user privacy.

2. Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. A very important goal, but the product featured in Google’s video, off-the-record chats in iChat, isn’t providing the kinds of privacy protections that most consumers or advocates clamor for. Certainly, being able to control (to an extent) whether my chats are logged is a way to protect my privacy, but what about IP logging or behavioral targeting? Perhaps Google doesn’t want to bring up its current data retention policies given Microsoft’s recent announcement. And perhaps it doesn’t want to actively promote one of its truly innovative privacy protecting product — the Google Advertising Cookie Opt-Out Plugin — since the more users who install the plugin, the less valuable its advertising platform becomes.

3. Make the collection of personal information transparent. Despite what Google claims about Dashboard, there remains an enormous lack of transparency regarding the collection of user information (Google Analytics comes immediately to mind). If Google was committed to transparency, it wouldn’t have resisted placing a link to its privacy policy on the homepage. If Google was committed to transparency, its behavioral targeting system would be opt-in and would provide a conspicuous link to “Ad Privacy Preferences”.

4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy. Google touts the ability to report problems in Street View and the removal of one’s search history as examples of this principle. Of course, the Street View example has a horrid history, and removing your search history only removes it from that product’s interface, not from Google’s main server logs. That’s a limited choice, not a fully meaningful one.

5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold. I have faith that Google is indeed being responsible with our information, and that it is keeping it secure. But while security is often necessary to ensure privacy, it certainly isn’t a sufficient condition, and the gaps in the preceding principles overshadow Google’s good stewardship.

In summary, I do give Google much credit for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to improve its privacy practices and communication. But too often its rhetoric is too self-congratulatory, and fails to recognize serious gaps in its approach to user privacy.

These principles are vital, and I hope Google continues to strive to meet them. There is much work still to be done.

Recall that in early 2007, Google announced it would “anonymize” its user search logs after 18-24 months. Later that year, Google reluctantly decided to add an expiration date to its web cookie, while Ask.com (unsuccessfully) tried to gain market share by giving users almost complete control over whether any data is collected. Then, in 2008, under pressure from EU regulators, Google announced it would anonymize its search logs after 9 months. Later, Microsoft endorsed the EU’s  Article 29 Working Party’s position that search companies should anonymize data retention logs after 6 months, but only if the other major search engines follow suit. None did, but Yahoo did agree to anonymize its logs after 90 days.

Microsoft has now decided to take the lead in search privacy and agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. Previously, Microsoft de-identified its search logs immediately, but didn’t purge the IP address until 18 months. Now, de-identification still takes place immediately, and the IP addresses are completely removed in 6 months. Here’s the chart included with Microsoft’s announcement:

Microsoft’s bold move puts significant pressure on Google. Currently Google merely “anonymizes” IP addresses on its server logs after nine months, arguing it must retain user logs to improve their services, fight spam and abuse, and comply with legal obligations. I, of course, have been critical of this reasoning on various occasions, and now Microsoft appears to be confirming that long-term data retention isn’t necessary to run a successful search engine.

Google, the ball is in your court.

(Hat tip to Jules Polonetsky at the Future of Privacy Forum)

Remember how hard we gad to fight to convince Google to include a link to its privacy policy on the Google.com homepage?

Remember how Google argued “we do believe that having very limited text on our home page is important” and that it was pitched as some great sacrifice to include the word “privacy” and disrupt the homepage’s aesthetics?

Remember how, just a month ago, Google argued that a “clean, minimalist approach” to their homepage gives users “just what they are looking for first and foremost” — thus only the search box appeared when you visit Google.com, with all the other content (including the privacy policy link) only fading in if you happen to move the mouse?

Apparently none of this is nearly as important as shilling promoting Google’s new phone, the Nexus One. If you visit Google.com today, you’ll notice everything faded out except a prominently placed Nexus One advertisement:

Move your mouse, and then everything else fades in (including yet another advertisement for Google Chrome, and an ugly one at that):

Yes, we’ve seen this kind of hypocrisy before…

UPDATE (1/7/2010): Google has now changed the way the homepage loads, with the Nexus One ad faded out and only appearing with the other content when the use moves the mouse. I’d be curious to see what kind of discussions led to the original design, and this revert.

[Minor update: crossed out "shilling", since it is Google's own phone]