Google’s Data Mining Causing Continued Concern in Europe

If you have not already heard, Google has a new policy in place in which in consolidates information about users from YouTube, Google+, Gmail, and others and uses that information to filter results and improve services for users. The catch is, however, that users cannot opt out. Many in Europe are concerned that this data compilation is a massive invasion of privacy, and Google has yet to convince them otherwise. There is currently a meeting set up between Google and France’s Commission Nationale de l'Informatique, the committee that overseas data protection, for May 23.

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Recently, I addressed the issues of privacy on LinkedIn with my article on Social Media Sun. In many ways what Google is doing is what LinkedIn does on a grand scale. They are taking information available online, such as what we search for, pages we visit, what we do with Google+, and consolidating it to one place for easy reference.

On the other hand, the webpages we view are not public information, the way our alma mater is, or past employers, and that is what makes me uneasy. Some may argue that users are utilizing a Google service, so Google has the right to store the information processed on its server.

The entire issue seems to come down to the question of the permanence of the internet, and all that is done on it. The ‘Right to be Forgotten’ has continued to be a huge issue in the European community as people hammer out what it means to be forgotten on the internet, how that interacts with free speech, and how it can be implemented and under what guidelines.

The legal issues surrounding the internet are going to continue to be debated in the coming years, really the coming decades. But what do you think about Google’s data collection and the ‘Right to be Forgotten’? Who owns what is posted on the internet? How do we regulate ownership and determine if someone can demand something being permanently deleted?