Google debuted its answer to Facebook Tuesday, dubbed Google+, and the search and online advertising giant is clearly seeking to present it as an alternative to Facebook.
One of Facebook's clearest weaknesses is its privacy practices, which have come under attack many times for being confusing, ever-mutating and self-serving. Facebook's privacy controls remain difficult to navigate, despite efforts at simplification. For instance: Try to find the button to turn off having your "Likes" included in ads.
And its privacy policy clocks in at nearly 6,000 words.
So what's different about Google+'s privacy policy?
For one, it's much shorter – just a sentence or two past 1,000 words. That, however, can be a little deceiving because Facebook's policy covers all of its services, while Google+'s version has links to its other privacy policies, including ones for Google generally and the +1 button specifically.
The policy is, however, very direct and simple, with statements such as: "After someone tags you in a shared photo or video, you may choose to remove the tag."
The social network's policy for what's acceptable behavior is also concise, direct and well, almost human.
But that doesn't mean all is crystal clear.
For instance, Google+'s opening disclosure is open to interpretation.
"We will record information about your activity – such as posts you comment on and the other users with whom you interact – in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services," the policy reads.
While the language seems to be plain-spoken, it's very unclear what this actually means. "Google Services" has grown to be a huge category, including such a range of diverse products that includes search, e-mail, maps, advertising, and even a high-end women's clothing shopping site.
Wired asked Google to clarify what that statement meant.
The answer: "Like all Google products and services, we are running analyses of how users interact with Google+. We do that to make sure the products and services are running correctly and to consider future improvements."
Which basically explains nothing about how they are using this data, or whether even the data usage is limited to Google+.
For most of its existence, Google has largely decided that what you do on its properties – such as search and Gmail – will not be used for its ad program, which shows banner ads on third-party websites. That program uses tracking cookies on more than a million sites to create an anonymous profile of you in order to show you more targeted ads (click here to see your profile). By contrast, the ads you see in Gmail and in Google Search are targeted by the search termsyou use, or the words in recent e-mails.
To date, the only Google site that feeds into the marketing profile is YouTube. Google has long emphasized that it won't use your search history to create targeted ads and that they use different cookies so the marketing cookie can't be matched with your Google user profile cookie – despite the temptation of untold advertising riches for the taking by combining and mining such a rich vein of data.
So will Google+, with its likely very rich data about users' interests, feed into that marketing profile – now or in the future?
The answer: "Google+ is not part of the Google Display Network," a spokesman said. But that's not to say it won't ever feed that network. YouTube used to live outside that wall as well.
Facebook, for all the guff it takes on privacy, prides itself on not mining what users do around the web, even though it knows every page that a Facebook user visits that has a "Like" button. Their ads target only the data that users explicitly enter into their profiles.
As for Google advertising inside the social network? Well, there is definitely much money to be made advertising inside a popular social network – as Facebook has learned. In fact, Facebook is now displays more "display ads" than any other company on the net.
But for now, Google says there's Google+ will be ad-free.
"We currently do not offer advertising in Google+, but will continue to look for new ways for businesses to engage users in the project," the spokesman said.
Which is a short way of saying, "Yes, we will have ads, but first we need to get some users."
But if Google mines what you do inside its social network to create a behavioral profile for ads outside of the social network, or use the profile they've created about you outside Google's walls inside its social network, Facebook would have good reason to say that it's ahead in the social networking privacy battle. In other respects, however, they are neck-and-neck in unexpected uses of your data.
Both companies have already wandered into a gray zone by automatically opting users into a systems that uses their "Likes" and "+1" on other websites, so that when you visit a site like CNN.com, you can see which of your friends like that site. Those votes can also show up on ads from companies that your friends have given a social vote too. (You turn this offhere for Google, and here for Facebook).
Both companies also have much to win – and possibly much to lose – in dicing and slicing and packaging user data, and user perceptions of privacy and creepiness don't always correlate with reality.
But at least at the debut of Google+, the company is off to a pretty good start – at least attempting to speak in plain English to users – even if that plain English isn't as plain as it ought to be.
See Also:
- Google Settles With Feds, Apologizes (Again) For Buzz Privacy Blunder
- Google Tweaks Buzz After Overblown Privacy Backlash
- The Facebook Privacy War: What is Personal Data?
- Facebook Loosens Privacy Controls, Sparks a Backlash
- Facebook’s Stealth Attack on Google Exposes Its Own Privacy Problem
- Privacy Flare-Up Prompts Facebook Meetings with Congress, Employees
- Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is a Privacy Nightmare
- Facebook Debuts Simplified Privacy Settings
