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"The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare." That's Brewster Kahle, commenting on Google's contracts with libraries in its controversial book scanning/search service. I have asked many times on this site whether Google would ever share its scans with the world, and I've presumed the answer is no. Kahle confirms that, and comments on the implications.
More from Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped.
Herewith the story of my attempts to buy a Dora the Explorer Mr. Face Plush Backpack from ToysRUs using Google Checkout. In short, Google now has my credit card number. (It's one I use for testing, however). It feels kind of odd, to be honest.
It seems Google is obviating the merchant entirely vis the ongoing data relationship with the buyer. The registration screen states: ""Google" will appear by the charge on your credit card statement. Your card number will not be shared with the seller."
Why on earth would anyone want this to be the case? To lose your relationship with the buyer? What information *is* passed back to ToysRUs? What rights do I have to that information, and to know how it's used between Google and the merchant?
I clicked on the TOS, which is here. What I found noteworthy (GPC is Google Payment Company, the company Google created to drive Checkout):
You acknowledge and agree that your purchases of Products are transactions between you and the Seller, and not with GPC, Google or any of GPC’s affiliates. GPC is not a party to your purchase of Products, and GPC, Google, or other GPC affiliates are not a buyer or a seller in connection with any Payment Transaction, unless expressly designated as such in the listing of the Product on a Google Web Site.
Also, found this:
You agree that you will not use the Service to process Payment Transactions for any Products that violate this Terms of Service, other policies or rules applicable to the Service, or applicable law. The current policy that establishes the Products and other transactions that may not be paid for with the Service is provided here. Failure to comply with these limitations may result in suspension or termination of your use of the Service.
A quick check of what Google finds not worth selling shows expected stuff, like porn and drugs, but also this:
Offensive goods
Literature, products or other materials that:
* Defame or slander any person or groups of people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, or other factors
* Encourage or incite violent acts
* Promote intolerance or hatred
Which I suppose means that you cannot use Google Checkout to buy a DVD of this or this.
In section 7, they get to a privacy policy, which I read with interest, given my questions above. I wonder if any more than a handful of folks ever read this policy, as it's a link inside a link inside a link, but here it is. Noteworthy:
Google clearly states that its master privacy policy applies. That can be found here. (Now that's a link inside a link inside a link inside a link...). So to recap what Google can do with your information under that policy:
* Providing our products and services to users, including the display of customized content and advertising;
* Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
* Ensuring the technical functioning of our network; and
* Developing new services.
....We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.
....We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.
Whew. OK, back to the Checkout specific policy terms:
They collect a lot of data on you, and they keep it in one place - your Google Account. That's pretty much what I expected. All your reg info goes there (credit card, address, etc) and then Google reserves the right to add third party data (credit reporting agencies, for example) and - here's the nub:
...Transaction information - When you use Google Checkout to conduct a transaction, we collect information about each transaction, including the transaction amount, a description provided by the seller of the goods or services being purchased, the names of the seller and buyer, and the type of payment used.
Nowhere does it say that this information is shared back to the merchants. Were I a merchant, I'd be very wary of this.
Now, here's the thing that might make you think. Once you start a data trail in Checkout, it stays for good, at least, it stays as long as Google wants it to:
You can disable Google Checkout by contacting us. If you do so, your payment information and transaction history will no longer be viewable through Google Checkout. However, in order to meet our reporting and auditing obligations, and to detect, deter, and prevent fraud or other misconduct on our systems, the information will be retained in our systems. If you disable Google Checkout, your personally identifiable information will not be used by Google or shared with third parties except for these purposes. We may delete these records over time if permitted or required by law.
Disabling Google Checkout does not close or cancel your Google Account. For more information about how to manage your Google Account preferences, please click here. This Privacy Policy continues to apply to the personal information we maintain after you disable Google Checkout or close or cancel your Google Account.
Put another way, don't step in the mud if you don't want the tracks to stay forever.
Lastly, federal law does interfere with Google using your info in certain marketing-related ways, and the privacy policy allows you to opt out. Details:
We operate the Google Checkout service through a company called Google Payment Corporation (“GPC”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google. The information we collect, including information obtained from third parties, is shared between GPC and Google to operate the service. Neither GPC nor Google will share your information with others except as described in this Privacy Policy.
Under federal law, you have the right to opt out of certain sharing between affiliated companies such as GPC and Google. Specifically, you may choose to opt out of:
* The sharing between GPC and Google of information that does not pertain to your transactions or experiences with Google Checkout (also called “non-transactional information”, e.g., information we may obtain from third parties to verify your identity), and
* The use by Google of information shared between GPC and Google to promote Google products and services.
Please remember, regardless of whether you choose to opt out of this sharing or not, we will never sell or rent your personal information, and we will not share your personal information with anyone outside of GPC and Google except as described in this Privacy Policy.
If you don’t want us to share non-transactional data between GPC and Google, please click here (this is a email address).
If you don’t want us to use any information shared between GPC and Google to promote Google products and services to you, please click here. (also an email, I sent both of them mail and asked to opt out).
OK, so I have now read (or re-read) three separate privacy policies, and it's time to complete my purchase. I hit "agree" and, still on Google's servers, get the confirmation page, hit "sign in" again and...shit, it's not working!
What did I do wrong?
I head over to where they tell me to go - https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd - and give them the email I use for my Google account. (It worked before, to log me in in the first place, very odd!). I reset my password, and now...where do I go? There's not a screen inviting me back to complete my purchase! There's no way to get back to my order! My daughter's beloved Dora the Explorer Mr. Face Plush Backpack from ToysRUs is totally MIA!
Hmmm. I sign into my Google Checkout account, maybe that will have the purchase history. After all, they had all the information - but no. While Google did manage to capture and save my credit card info, there's no history of my attempt to purchase the Dora backpack.
Hmmm. How about I use my Firefox history to go back to the original page where my account did not work in the first place! (Not that this is something most shoppers would ever do, but...). Hey, that should work!
Nope. "Oops! Your shopping cart has expired."
Shit. So I'm starting over. No, wait, this has been way too much of a trial. I'll get back to it later. Or, I'll just go to Amazon.
Sorry Google, but mark this one in your metadata as "abandoned cart."
From a release just mailed to me:
Google Checkout Adds New Merchants, Charity Donations and Promotions to New Holiday Site
Looking for the perfect holiday gift this past weekend might have been enough to send most shoppers over the edge. That's why Cyber Monday, November 27, is expected to attract a crowd of online shoppers for the holiday season this year. And now, Google Checkout is working with even more merchants to help gift givers quickly and easily buy exactly what they want.
Just in time for the holidays, Toys "R" Us, Babies "R" Us, Golfsmith, Linens 'n Things, PETCO, J&R Music and Computer World have joined the thousands of merchants who have already added Google Checkout to their sites. Shoppers can buy directly from these merchants' sites and use their Google Checkout login to speed their purchase process. On average, Google Checkout eliminates an average of 15 steps from the online checkout process, in many cases making checking out as simple as entering a single login.
For those who like to give back (in addition to giving gifts) during the holidays, donations to eight international charities can be made with a Google Checkout login. Google will add $10 to every user's first donation of $30 or more.
I plan to go use the service today, will report back.
More here.
But it's really worth watching.
The program’s designers say existing anticensorship programs are too complicated for everyday computer users, leave evidence on the user’s computer and lack security in part because they have to be advertised publicly, making it easy for censors to detect and block access to them.
“Now you will have potentially thousands, even tens of thousands, of private proxies that are almost impossible for censors to follow one by one,” said Qiang Xiao, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Instead of publicly advertising the required login and password information, psiphon is designed to be shared within trusted social circles of friends, family and co-workers. This feature is meant to keep the program away from censors but is also the largest drawback because it limits efforts to get the program to as many people as possible. The program’s designers say existing anticensorship programs are too complicated for everyday computer users, leave evidence on the user’s computer and lack security in part because they have to be advertised publicly, making it easy for censors to detect and block access to them.
I remain deeply concerned about the erosion of press freedoms in this country. A Times case regarding confidentiality of sources is coming to a head, more here. Key quote:
“If the government is permitted to proceed to scrutinize the telephone records of The New York Times and its journalists,” Mr. Abrams said, “it will be in a position to identify literally scores of confidential sources, thus imperiling both the ability of the press to gather the news and of the public to learn it.”
Google has settled with Sofam and Scam, two news organizations in Belguim that had been disputing Google's right to index and summarize their work in Google News. The most interesting bit of this story? Right here:
“We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that will help us make extensive use of their content,” Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a phone interview yesterday. She declined to give details of the agreement or say whether it involved paying the groups for the content, and declined to say whether Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., was considering similar accords with the newspapers.
What do you think? Did Google pay up?
Interesting tidbit from Reuters:
ROME (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors on Friday put two Google Italy representatives under investigation as part of an inquiry into how a video of teenagers harassing an autistic classmate surfaced on its Video site, a judicial source said.
The two are being investigated for allegedly failing to check on the content of the video posted on the Internet search engine's Web site.
The video, which sparked outrage in the country, showed four teenagers beating and poking fun at a 17-year old disabled boy in a classroom in the northern Italian city of Turin.
What really struck me is this part:
"I've said repeatedly that there can't be double standards, one for the press and television and another for the Internet," (Italy's Education Minister Giuseppe Fioroni ) told ANSA news agency.
The Internet search engine shared the same duty as other forms of media in distributing "responsible" content, he said.
Huh.
It's called search. Search *is* the new OS. Just most of the world hasn't figured it out yet. All this speculation, it's just folks noticing what's already true.
Happy Thanksgiving, Searchbloggers. I'm very grateful that you are part of this community. Have a great holiday.
I've been meaning to point to these all week, but with the holiday, and all the catch up work after Web 2 and being sick as a dog last week, well. Anyway, this is kind of fun. The subject: Google's search share (natch). The stats: well, Comscore says Google gained share, and Nielsen says it lost. I say, when can we get a stat provider we can trust? SEW does a nice job of wrapping it all up here.
Meanwhile, Hitwise (whose data feels most suspect of the three given the results Danny tabulated in the pic to the left) has a nifty chart where you can chart Yahoo v Google for overall audience here.
Baidu, China's largest search engine, just cleared a hurdle on copyright infringement with the music industry. The Chinese courts ruled that directing users to illegally downloadable material from third party sites did not constitute a violation, overturning an earlier favorable ruling for EMI.
From the BBC:
"If the music companies had won, the whole search engine sector would have ground to a halt," Xinhua news agency quoted a Baidu spokesman as saying.
The report said the music companies would appeal against the ruling.
Skype Early Investor Finds Quintura
The Woman Who Pushed Microsoft into Online Advertising
Tracking Arbitrary Websites with Google Analytics
Father of Search Engine Link Technology Gets Nobel Equivalent of Math Award
Which Company Originated the Idea of Web 2.0?
From the AP:
Google Inc. has set aside more than $200 million in its just-completed takeover of YouTube Inc. to cover possible losses on the deal, creating a financial cushion that might protect the Internet search leader it it's hit with legal bills for the frequent copyright violations on YouTube's video-sharing site.
Without elaborating in a late Monday statement, Google said it is withholding 12.5 percent of the stock owed to YouTube for one year 'to secure certain indemnification obligations.'
I asked about the YouTube acquisition and whether a portion of the $1.65 billion sum was reserved to pay settlements with various media companies, as Mark Cuban asserted on his site. Eric flatly denied it.
The Times has the story, PaidContent had the curtain raiser...
From the NYT:
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.
In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.
But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.
For the past few quarters, many of us have sensed something of a malaise brewing inside Yahoo. (My first question to David Filo at Web 2, for example, was centered on Yahoo's sliding image as an innovator, and how it's languished compared to Google in terms of search and monetization). Now Paul Kedrosky has posted an internal memo (and WSJ does too) that puts that malaise into words. Written by SVP Brad Garlinghouse, it's a pretty thrilling manifesto - the kind of internal document that gains power when it becomes public.
Now the question is, what will Semel do with it? The public airing of such a damming memo certainly demands some kind of response. Wow.
...all is not well. Last Thursday's NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo's, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.
It's time for us to get back up.
I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action. We have the opportunity - in fact the invitation - to send a strong, clear and powerful message to our shareholders and Wall Street, to our advertisers and our partners, to our employees (both current and future), and to our users. They are all begging for a signal that we recognize and understand our problems, and that we are charting a course for fundamental change, Our current course and speed simply will not get us there. Short-term band-aids will not get us there.
Specific points Brad makes:
We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization.
We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late.
We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are "phoning" it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while -- at all levels -- employees are enabled to "hang around". Where is the accountability?
Garlinghouse goes on to make specific recommendations about how the company should be organized (way flatter), staffed (cut 15-20%) and run (kill redundant businesses, etc.).
I can only imagine the fire drill going on at Yahoo right now over this. But my two cents is this: Accept this criticism as heartfelt, and assuming the leak was not malicious, don't go on a witch hunt. Don't circle the wagons, and - this would be risky but right - if you truly believe that Garlinghouse has valid points, take the memo to heart and address the points it raises.
No one wants to see what happened to DEC, Xerox, IBM, or Microsoft happen to Yahoo. Maybe this is the wake up call it needed? (Of course, having the leak on the weekend before Thanksgiving does minimize the impact...)
Update: From the Journal: Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig has asked Mr. Garlinghouse to head a group of Yahoo staff looking into the issues in the memo over two months, say people familiar with the matter.
(pic) I knew this was coming, but Lord, it sucks. Now our industry is making money, and hitting the big times, it's going to be all about lawyers and posturing, right? From the Journal (not public link, check here):
Universal Music Group, the world's largest recorded-music company, sued News Corp.'s MySpace for copyright infringement, alleging that the social-networking giant traffics in "user-stolen" content, including music, videos and other material.
At issue is the widespread presence of copyrighted music and video content on MySpace. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for California's Central District, Vivendi SA's Universal dismisses the frequently-used label "user-generated content" -- alleging that much of the material on MySpace is stolen from copyright holders.
I guess Ross got out of there right before managing this monster turns into one big poo-flinging goat rodeo. Also, filing on a Friday afternoon, right before Thanksgiving...nice...