What a load of BS. It confirms that Google is out of touch with reality and needs to be punished heavily so they wake up from that fantasy land they live in. The guys at the FTC must be laughing their tail off after reading the “Do what’s best for the user” crap. Do what’s best for the user in their fantasy land is inserting their own properties at the top because they are more relevant due to their unfair inside knowledge of their ranking algo. Google should not be allowed to promote their other anywhere else but through Adwords. Google has to be broken up to make it more fair as if they have inside knowledge of the ranking algo. I hope the FTC break their legs.

It’s not that I believe Google is evil. What I believe is that Google, Inc. is at a fork in the road, and they have some big decisions to make. Here are a few points I like to raise in connection with this Google’s privacy issues:

Google’s immortal cookie:

Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it’s years later, and immortal cookies are common place among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don’t already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

Google records everything they can:

For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as “IP delivery based on geolocation.”

Google retains all data indefinitely:

Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

Google won’t say why they need this data:

Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

Google hires spooks:

Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

Google’s toolbar is spyware:

With the advanced features enabled, Google’s free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that’s only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google’s toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you’d like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

Google’s cache copy is illegal:

Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google’s cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a “noarchive” meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don’t. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google’s cache. The cache copy should be “opt-in” for webmasters, not “opt-out.”

The internet was designed to be open and not controlled by anyone, except Google has created the opportunity to control it and milk it for what it’s worth, in every way that it can. It’s time that an example is made to deter others.

I think Google has gotten greedy and is on the verge of EPIC FAIL status.
Of interest to the FTC should be the correlation between Google’s authority sites and Google’s big spending advertisers.
(In my opinion) A few years ago it was possible to produce a decent site for the hospitality industry and get it ranked well enough to create traffic. The bulk of the traffic came from maps (which is now Places). It now appears that the authority sites for Google Places are the same sites that appear in the CPC advertising (check the three, seven pack etc of any area you are interested in).
The end results
(1) Users being offered less variety
(2) Users being directed to Hotels who have allocation blocked by the big CPC buyers
(3) Users paying (a hidden) X% of the total of the purchase to a CPC buyer
(4) Google gets it’s CPC money

The (hidden)X% paid by the user to the CPC buyers has to be passed on as a cost by the hotel.

Winners and Losers.
Losers – Users who end up being presented less variety and eventually paying higher prices
Winners – Google with their CPC revenue and high spending CPC booking sites.

“Do what is best for the user” – don’t make me laugh.
“Do what is best for Google and it’s share holders” – I can believe it