Experts weighed the benefits of Google’s new privacy tools launched earlier this May and found them wanting. Sundar Pichai, the tech giant’s CEO, said that the privacy tools prove Google’s commitment to the privacy rights of its users. Princeton computer scientist Jonathan Mayer was unimpressed, saying: “This is not privacy leadership — this is privacy theater.”
This excerpt from the Associated Press report by Rachel Lerman and Matt O’Brien on Google’s new privacy tools was published by Time:
Some critics, however, say Google’s privacy updates sidestep more substantial changes that could threaten its ad-driven business model.
“They’re sort of marginal improvements,” said Jeremy Tillman, president of Ghostery, which provides ad-blocking and anti-tracking software. “They are not bad, but they almost seem like they’re designed to give the company a better messaging push instead of making wholesale improvements to user privacy.”
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Data privacy and security at Google and its Big Tech counterparts have been under the microscope for more than a year now. Facebook dedicated much of its own conference last week to connecting people though more private channels rather than broadly on the social network.
Google announced smaller but tangible changes across many of its products. The company makes billions of dollars annually by selling digital ads that are targeted at the interests people reveal through their search requests and data collected by Google apps and services.
For instance, the company said it will extend an “incognito mode” feature to its Google Maps and search apps. When activated, the app won’t record user searches or movements, analogous to how the same feature works in its Chrome browser and YouTube now.The latest version of Google’s Android phone software will also alert users when apps may be exploiting access to phone location data, which Stephanie Cuthbertson, an Android senior director, called “some of your most personal information.” Android Q, as the new operating system is currently known, will also let users restrict apps’ access to location more generally — for instance, by only allowing apps currently in use to gather the data. (Some apps record location data continuously in the background.)
