
Daring Fireball: Creep Executive Officer - barredo
http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/creep_executive_officer
======
oldgregg
He's not creepy, just honest. He knows in the future what we call "privacy"
won't exist anymore. Every new innovation gets regulated by the government so
that politicians get their cut. Right now we're seeing them redefine "privacy"
to mean privacy from anyone other than this corporate/government partnership
knowing _everything_ about you. This is what he's talking about -- and it IS
inevitable.

Here's the real privacy question: will you be able to keep other PEOPLE from
knowing everything about you? I've contributed recently to speakerwiki.org --
they are building a massive database of every public/tech/motivational speaker
in the world. Rated and Ranked. So what happens when everyone has a Yelp
profile that they don't control? Or do corporate/political interests prevent
this from ever happening to control their monopoly on data? To me that's the
real privacy question for the next 5-10 years.

On second thought, he is pretty creepy.

~~~
TotlolRon
> _He's not creepy, just honest._

Maybe he is creepy AND honest? Possible?

~~~
flatulent1
He seems honest, just not as comforting as some would like. The problem is
reality has become kinda creepy.

Google certainly swallowed a lump of creepiness when they bought doubleclick,
that company the state of Texas had sued for stalking. One of the former upper
figures there was hired by homeland security. Wonder what skill that was for?

It seems we must ask if Google is far less evil than others would be in the
same position.

I'm kind of liking the Apple iAds thing. If done right, it could basically do
away with accessing third-party sites when displaying third-party content. The
user demographic could be typed simply by the kind of app the ad is in, and
just being an Apple customer probably puts him in a more sought-after group of
spenders.

Hmmm. I just had an odd thought. For games with ads, dumb down the ads for
people with low scores. Mental bandwidth adjustment...

~~~
benologist
"It seems we must ask if Google is far less evil than others would be in the
same position."

No I don't think that's the right question. I think Gruber really nailed it
with this:

"Maybe the question isn't who should hold this information, but rather should
anyone hold this information."

~~~
nooneelse
Unless we presuppose that the answer to the question "is there anything that
could be done to stop the mass accumulation of data in this way?" is "yes",
then Gruber's question is moot. Why should we make that presupposition in the
face of the march of progress in this area?

~~~
benologist
Of course we should make that presupposition - the US, EU, etc have the power
to regulate it.

~~~
derefr
How? You're basically suggesting the old "country X will regulate what its
citizens can or cannot do on the internet" idea, which fails because _country
X does not control the internet_. Users will still leak information to sites
that are not under the control of the US/EU/whoever, and _those_ sites will
accumulate these informational profiles.

~~~
benologist
The internet's not a free pass, countries regulate a lot of things for people
and companies within them.

Is it feasible for Google, Facebook or anyone else mining data at massive
scale to operate outside the US/EU/a couple other countries? I doubt it. The
infrastructure wouldn't even handle their websites, which would be a moot
point since they wouldn't find 5 digits of the manpower they need lying around
in whatever little country.

------
rayval
Gruber misinterprets what Schmidt said. He was making a prediction, not a
prescription, regarding future social behavior -- young people changing their
name as they come of age.

Ten years ago, would anyone have predicted that today we would be able to have
online friendships with 1000 people whom we have never met (Facebook), know
what they had for lunch (Twitter), see photos from their vacation (Flickr),
know their exact location at this moment (Gowalla), what items they have just
bought (Blippy), etc. None of this has anything to do with Google or how
"creepy" Schmidt is. It seems to me a prescient forecast.

~~~
ible
He also takes the "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,
maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." quote out of context, as
so many did at the time. Schmidt was pointing out that the government can
demand access to data about your searches, and that you need to be conscious
of that and be careful.

Between two misinterpretations and quoting a 'quip' to imply that google
somehow things it should make all your decisions for you, it is a pretty
shoddy post.

~~~
blasdel
Schmidt could have phrased it much better as "If you have something that you
don’t want anyone to know, _Don't tell anyone._ "

~~~
andreyf
_Schmidt could have phrased it much better as "If you have something that you
don’t want anyone to know, Don't tell anyone."_

Great point, in hindsight. It's much harder to know these things when you
spend a lot of your time in front of reporters.

------
rsingel
Gruber loses it on the facts here. <em>On the other, the Schmidt Google that,
in its efforts to serve ads as efficiently as possible, no longer seems
concerned with the traditional Western concept of personal privacy.</em> For
search ads, nothing matters except your query. It's just contextual -- it
doesn't matter who you are, what you've searched on before or if you have a
Gmail account.

Now, with Adsense and DoubleClick, Google is starting to play with using more
about what it knows about you, but so far, the system only uses traditional
third-party tracking cookies AND some data about what you do on YouTube.
There's substantial pressure inside the company to break down this wall
further (see the recent WSJ article on the leaked docusments), but right now,
it's hard to see where Google is "no longer concerned with the traditional
Western notion of personal privacy."

Other than that, it's a great troll on Gruber's part.

------
grandalf
The more I read about Schmidt the more I think he's soon to be replaced by
Larry or Sergey as CEO.

The guy has a knack for putting his foot in his mouth in interviews, and he's
been publicly identified as the guy who wanted to stay in China, wanted to
abandon Net Neutrality, and who made a few gaffes in reference to the captured
wifi network info, etc.

Schmidt is also the face of Google in Washington DC, and has led the Company's
efforts to innovate via legislation. He is also very tight with the Obama
campaign and campaigned overtly, which is not (in my opinion) an appropriate
thing for a CEO to do.

In a lot of ways, his instincts clash with the values that Larry and Sergey
seem to be trying very hard to perserve... My prediction is one more gaffe,
particularly one accompanied by a stock price dip and he's out.

~~~
nanairo
If you were a shareholder, would you rather want your company to be controlled
by a shark, who pursue profits vigourosly at the cost of the occasional PR
failure (that doesn't really seem to affect them in any real term). Or would
you want it to be controlled by two geeks that started their company with the
motto: "Don't be evil" and would put (I imagine) ethics before profit?

~~~
irons
It's a mistake (though a common one, and almost an American truism) to equate
"being a shareholder" with "fixated on next quarter's earnings above all other
factors". There are other standards of behavior, even if you still profess an
interest only in money, especially if you still want your company to be
thriving in a decade.

~~~
nanairo
I agree that a shareholder may be interested in the long term, though not many
are (what happens in the long term is not a problem if you manage to sell your
shares beforehand).

At the same time I think most shareholders want to make money from their
shares. I am sure that there are a significant amount of ethical shareholders,
but not enough that their behaviour would change the shares strongly. They
would simply pick a company that is more ethical. But as long as Google makes
the earnings it makes, I am sure others would happily take their place.

As for the short-term vs. long-term I would agree with you if Google ended up
losing business. But I think we (as in the geeky people on this and similar
sites) are out of touch if we think they'll lose much. Look at Facebook and
the failed boycott. I don't think a few PR gaffes from its CEO would do Google
any harm.

Look: I am not defending Google. I hate that people (and shareholders) are not
more ethical. I hate that shareholders may hold onto their stock for only a
few days or months: originally it was meant as a way to fund companies you
believe in, not as a bet on the market. I am just trying to justify why I
think there's no way that this or many more gaffes like this would force
Schmidt to resign (or be fired).

~~~
barrkel
Expectations of future earnings affect share prices today. And of course if
stock markets were perfectly efficient with full information, then stock
prices would never change - they would be the net present value of all future
earnings.

So the question isn't whether or not Google is profitable today. It's rather,
is Google going to be as profitable as it could be in the future? If it keeps
up with what it's doing, there's a risk it could attract unwelcome attention
from regulators, especially in Europe. It doesn't take much pissing off of the
public re privacy for politicians to be motivated to meddle. Google would do
well to put that off as much as possible and minimize potential ramifications.
And that work pays off in today's prices.

~~~
nanairo
I perfectly agree. It's a risk Google is taking: Schmidt has its pros and
cons. The question is not that having a bad reputation may be a risky and one
day hurt their revenues. The question is how that would compare to not having
done anything, i.e. a Google where Schmidt was not in command. Would we have
had Buzz, AdMob, Android and Facebook killers?

So it's the benefit of having Schmidt more or less than the disadvantages
brought by his gaffes? My feeling is that apart from a people in tech related
websites, most people would soon forget about these gaffes. As evidence I
pointed out to Google's current share prices, and other companies that have
had similar gaffes or actual problems, such as Apple or Facebook.

------
gamble
There's definitely some truth to this, but it has more than a hint of the old
trope that "the king is virtuous, but misled by wicked advisors".

If Larry and Sergey have a problem with Google's actions or Schmidt's
channeling of Larry Ellison in interviews, no one is in a better place to know
or do something about it.

~~~
gruseom
_the old trope that "the king is virtuous, but misled by wicked advisors"_

That's very well put and I recognize the pattern, but never thought of it this
way before. Is this something you figured out from observation, or did you
learn it from some source (and if so, what)?

------
palish
_[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day
will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood
in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media
sites._

Does this really seem so hard to believe?

I'm one of the developers for a certain popular online video game. One time, I
posted my personal email to the game's forums... it was along the lines of "If
you happen to reproduce [certain really hard to reproduce problem], please
type [console command] and send the results to [email address]". That kind of
thing.

Well, one of the fans managed to trace my name -> my email -> my Hacker News
profile -> my hacker news comments, then started copy-pasting random things I
had written from HN to the game's IRC channel. I didn't really mind... it was
just very weird.

But what if I were in an alternate reality, and I had said some really insane
things on my HN account, like, say, C/C++ really isn't _that_ terrible? You
know, something absolutely _crazy_. Then an employer traced my name -> my
email -> my Hacker News profile -> my insane comments. Now a potential
employer has another data point about whether to hire me, one that I didn't
necessarily want him to have.

So I can see why it would potentially it would potentially be very useful to
have a mechanism to very easily legally change your name. I've never looked
into how to do that, since I have no reason to, but I assume it's probably
difficult, or doesn't catch everything, or causes you headaches down the road,
etc.

------
Herring
> _Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google
> and privacy: "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,
> maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."_

It's ironic that Schmidt's quote is taken completely out of context, & will
follow him around for years if not decades to come. Maybe he should change his
name.

~~~
rue
Can you cite the context?

~~~
atuladhar
Someone did, above: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621594>

------
mcantelon
It's hard to take Gruber seriously because of his bias towards Apple. Gruber
is concerned about things Schmidt _says_ , yet not about what Apple _does_ ,
i.e. creating a device that logs everything you type, takes pictures of you
without you knowing it, etc.

<http://bit.ly/9Gox6U>

~~~
Anechoic
_creating a device that logs everything you type, takes pictures of you
without you knowing it_

The article you linked to supports neither of those accusations.

~~~
mcantelon
Claim: "logs everything you type"

Article: "The keyboard cache logs everything that you type in to learn
autocorrect ... someone with know-how could recover months of typing in the
order in which it was typed"

Claim: "takes pictures of you without you knowing it"

Article: "...the phone itself automatically shoots and stores hundreds of such
images as people close out one application to use another."

Article: "Every time an iPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping
application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it"

~~~
Anechoic
1 for 2: I missed the part about the keyboard cache (although unless the cache
organizes the data in their original sentence structure, I don't see how
useful it would be).

However, taking screenshots /= "takes pictures of you"

~~~
mcantelon
You're right... I misread that (although secretly taking screenshots is also
creepy).

------
kmfrk
My main gripe with Schmidt (in the way he is presented in the interview[^1])
is how casual he is about all the problems. You almost hear Steve Jobs's
voice: "Change your name. Not that big of a deal".

I don't know what goes on in Schmidt's head, and maybe he is as upset about
the predicament of today's youth with the vociferous cornucopia of information
most people leave behind. Maybe he has come to terms with these reservations
at some point, which is why we hear no lament, no reprehensions, no fear and
expressed personal(!) feelings.

Nevertheless, he comes across as creepy because of this, be it as an
automaton, a corporate CEO, or someone who knows that he at the very least
wields the key to the cogs and gears of most of the information-aggregating
monster - keeping himself out of harm's way.

I don't get a single vibe from him signalling that he finds the development
troubling and at the very least wants to try to ameliorate the situation and
development - as a private person and a corporate entity with a lot of
influence. _He seems to be welcoming the development._ At the very least, if
he has an moral fibre of independence, he is accepting it, and if he's
indifferent, he's acquiescent.

The last person who casually declared privacy dead was Mark Zuckerberg. Go
figure.

[1]: I want to emphasize this, because the structure of the article leaves no
wiggle room for context and elaboration, which leaves Schmidt with the benefit
of the doubt. And so I do. But Google is doing a [expletive] job at managing,
building and recovering PR and brand value at the moment.

And the mindset construed from the article lends itself to the recent hubbub
of Google's moral qualms of how far they should go to monetize and foster more
ad revenue.

------
gojomo
David Brin, author of _The Transparent Society_ [1], should do a 1-hour sit-
down interview with Eric Schmidt. I'm sure it'd generate dozens of scary-but-
true quotes for the blogosphere and social-news sites to wring their hands
over.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society>

------
naner
_but at least our government answers to its citizens through elections._

Haha. I agree with him that Schmidt is out of touch but still I trust Google's
discretion over that of Congress. If Google missteps everyone cries bloody-
murder and it can affect their profits and future projects. Congress
systematically abuses power and profits from it.

It is a matter of incentives and culture.

------
SkyMarshal
_"[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day
will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood
in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media
sites."_

Or maybe people will just adapt, as people tend to do, and learn to more
actively manage their online identities, and selectively upload and monitor
information about themselves and their friends online.

Or maybe some intrepid hackers will see this as a problem and solve it with
some technology that puts control of our own data directly in our hands,
perhaps One Social Web or Diaspora.

Schmidt's prediction doesn't make him sound creepy to me. It makes him sound
like a dinosaur. I can't imagine a more kludgey, un-Google-like solution to
this problem than people changing their names when they reach 'adulthood',
whenever that is (18? 21? 25? 29? 30? 35?).

Especially with rapidly advancing facial recognition technology and
information theory, changing your name will do exactly nothing for you in this
regard.

Rather I would expect the CEO of Google, the company that seemed to popularize
finding clever technical solutions to every problem, to have predicted
something more along those lines. What's going on guys?

Edit: now that I reread this, it strikes me that maybe Schmidt didn't put much
thought into this prediction and didn't much care to. He's just using an
outlandish idea to draw attention to an interesting social problem. Who knows.

~~~
hugh3
Incidentally, I think that the best gift you can give your child is a non-
unique name. The ability to disappear into a crowd of identically-named folks
when someone searches for your name is priceless.

------
madair
This is quite a strong personal attack to make on someone, even a public
figure.

 _Creepy_ is not an objective word, making this article by definition Ad
Hominem.

------
mjterave
Another contentless post from Gruber. Seriously, why does anybody want to
support this asshole by linking to his posts? He's a whiny apple shill.

------
chaostheory
_[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day
will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood
in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media
sites._

I'm going to propose something more specific if you want online anonymity.
Change your name (or keep this in mind for your future child), both first and
last, to something pretty common that suits your taste. When people google
you, they'll get so many results of different people with the same name that
you'll have anonymity through numbers.

Here is something to help you out, though I'm not sure how good of a tool it
is: <http://namestatistics.com/>

Whenever I google my name, I can never find myself having to sift through
hundreds of different people with the same first and last name.

~~~
nanairo
Good point. Though name is only one of many attributes we have. You should
also take a common job (how do you feel about being a waiter?), keep a common
wardrobe, live in a big city, drive an average car, and watch/read average
stuff. Oh yeah, you probably want to ask a surgeon to give you an average
face.

Then you'll be anonymous... and you'll also have one of the most boring lives
you could imagine.

Sorry, there's an alternative. Corporations are not above the law: if the
citizens decide that certain stuff is illegal, then it becomes so. Full stop.

I realise many americans (and other people) hate any type of regulation, but
this is exactly what they are for. You don't need to wonder how to stop
bribes. You don't say: "Well, this is the way the world is going and we can't
do nothing about it". You make a law against it, and then the police will do
their best. Will it solve the problem? No, but it would definitely help.

~~~
chaostheory
I don't think my profession is very common, nor the school that I went to, or
even any of my other details.

I still have a hard time finding myself.

~~~
nanairo
Yes, but we are talking of the future. The fact that we can't do it in the
present is not being challenged by anyone. The point is Schmidt's prediction
that in the future we will.

------
sk_0919
"Don't be evil" must be one of the biggest PR regrets of Google. Everything
they do today is measured up to that

~~~
nanairo
Sure, but they also gained a lot from it.

------
gnufied
From the article Gruber quotes :

>Fortune magazine recently called Google a "cash cow" and suggested more
attention be paid to milking it rather than running off in search of the next
big thing.

I think any creator worth his salt would hate this line of thinking. The
premise that since Google is sitting on pile of Cash and should pay large of
chunks it as dividends rather than spending it on "next big thing" is
ridiculous. Apple hasn't paid cash dividend since 1995
(<http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL+Key+Statistics>). Well it was so
steeped in bad journalism, I couldn't finish it.

Coming to Gruber's article, first - why get personal? And none can deny that
Google (or Facebook) wield tremendous power by keeping so much of personal
data, but seriously what alternatives he proposes? I can't go back to stone
age. Anyone who asks Google, "oh-but you keep so much of our data?" is
basically asking a rhetorical question. Personally, I am not afraid. If Mr.
Gruber got better ideas if not 'internet', I am all ears.

~~~
kareemm
> And none can deny that Google (or Facebook) wield tremendous power by
> keeping so much of personal data, but seriously what alternatives he
> proposes?

Um, delete the data instead of keeping it?

~~~
gnufied
Like delete my mails and contacts?

~~~
irons
No, not like that.

------
credo
I think that many of Schmidt's comments might be _unnecessarily_ frank (from
Google's perspective).

I'm glad he is making these comments because it helps more people understand
the privacy issues that they're dealing with. So to that extent, I applaud
Schmidt though I'm not sure why he is making all of these comments.It seems
like his honesty/candidness (or is it arrogance) is hurting Google.

------
bmalicoat
Anyone who bought that "Don't be evil" could be a legitimate mission statement
for one of the most powerful companies in the world is kidding themselves.

Evil is quite relative, especially when billions of dollars are involved.

Google (and Facebook) should be held to a higher standard since there has been
no company in human history that knows (or has the potential to know) so much
personal information.

~~~
cageface
The speed with which people rush to discredit that slogan says more about the
degree to which it threatens _them_ than it does about Google's adherence to
it, IMO.

Also, Gruber attack-dogging Google? Shocking!

------
ashishbharthi
At least now Gruber believes that Android is cool!

------
woodall
" We are moving to a Google that knows more about you."

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to financial analysts,

February 9, 2005, as quoted in the New York Times the next day

<http://www.scroogle.org/>

Scroogle is nice because it lets you search without logging a cookie, IP, ect.
Google logs a lot about you every time you search. Even if you are not doing
something "illegal" you should still be worried. Think of the bigger picture;
opsec.

------
guelo
Good ol' ad hominem, it always seems to do the trick. Creepy, I guess that's
better than some other things you could be called.

------
rickmb
Regardless of how you feel about Schmidt, or to what extent his comments have
been taken out of context, the guy consistently draws the wrong kind of media
attention to himself and Google. "Creep Executive Officer" describes exactly
the kind of image he creates, and it is damaging Google.

------
nanairo
I think the point about Google vs. government and who should have our private
information is one of the crucial points.

Google is a company and there's very little that we (the citizens) can do
against it. Every citizen holds a vote for the government, but only the
shareholders have any vote about Google.

~~~
moultano
You can't escape from the government. You _can_ abstain from google's
products.

~~~
tswicegood
I don't think this is a fair point as most people who are engaged in anything
online don't have the technical wherewithal to correctly abstain. How many
people do you know who are not directly involved in tech that would even begin
to fathom what you meant if you told them to "add a 127.0.0.1 alias to your
/etc/hosts file"? Breaking it down further, how many would know what
"127.0.0.1" meant, or even what "/etc/hosts" was?

~~~
moultano
They don't have to. If enough people wanted it, anyone one of us on this forum
could build a "Google blocker" that would effectively remove google from the
user's life and give it away or sell it.

------
random42
Nowadays, there is no difference in online/real privacy. If I would not want
to tell anyone/anything in real life, I would/should rather leave digital
footprints of it on the internet either.

------
mcantelon
>at least our government answers to its citizens through elections.

It answers to lobbyists, actually.

------
pclark
I'm really curious on who is more naieve about the Google "don't be evil
statement" the founders for thinking a public company could be like this, or
the public for believing it.

------
theDoug
I think the problem is that "Don't be evil" was mis-interpreted as a credo for
Google when it was really a command and warning to its users.

~~~
SMrF
It was originally created by Paul Buchheit. It's in point 6 of Google's
corporate philosophy "You can make money without doing evil."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil>

Edit: I couldn't tell if you were making a joke or just misinformed.

~~~
jmatt
news.arc owned your single quote:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil>

------
GrandMasterBirt
The problem I have with google is their collection of data. The government
needs to control this.

See when it comes to Facebook/twitter only what I WANT to become public, is
public. I mean I only post on facebook/twitter what I want the world to see.
Lets assume everything is public. While with google I am betting they can know
where I live without any sort of geolocation gps or any other technology,
because they will know what I search for, where I go (directions on google
maps), when I go where I go, where I work, etc. I am betting they can recite
my life better than I remember it.

That I have a problem with. And pretty much everything I do online feeds
google. And this applies to many online companies, google just does it better.

The days of "lets not be evil, lets be awesome" are easily replaced by "lets
make money!"

~~~
hugh3
_While with google I am betting they can know where I live without any sort of
geolocation gps or any other technology, because they will know what I search
for, where I go (directions on google maps), when I go where I go, where I
work, etc. I am betting they can recite my life better than I remember it._

If you don't want 'em to know that kind of information, then don't give it to
'em. Don't use google for search, don't use google for maps, don't use google
for mail.

Alternatively you can hide most of your identity with careful cookie
management, or by using the "Incognito" feature in Chrome, which is made by...
aw crap.

Personally I don't bother to hide my actions from google since I never tell
them anything interesting enough to catch anyone's attention, but I _could_ if
I wanted to.

~~~
lotharbot
> If you don't want 'em to know that kind of information, then don't give it
> to 'em.

Exactly.

It's not like google is breaking into your home, holding you at gunpoint, and
forcing you to type your personal and private information. Instead, people are
using a network _designed for information sharing_ , putting their information
on that network, and then acting surprised when somebody aggregates it. If you
don't want google having your private data, quit putting your private data
into google software or onto the public internet. They don't know anything you
(or your acquaintances) don't either tell them directly or say in public.

------
rsingel
Grube

------
ramanujan
Did Gruber float this at Steve Jobs' behest? Great anti-Google talking point,
till you realize that Apple has quite a bit of data on you too with iTunes
Genius (and will get more with iAds and their new cloud center).

[In this particular case motives are of relevance]

