Can Google Manage Public Perception of Its Privacy Policies?

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Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is facing yet another privacy controversy. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the search giant used a coding workaround to track users of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Safari Web browser, which is favored by iPhone and other mobile users. The code took advantage of a known Safari flaw in a way that appeared to promote usage of the Google+ social network.

The Safari flaw involved cookies—small amounts of text that normally provide benign functions such as allowing a website to identify a user and the user’s Web browsing preferences. Cookies can also be used to carry spyware: tracking software that trails the user’s online movements, often for market research purposes. Safari’s privacy settings are meant to block tracking cookies while allowing functional cookies to transmit needed information.

Google found a workaround to that by embedding code into popular websites, including AOL.com and TMZ.com, which convinced Safari that a form had been submitted that would allow cookies, and then installed a tracker instead. The websites used weren’t aware of the code’s presence.

The Journal contacted Google for its story and the code was quickly deactivated. Google released a statement stating that WSJ “mischaracterizes” the purpose of the code and insisted that it was meant to deliver customization options that users had chosen through a Google account. Those options include the +1 sharing features built into search via Google+ as well as personalized advertising.

Though the tracker was meant to expire within a day, Safari’s initial acceptance of the code meant that it was easier for Google to slip through other nonessential cookies. The company claimed in its statement that it didn’t realize this would happen, explaining to the Journal: “[T]he Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser. We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.”

Another PR opportunity for MSFT?

As happened a few weeks ago when Google weathered criticism over its newly introduced, comprehensive privacy policy, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) saw an opportunity to jab its competitor for yet another privacy controversy. An official Microsoft blog attempted to cast doubt on Google’s claim of ignorance regarding the potential consequences of the Safari workaround: “…[T]he novelty here is that Google apparently circumvented the privacy protections built into Apple’s Safari browser in a deliberate, and ultimately, successful fashion.”

Google wasn’t the only company caught using the workaround, though it was the largest. Online advertisers Vibrant Media, Gannett’s PointRoll, and WPP PLC’s Media Innovation Group deployed it, according to the Journal‘s analysis. Those smaller companies might be grateful they were busted at the same time as Google, since the biggest name in the group likely was going to take most of the heat.

Privacy issues have been mounting for Google over the past year, and an agreement the company struck with the Federal Trade Commission is intended to impose a hefty fine should the company be found to “misrepresent” its privacy policies. And then last month the announcement of Google’s streamlined privacy policy generated concern over its lack of an opt-out option. The company wrote a letter to Congress addressing politicians’ concerns about the matter, while a group of European regulators sent a letter to Google expressing its concerns. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) decided to sue suing the FTC in an attempt to stop the privacy changes.

Google no doubt will manage to stamp out these brushfires as they flare up, but the long-term danger for the company is that its public relations problems may grow disproportionately with each privacy incident, whether or not its cause is accidental. And it’ll get tougher and tougher to defuse jokes about Google’s “don’t be evil” motto.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2012/02/can-google-manage-public-perception-of-its-privacy-policies-goog-msft-aapl/.

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