Biting the hand that feeds: Mozilla Director recommends Bing
Despite the fact that Mozilla makes its money from sharing the revenue from Google searches in Firefox, its Director of Community Development Asa Dotzler recommends switching to Bing. So why does he recommend ditching Google?
It’s all about the privacy policy. Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a comment recently that highlights the company’s stance on privacy, and it isn’t very consumer-friendly.
Schmidt’s words of advice are below, or you can catch them on video:
If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.
This might not exactly break Google’s mantra, “Don’t be evil.” However part of the spirit of that mantra is to put consumers first and advertisers will follow.
While Google has consistently been good about preserving its user experience from being invaded by advertisers, the company certainly doesn’t seem to be a champion for privacy in the digital era. The sad truth is that most users don’t even care enough to change search engines as Dotzler recommends.
It’s also important to consider whether Microsoft’s actions would be any different if asked for private data on its users. Schmidt is simply being transparent about the need to cooperate with law enforcement officials under the Patriot Act as all American businesses are required to do.
If Microsoft were given a similar request, it would almost certainly offer up search logs for a user or IP address as well. The only difference is that Microsoft has so much less to offer.
Many users have grown so accustomed to using Google for search, maps and email that the company has logs of not only what we’re interested in, but where we go and who we associate with. Thus Dotzler’s recommendation can help privacy simply by not putting all of our data into one basket.
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