Doc Searls thinks through the whole piracy episode which has dumped the Google at bottom of the stack. Many posts flew accusing, defending and debating the defense the corporations for being hostile, but none of them looks at the reason why piracy is at stake.
But Google’s business model isn’t search. It gets because effects off search. Search is free. But because of search, Google makes money with advertising. That’s its business model. Part of that business model is putting millions of individuals and companies into the same business. You don’t need to sell a single ad to support your site or your blog with advertising. Google AdSense does all the work. It not only does that work for millions of businesses, but creates millions of businesses where before there were none.
The Internet Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse say online advertising was $4.9 billion in Q1 of 2007. Google advertising revenues in the same quarter were $3.627450 billion. Do the math. “Google Network Web Sites” reveneues were $1.345329 billion. Those revenues were Google’s side of the advertising take. The rest of the money went to the site owners.
To make advertising of this sort work best requires maximizing intelligence about users. Does this also require privacy violations? The last quoted paragraph above seems to suggest as much. So I have a question for both Google and Privacy International : Could Google and its partners do as good a job in the advertising business if they did everything it takes to get a green score?
The advertising business is benefiting Google, but along with many other businesses and individuals. Would it be acceptable if this business was hurt because of Google trying to get in the green mark? Also, would any other top contender be in the good books of privacy? Are AOL users safer than Google users because it is one mark above Google?
I agree with Doc that the solution is not in getting these companies in the right color, but to empower the user with more controls to protect his/her privacy. The reason that information is called private is because the user can control who should know and who should not. The technology has become lopsided towards advertising - the supply side. The Web cannot be user-centric if privacy control is not.
A thought provoking article by Doc, read it.
