Privacy - quotes

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”We have started the social engines at Google and we’re about to step on the gas.”; Vic Gundotra Google VP of engineering; 3-7-12; to New York Times

"Developers will be the engineers of human freedom.” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, at German Trade Show, 3-5-12

“So, for example, if you and I are talking about where we’re going for dinner on Sunday, and the system is smart enough to recognize the nature of that discussion and offer me a 20 percent discount for a local restaurant, that’s not a nuisance. That’s an incredibly valuable offer.” Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz, in Wired 9-27-11

“As I’ve learned first-hand, any online service that involves personal data will be a magnet for privacy fears.” "It will be vital to strike the right balance, so people feel comfortable and in control, not disconcerted by the eerie accuracy of suggestions." Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Reuters, 8-30-2011

“Current technology does not enable anyone to tell you what’s the best restaurant for you but Google and others are trying to determine that based on your patterns. Is that a good thing – that the world knows what’s best for me? "That worries me. When they recommend what’s best for you it means they have a much more sophisticated understanding of you than you may wish them to have.” Doug Edwards author of “I’m Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. 7-27-11 quoted in The Telegraph

“Privacy issues are an Achilles’ heel for Google. After 9/11, Sergey tried to find out if the terrorists had used Google to prepare for the attacks, and that raises the issue of identifying personal information within Google’s search logs. That’s a very sensitive topic.” Doug Edwards author of “I’m Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. 7-27-11 quoted in The Telegraph

“All of our testing indicates that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with our policy. And this message is the message that nobody wants to hear so let me say it again: the reality is we make decisions based on what the average user tells us and we do check. And the reason that you should trust us is that if we were to violate that trust people would move immediately to someone else. We're very non-sticky so we have a very high interest in maintaining the trust of those users."

“The fact of the matter is that if you're online all the time, computers are generating a lot of information about you. This is not a Google decision, this is a societal decision.”

“The word ‘control’ is not such a strong word at Google.”

With everybody online, "you can get a lot of information about user behavior that you can mine or build interesting products for."

"This comprehensive photo offensive is nothing less than a million-fold violation of the private sphere," Aigner said. "I reject this form of exposure. There is not a secret service in existence that would collect photos so unabashedly." German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"

"Ultimately our goal at Google is to have the strongest advertising network and all the world's information"

"We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do.”

“We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”