Oxymorons: Google Privacy v Microsoft Uber Alles

People seem to be up in arms about Google’s new privacy policy.They’ve taken all their sixty something policies and now they have one. That’s how they’re selling it to customers. But critics are paranoid that the new policy heralds the dawn of Google Big Brother tracking us from our Gmail to our Google searches to our phones to our iPads. Woopee. As if that’s a revelation.

What the critics are griping about is the potential for Google to use targeted marketing across its many platforms. Google may amass our searches and send ads to our smartphone or to our gmail banner. Most of us won’t notice.

There have been calls for Congress to ‘do something.’ Um, like what? I hesitate to show my impatience, but, do folks realize that Google is actually a corporation that is out to make money and not a government entity? If you want to dictate Google policy, buy stock and get on the Board of Directors. OR, maybe you can just use . . . the. . . other Google. Hmmmm.

To that end, Microsoft has pitched its own bitch. The corporation launched a print ad campaign decrying the Google privacy policy, implying that we no longer have any protection from the prying eyes of the leering corporation and its minions. Sour grapes. Microsoft wishes it was Google. And, it wishes it could come up with both a single policy to govern all of its many concerns and track all of us as effectively and profitably as Google uber alles.