As much as I love Google products, and use them daily, here is a perky brick to the ethical head. The following quote is from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the current CNBC Google Blockbuster.
If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but 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. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.
When Google was founded in 1998, the company hung its proverbial hat on telling the world that they would be successful without mucking things up in the process. Specifically, number six in the company’s own manifesto:
6. You can make money without doing evil.
This is all well and good until, for example, you’re a global titan with $12 billion and change in the bank, competing for telcom spectrum in an industry as messed up as wireless. What’s that they say about laying down with dogs?