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> Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt appearing on CNBC once said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the f
by spondyl 4y ago
> Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt appearing on CNBC once said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
It's always funny when Eric Schmidt says stuff like that.
I've shared it before but I'll inline this evergreen quote from a book called In The Plex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27479152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27479152
> One day Denise Griffin got a call from Eric Schmidt’s assistant. “There’s this information about Eric in the indexes,” she told Griffin. “And we want it out.” In Griffin’s recollection, it dealt with donor information from a political campaign, exactly the type of public information that Google dedicated itself to making accessible. Griffin explained that it wasn’t Google policy to take things like that out of the index just because people didn’t want it there. Principles always make sense until it’s personal,” she says.
> Then in July 2005, a CNET reporter used Schmidt as an example of how much personal information Google search could expose. Though she used only information that anyone would see if they typed Schmidt’s name into his company’s search box, Schmidt was so furious that he blackballed the news organization for a year.
> “My personal view is that private information that is really private, you should be able to delete from history,” Schmidt once said. But that wasn’t Google’s policy...
- verisimi 4y agoGreat quotes. Privacy for google, other corporations and the government is a one way street. You give it to them. There is no reciprocity. That's it. And that's how it's staying. The end. This is how tyrants are able to talk the talk (but not the walk) and bark out moral high ground orders to those they rule, while doing whatever degenerate acts they like behind closed doors. That's what power is and does.
- altair222 4y agoGoogle will decide what people should and shouldnt do. Google will decide whether people deserve privacy in their lives for certain things or not. Language of the abusers.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoI al hoping that one day American society will wake up to the fact that Tyranny can, and has been privatised. It is not only the state that you should be afraid of.
- jamwil 4y agoSurveillance capitalism is several orders of fucked up, but to call it tyranny is pretty dismissive of the plight of people living under actual tyranny.
- di456 4y agoMaybe it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs of the other.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs [sic] of the other. There are generational labor camps in North Korea and a litany of horrible ongoing civil wars in Africa. They are evil. So is industry pushback against unleaded aviation fuel [1][2]. But comparing the evils of the civil war in Somalia to those of leaded avgas is, at best, pointless. [1] https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/findings-county-commissioned-airborne-lead-study-published-online-proceedings-national https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/findings-county-commiss... [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/20/aviation-lead-fuel-00081641 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/20/aviation-lead-fuel-...
- andrepd 4y agoYes, but your point is? This is a thread about Google and their abuses, so it makes sense that is what is being discussed (not invalidating that there are much worse things happening in the world).
- pessimizer 4y ago