In February 2010, Google introduced a new social networking service called Buzz. Buzz is directly connected to GMail, Google’s webmail-platform. Google’s introduction of Buzz is an attempt to gain importance in the social networking sites-market that has been dominated by Facebook and Twitter. In February 2010, Facebook was ranked number 2 and Twitter number 12 in the list of the most accessed web platforms, whereas Google’s own social networking platform Orkut, which is only very popular in Brazil, was at number 52 (data source: http://alexa.com, the top 500 sites on the web, February 14, 2010). Popular social networking platforms attract millions of users, who upload and share personal information that provides data about their consumption preferences. Therefore commercial social networking sites are keen on storing, analyzing, and selling individual and aggregated data about user preferences and user behaviour to advertising clients in order to accumulate capital. Google is itself a main player in the business of online advertising. One can therefore assume that Google considers Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that attract many users, as competitors, and that as a result of this competitive situation Google has introduced Buzz. In 2009, GMail had approximately 150 million users (see http://www.tech24hours.com/2009/09/number-of-gmail-users-worldwide-as-of.html, accessed on February 14, 2010), which explains that Google integrated Buzz into GMail in order to start from a solid foundation of potential users.

Buzz supports the following communicative functions: the creation of postings that are shared with contacts, the sharing of images and videos, commenting and evaluating others’ Buzz posts, the forwarding of Twitter messages to a Buzz account, linking and integrating images uploaded to Flickr or Picasa, videos uploaded to YouTube, and posts generated on Blogger; the usage of Buzz via mobile phones. Buzz messages can either be presented publicly or only to selected groups of followers. Each user’s Buzz profile has a list of followers. Users can select which Buzz accounts they want to follow. Buzz mobile phone messages include geo-tags that display the current location of users. Buzz posts of users who are geographically located nearby a user and information about nearby sites, shops, restaurants, etc can be displayed on mobile phones. Buzz also recommends postings by others users.

In December 2009, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt commented about online privacy: “If you have something that you do not want anyone to know, maybe you should not be doing it in the first place” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew, accessed on February 14, 2010). This statement is an indication that Google or at least its most important managers and shareholders do not value privacy very highly. Schmidt’s statement implies that he thinks that in the online world, all uploaded information and personal data should be available publicly and should be usable by corporations for economic ends.

When first installing Buzz, the application automatically generated a list of followers for each user based on the most frequent GMail mail contacts. The standard setting was that this list of followers was automatically visible in public. This design move resulted in heavy criticism of Google in the days following the launch of Buzz. Users and civil rights advocates argued that Buzz threatens the privacy of users and makes contacts that users might want to keep private available in public. Google reacted to public criticism (see: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/13/buzz-changes-google-drops_n_461656.html, accessed on February 14, 2010) and changed some of the standard settings of Buzz on February 13, 2010. Some changes were made to the auto-follow option, so that now a dialogue is displayed that shows which users Buzz suggests as followers (see: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html, accessed on February 14, 2010). But still all suggested followers are automatically activated, which does not make this solution an opt-in version of the follow feature. Google also said that Buzz would no longer automatically connect publicly available Picasa and Google Reader items to the application. Also an options menu was announced that allows users to hide their contact list from their public Google profiles. The problem here is again that this was planned as an opt-out solution, and not as an opt-in option (see: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html, accessed on February 14, 2010). From a privacy-enhancing perspective, opt-in solutions are preferable to opt-out solutions because they give users more control over what applications are allowed to do with their data. However, it is clear that opt-in solutions are rather unpopular design options for many Internet corporations because they tend to reduce the number of potential users that are subject to advertising-oriented data surveillance.

At the Google Buzz launch event on February 9, 2010, the presenters were keen on stressing the advantages that Buzz poses for users. Bradley Horwitz, Google vice president of product marketing, spoke of Buzz as “a Google approach to sharing” and a tool that will “help you manage your attention better” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuThg91-4Nw, accessed on February 15, 2010). There was no talk about potential disadvantages. When in the question and answer section of the event, the first question that came about was about privacy issues, Buzz product manager Todd Jackson answered: “There is a lot of controls in there for users. […] There are ways to control the settings you are revealing to other people” (ibid.). Four days later, following a public discussion about the surveillance and privacy threats of Buzz, Google sounded much less optimistic. On the Google GMail blog, Todd Jackson wrote: “We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear, and since we launched Google Buzz four days ago, we’ve been working around the clock to address the concerns you’ve raised” (http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html, accessed on February 15, 2010).

Google’s economic strategy is to gather data about users that utilize different Google applications in different everyday situations. The more everyday situations can be supported by Google applications, the more time users will spend online with Google, so that more user data will be available to Google, which allows the company to better analyze usage and consumer behaviour. As a result, more and more precise user data and aggregated data can be sold to advertising clients that provide the users with personalized advertising that targets them in all of these everyday situations with information about potential consumption choices. The introduction of ever more applications does primarily serve economic ends that are realized by large-scale user surveillance. As more and more people access the Internet from their mobile phones, the number of times and the time spans users are online as well as the number of access points and situations in which users are online increase. Therefore supplying applications that are attractive for users in all of these circumstances (such as waiting for the bus or the underground, travelling on the train or the airplane, going to a restaurant, concert, or movie, visiting friends, attending a business meeting, etc), promises that users spend more time online with applications supplied by specific companies such as Google, which allows these companies to present more advertisements that are more individually targeted to users, which in turn promises more profit for the companies. We can therefore say that there is a strong economic incentive for Google’s and other companies’ introduction of new Internet- and mobile Internet-applications.

Google Buzz is part of Google’s empire of economic surveillance. It gathers information about user behaviour and user interests in order to store, assess, and sell this data to advertising clients. These surveillance practices are legally guaranteed by the Buzz privacy policy, which says for example: “When you use Google Buzz, we may record information about your use of the product, such as the posts that you like or comment on and the other users who you communicate with. This is to provide you with a better experience on Buzz and other Google services and to improve the quality of Google services. […] If you use Google Buzz on a mobile device and choose to view “nearby” posts, your location will be collected by Google” (Google Buzz Privacy Policy, February 14, 2010).

Google uses DoubleClick – a commercial advertising server owned by Google since 2007 that collects and networks data about usage behaviour on various websites, sells this data, and helps providing targeted advertising – for networking the data it holds about its users with data about these users’ browsing and usage behaviour on other web platforms. There is only an opt-out option from this form of networked economic surveillance. Opt-out options are always rather unlikely to be used because in many cases they are hidden inside of long privacy and usage terms and are therefore only really accessible to knowledgeable users. Many Internet corporations avoid opt-in advertising solutions because such mechanisms drastically reduce the potential number of users participating in advertising. The Google privacy policy says in this context: “Google uses the DoubleClick advertising cookie on AdSense partner sites and certain Google services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. You can view, edit, and manage your ads preferences associated with this cookie by accessing the Ads Preferences Manager. In addition, you may choose to opt out of the DoubleClick cookie at any time by using DoubleClick’s opt-out cookie” (Gogle Privacy Policy, February 14, 2010).

Google’s online product advertising for Buzz says: “The first thing we all do when we find something interesting is share it. More and more of this kind of sharing takes place online. Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos, and more. […] When you are out in the real world, you usually want to say something about where you are. Buzz makes this easy” (Google Buzz advertising, online at http://www.google.com/buzz, February 14, 2009). Sharing information with friends and to a certain extent with the public is surely an important feature of everyday communication that allows humans to stay in touch and to make new contacts. But Google only presents potential advantages of Buzz and does not say a single word about potential disadvantages. Do people really want to share vast amounts of private data and location data not only with their friends, but also with Google? Can Google be considered as a friend of all humans, or doesn’t it rather accumulate power that can also cause great harm to humans? Do people really always want to tell others where they currently are? Are people really interested in sharing their location data not only with selected friends, but also with Google? It is a natural corporate behaviour that Google only presents potential advantages of its applications in its marketing videos, ads, and events. But by doing so, it creates a one-dimensional picture of online reality that conveys the impression that we live in a world without power structures, in which all humans always benefit from corporate practices. But the great financial crisis has made clear to many citizens that corporations cannot always be trusted and are prone to act in ways that do not benefit all, but only a small group of investors.

Buzz is not the only example of Google-enhanced surveillance. Google has developed Goggles, which is an image-recognition software that identifies objects that people take pictures of by mapping these objects with Google’s image database and provides information about these objects. If this application were linked to image data about humans, it would allow people to identify and obtain information about humans, who they see on the street by taking a picture of them and linking this image to Google in real time. This would on the one hand allow humans to intrude the privacy of others in public spaces by identifying their personality and it would allow Google to gather, assess, provide, and potentially sell real time data about the physical location of millions of people.

Why is data surveillance for economic surveillance by Google applications such as Buzz problematic? One could argue that Google provides a free service to users and that in return it should be allowed to access, store, analyze, and use personal data and Internet usage behaviour. But the problem is that the power relations between Google and its users are not symmetric. In December 2008, Google controlled 57% of the online advertising market (http://www.attributor.com/blog/google-ad-server-share-now-at-57-microhoo-less-than-15-market-share, accessed on February 15, 2010). A Google monopoly in online advertising poses several threats (for a general account of the threats of information monopolies see Fuchs 2008, 164-171):

* Ideological power threat: Online advertising presents certain realities as important to users and leaves out those realities that are non-corporate in character or that are produced by actors that do not have enough capital in order to purchase online advertisements. An online advertising monopoly therefore advances one-dimensional views of reality.

* Political power threat: In modern society, money is a form of influence on political power. The concentration of online advertising therefore gives Google huge political power.

* Control of labour standards and prices: An online advertising monopoly holds the power to set industry-wide labour standards and prices. This can pose disadvantages for workers and consumers.

* Economic centralization threat: An economic monopoly controls large market shares and thereby deprives other actors of economic opportunities.

* Surveillance threat: Targeted online advertising is based on the collection of vast amounts of personal user data and usage behaviour that is stored, analyzed, and passed on to advertising customers. Modern societies are stratified, which means that certain groups and individuals compete with others for the control of resources, consider others as their opponents, benefit from certain circumstances at the expense of others, etc. Therefore information about personal preferences and individual behaviour can cause harm to individuals if it gets into the hand of their opponents or others who might have an interest in harming them. Large-scale data gathering and surveillance in a society that is based on the principle of competition poses certain threats to the well-being of all citizens. Therefore special privacy protection mechanisms are needed. All large collections of data pose the threat of being accessed by individuals who want to harm others. If such collections are owned privately, then access to data might be sold because there is an economic interest in accumulating money. Humans who live in modern societies have an inherent interest in controlling which personal data about them is stored and is available to whom because they are facing systemic threats of being harmed by others. Large collections of personal information pose under the given modern circumstances the threat that humans can be harmed because their foes, opponents, or rivals in private or professional life can potentially gain access to such data. Since 9/11, there has been an extension and intensification of state surveillance that is based on the argument that security from terrorism is more important than privacy. But state surveillance is prone to failure, and the access of state institutions to large online collections about citizens (as for example enabled by the USA PATRIOT Act) not only poses the possibility for detecting terrorists, but also the threat that a large number of citizens is considered as potential criminals or terrorists without having committed any crimes and the threat that the state obtains a huge amount of information about the private lives of citizens that the latter consider worth protecting (as for example: political views, voting decisions, sexual preferences and relationships, friendship statuses).

Overall, the introduction of Google Buzz shows that there is an antagonism of privacy protection and economic surveillance interests on the contemporary Internet that is dominated by commercial interests. It might be time for thinking more about strengthening alternative Internet platforms and the potentials for constructing an alternative Internet.

Christian Fuchs (http://fuchs.uti.at)

Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and society: social theory in the information age. New York: Routledge.

The New York Times ran an article about this new technology on February, 13, 2010:
Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service

I find interesting about the NY Times article and the reactions of some users to Google Buzz that they primarily stress the danger that China, Iran, etc could use Buzz for engaging in the (political) surveillance of political oppositionists and that they label such endeavours totalitarian, while at the same time they do not provide a critique of the economic surveillance machine constituted by Google’s expanding services, its collection, storage, analysis, and commodification of personal data, and its market dominance.

Surveillance and Big Brother are not only somewhere out there in China or Iran, they are also present in the heart of capitalism itself – in the form of economic surveillance, and Google is one of its primary executors.

The Buzz privacy policy for example says:
“When you use Google Buzz, we may record information about your use of the product, such as the posts that you like or comment on and the other users who you communicate with. This is to provide you with a better experience on Buzz and other Google services and to improve the quality of Google services”
“If you use Google Buzz on a mobile device and choose to view “nearby” posts, your location will be collected by Google.”

The task for Google is to collect as much data about users as possible and to then sell this data as commodity to advertising clients. Google fears the competition by Facebook and Twitter in the social networking market, and so has set up its own service (although I doubt that I will be so successful because until now it only supports rather trivial functions).

Google uses DoubleClick for networking the data it holds about its users with data about these users’ browsing and usage behaviour on other Web platforms (see Google Privacy Policy). There is only an opt-out option from this surveillance. Opt-out options are always unlikely to be used because in many cases they are hidden inside of long privacy and usage terms and therefore only really accessible to knowledgeable users. Of course Internet corporations avoid opt-in advertising solutions because this would drastically reduce the potential number of users participating in advertising.

To only focus on the political surveillance capabilities that Buzz provides for some non-Western societies and to ignore the immanence of economic surveillance, is a form of Digital Orientalism that is ideologically blind for the forms of stratification that are at the heart of Western economies.

GOOGLE BUZZ PRIVACY POLICY
9 February 2010