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Writer's pictureFahad H
Feb 1, 20124 min read

Google “Myth Busts” Microsoft’s Privacy Claims


That didn’t take long. Google has reacted to

Microsoft’s ad campaign that slams Google’s forthcoming privacy policy changes with a mythbusting blog post. Here’s a look at the myths Google says are out there, the facts it claims are true and my own fact checking of both Google and Microsoft. Short story? They both seem about the same on the privacy front.

The Google post actually tackles a few allegations beyond those that Microsoft made today, but I’ll focus on the Microsoft ones.

Hard To Control Personal Information?

Google wrote:

Myth: Google’s Privacy Policy changes make it harder for users to control their personal information. [Microsoft] Fact: Our privacy controls have not changed. Period. Our users can: edit and delete their search history; edit and delete their YouTube viewing history; use many of our services signed in or out; use Google Dashboard and our Ads Preferences Manager to see what data we collect and manage the way it is used; and take advantage of our data liberation efforts if they want to remove information from our services.

Fact Check:

Microsoft is talking about Google’s privacy policy changes; Google is responding about its privacy controls. Those are two different things. Both are somewhat correct. Google’s privacy policy change allows it to potentially share information across its services more easily than in the past. The mere fact that you allow for wider sharing makes things harder to control, simply because there’s more to control. However, Google does maintain controls that can prevent things such as web history information from being shared. Those controls aren’t disappearing. So, the privacy policy change hasn’t somehow made it harder to use those controls or taken them away.

Privacy Changes To Help Advertisers?

Google wrote:

Myth: Google is changing our Privacy Policy to make the data we collect more valuable to advertisers. [Microsoft] Fact: The vast majority of the product personalization Google does is unrelated to ads—it’s about making our services better for users. Today a signed-in user can instantly add an appointment to their Calendar when a message in Gmail looks like it’s about a meeting, or read Google Docs within their email.

Fact Check:

This is another case of them both being correct. Google is a profit-making company, with the vast majority of those profits coming from advertising. When Google talked about the privacy policy changes last week, part of what it highlighted was that they’d allow for better ad targeting. Potentially, that’s nice for users. But it’s far bigger improvement for advertisers. However, it’s perfectly accurate that Google isn’t solely doing these changes just for advertisers. In fact, I can recall at one point how Microsoft was highlighting how easy it was to drag content from its search engine into its Hotmail email system. That’s cross-platform data sharing that Microsoft is raising issues about with Google. Microsoft does the same, but no one runs ad campaigns taking the company to task over it.

Do People Read Your Email?

Google wrote:

Myth: Google reads your email. [Microsoft] Fact: No one reads your email but you. Like most major email providers, our computers scan messages to get rid of spam and malware, as well as show ads that are relevant to you.

Fact Check:

Will I disappoint you when I say both are right, again? Google is reading your email. It simply could not target ads to the content of your email without doing that. But no human is reading your email at Google. It’s all automated, and as Google says, the same type of automated reading is also done by Microsoft when it runs a spam filter against your email on Hotmail.

Who’s Better On Privacy?

Google wrote:

Myth: Microsoft’s approach to privacy is better than Google’s. [Microsoft] Fact: We don’t make judgments about other people’s policies or controls. But our industry-leading Privacy Dashboard, Ads Preferences Manager and data liberation efforts enable you to understand and control the information we collect and how we use it—and we’ve simplified our privacy policy to make it easier to understand. Microsoft has no data liberation effort or Dashboard-like hub for users. Their privacy policy states that “information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services.”

Fact Check:

Who knows? As I explained in my post earlier today, it’s extremely difficult to figure out all the things that are potentially covered even in Google’s forthcoming simplified privacy policy, much less the multipart ones that both it and Microsoft have. Microsoft actually does have a Dashboard-like service, called Microsoft Personal Data Dashboard Beta. I didn’t realize this myself until a reader pointed it out to me today. But Google’s had one for longer, and it deserves real praise in pioneering efforts here. The core issue is probably whether Google is somehow doing something radically different than what Microsoft does. I would say no. Both seem to have fairly broad privacy policies that can be difficult to understand, which provide some rights to the companies for making use of data, some protections to their users and which can’t be fully interpreted independently from actual controls different products allow to let users control data.

Google’s Woes: New “Constitution” Invites Renewed Attention

If Microsoft and Google basically are doing the same thing, why’s Google taking all this flak? Why’s Microsoft setting itself up for allegations of the pot calling the kettle black?

Because as I explained before, Google’s new privacy policy is effectively like the company unveiling a new constitution for its users — one that didn’t properly explain how those users retain their protections in a variety of ways or can limit the rights of Google.

That’s caused confusion in both the tech and mainstream press, which has led to confusion in the US Congress and left Google having to defend itself over changes it thought people would appreciate.

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