Google Facing New Privacy Probe Over Safari Incident 134
An anonymous reader writes "Last month we discussed news of a controversial method Google was using to bypass Safari's privacy settings in order to enable certain features for users who were logged in to Google. Now, U.S. regulators are investigating Google's actions to see whether the search giant has violated the privacy protection agreement they signed last year that includes a clause prohibiting Google from misrepresenting how users control the collection of their data. 'The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. ... A group of state attorneys general, including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut's George Jepsen, are also investigating Google's circumvention of Safari's privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.' European regulators are adding the Safari investigation to their review of Google's consolidated privacy policy."
Re:Do no Evil out the door! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's always been 'Do know evil'
Re:Investigate Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
I love Google as much as the next /. tard (and hate Apple to boot, I mean comeon, look at the evil deeds of each company and apple has so much more on it.) But Google purposely exploiting a security flaw in Safari is wrong. Plain and simple, however honestly I would like to wager Apple put it there on purpose to see if they could catch Google doing this. The reason I say this is, in chess (and corporate strategy is akin to Chess at times) one might allow themselves to lose a piece (reputation loss for Apple for having a security hole, def no more than a pawn) in exchange to turn the tables or even do substantial damage to ones opponent. We all heard they were doing this with IE before safari and all of a sudden Safari now has this exploit. Millions of users (lets say 10million) + let's say a year @ 16k each = $5,840,000,000. Also, even the slashdot community is turning on Google huge reputation loss.
A pawn for a queen, I'll take that any day. And if Apple did do this on purpose, I'm not saying they are evil, I'm saying they are smart. What I'm hoping is after this incident Google get's back on track to their 'Don't be Evil' motto. Google has been innovative, using there money to constantly make the world a better place, I can't think of the last time Apple did something truly good, but I can talk all day about Foxconn (cheapest vendor) and writing a 1500% markup on there devices with money just sitting in the bank and not really doing anything. When was the last time you heard of Apple Space, Apple with free anything, people are claiming they are contributing to the OS community but it's just ports so products work on there OS. So comparing the two, I always vote Google, even with this one evil truly evil deed. (I also don't think Microsoft was evil for forcing people to have IE, OH GOD NO... Oh wait you have to get Safari on apple, what's with that?). Googles really just a target because they don't pay off the right people it seems, and I really hope they start doing it or they're going to end up sinking the ship. I mean for gods sake Sony put a rootkit and your computer and they didn't get fined $5billion.