“Google’s trickery of tracking users of Apple’s (AAPL) Macs, iPhones and iPads without their knowledge or permission recently raised a firestorm when Jonathan Mayer of Stanford University found that Google intentionally circumvented Safari’s privacy feature,” Nigam Arora writes for Forbes. “Caught red-handed, Google offered a convoluted explanation.”
“President Obama has stepped in to slay Google’s privacy violations, introducing on Thursday a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” Arora writes. “Unfortunately the monster will not be slayed easily. First, Google has plenty of tricks up its sleeve to give lip service to the bill but circumvent its spirit. Second, Google has plenty of money to engage the best lobbyists to water down the bill.”
Arora writes, “Google has diversified but its bread and butter is still search. If Google cannot track, it dilutes its offerings of targeted advertisements. The stronger the bill, the more detrimental it will be to Google’s financial performance.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]
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WSJ: Google tracked iPhone, iPad users, bypassing Apple’s Safari browser privacy settings; Microsoft denounces – February 17, 2012