Google Public Policy Blog to give users a voice?

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 19 June 2007 17:57

Opinion and Analysis

Expect to hear more from Google on public policy issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, trade, and more. That was the message laid down in the inaugural post of the search company's new Google Public Policy Blog, which was launched on June 18. However, can Google afford to allow users a free rein to post critical comments on the blog?

Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google, Andrew McLaughlin, says in the post that the company's public policy team is addressing issues such as privacy, child online safety, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, reform of the patent system, and broadband policy.

According to the McLaughlin, the new blog seeks to enable users to have input to Google policy (through its comments facility) and to inform them of what the company is doing and why.

In some ways, the launch of this blog is a brave move by Google, which is a company that is increasingly surrounded by controversy concerning its policies as its market power continues to grow. Among other things, it should be interesting to see how Google reacts to comments on the initial post such as the following:

"One of your policies is to sometimes censor content when local laws and regulations require it. In a future post, can you tell us which legal/ technical channels censorship requests in Germany, France & China go through before they are implemented by you in local versions of Google?"

And this:

"I stopped liking you when I heard that you store searches (and all data you can get your hands on) forever. This is very sensitive data, and extremely scary, because it allows to see to a good deal what I think about. It doesn't belong in the hands of anybody, not even NSA or FBI, not EU governments, and not your log files either."

Judging by some of the comments, Google seems to be prepared at least initially to expose itself to warts and all critiques from the public on its policies. There is a caveat, though: "We do, however, reserve the right to remove off-topic comments."

Does that last bit mean Google will steer a safe course with the topics it raises? Or is it a means of making sure that it has the latitude to weed out the more paranoic anti-Google comments? Time will tell.