The Commonality Between Green & Privacy

For most of the past few decades the environmental movement pushed companies and governments to adopt green policies and procedures. By and large, the response in the U.S. could best be described as begrudging.

In the last two years, a sudden, massive shift occurred as energy prices skyrocketed and awareness of global warming as a reality increased. Companies who previously were about as green as exhaust from a tailpipe became advocates for adopting environmentally responsible policies. And, less cynically, other companies were created or quickly adapted to the green movement and now provide products and services that either increase the supply of alternative energies or reduce the demand for them.

When doing the right thing is also a way to gain competitive advantage in a rapidly shifting marketplace, than you've got a formula for a wholesale change in thinking overnight. This means that same people who scoffed at even saying the term "green" in 2005 are paying millions of dollars to justify how green equals greenbacks today.

I think we're at the precipice of thinking about data privacy in a similar way. It may not be as dramatic as the green movement, and, unfortunately, it may require an inevitable huge data breach to propel the shift, but it will come, nonetheless. Put simply, this means that the companies that collect and control the vast amount of personal information on networks will begin to view their privacy policies as an offensive strategy rather than merely a defensive one.

Evidence of this came last week when Microsoft and Ask played the privacy card to knock Google and Yahoo...

Ask.com and Microsoft (Quote) today suggested that the search industry have a conversation about consumer privacy in an age of online advertising and search. What it really is: the third- and fifth-place U.S. search providers calling out the market leaders.

That means Google and Yahoo.

In a statement, the companies said they want "leading search providers, online advertising companies and privacy advocates" to join them toward their goal of providing "privacy principles" for the search industry.

And while Ask and Microsoft said they also hoped to work with other technology leaders, consumer advocacy organizations and academics, they emphasized their hope that other, unnamed, "leading search providers" would join the talks.

"We hope others in the industry will join us in developing and supporting principles that address these important issues. People should be able to search and surf online without having to navigate a complicated patchwork of privacy policies," Peter Cullen, Microsoft chief privacy strategist, said in a statement. (From Internet News)

John Battelle covers Google as close as anyone and has been following the privacy issue as it relates to the search giant closely for years. He says in this audio stream that Google is very close to taking offensive steps that go beyond its recent moves to satisfy regulators concerned with the DoubleClick purchase.

Om Malik agrees with the premise of privacy controls as good business:

Web services could use better privacy as a distinguishing factor. After all if all social networks are going to be platforms, I should ideally opt for one that protects and respects my privacy. Other web services could follow - turn privacy into an opportunity for making money.

The environment and energy policies will be big topics for the current presidential campaign. It's not an outlandish thought to see privacy playing a role in the 2012 presidential campaigns. The sooner companies start showing how you can marry the benefits of new technologies and services, the massive flow of data on networks and open, transparent privacy controls, the better.

Comments

[Natalie]

Great post, Sean! We've pointed to it on our blog.

[borla exhaust]

thanks for all the info

[Alejandro]

I've seen many circumstances where popele exhaust the lifetime maximum on their policy.$ 1M sounds like a lot of money. However, it would be easy to go through a $ 1M lifetime maximum for a burn victim, a cancer patient, serious major trauma, etc.Which policy you should buy depends upon the level of risk you're willing to take.

[Shamika Bagwell]

The sooner companies start showing how you can marry the benefits of new technologies and services.

[Randy]

Indeed. What surprises me is that Google has aldreay figured all this out, put it in the Google Public Policy Blog, then effectively disregarded it (and actually they actively worked to counter it) for Google+.