Another Open Letter to Google

25/03/2009

March 25th, 2009

Eric Schmidt, CEO,
Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 USA

Dear Mr. Schmidt,

You may recall that on June 10th, 2007 we had cause to write to you regarding an unsavoury and defamatory smear campaign that your company had conducted against Privacy International.

At that time we had ranked Google as the worst performing major player on the Internet in terms of respect for privacy. Google’s response to this highly publicized report was to brief against us to the European press, alleging that we had an institutional bias against Google in order to protect Microsoft. In the above letter we comprehensively debunked these slurs. We have yet to receive an apology.

Over the past few days our criticism of your Street View product and our complaint to the UK Information Commissioner have received widespread press coverage. Google’s response, yet again, has been to conduct a smear campaign. This time, having so comprehensively failed in your first bid, you have briefed media across the UK about your contrived conspiracy allegation involving Privacy International, the PR firm Burson Marsteller, Microsoft and the consulting firm 80/20 Thinking Ltd.

In this new allegation you assert that Microsoft pays for Privacy International’s silence about potentially negative aspects of its products by tipping money into 80/20 Thinking Ltd, which has two Privacy International staff as Directors. You allege that Burson Marsteller, which has been retained by Microsoft, in some way facilitates this relationship because it is a strategic partner of 80/20 Thinking. In this bizarre conspiracy you allege that the world’s most prominent privacy advocates, the world’s biggest software developer and the world’s leading PR company have entered into a secret pact to discredit Google.

The British media by and large have refused to believe these untrue and outrageous allegations, though for the record you did succeed in convincing the Evening Standard to report the lie.

Let me be completely clear on this point. Neither Microsoft nor Burson Marsteller has ever paid money to either Privacy International or 80/20 Thinking. Nor has any benefit in kind been given. Microsoft is part of a Working Group on Consent managed by 80/20 Thinking, but unlike some other members of the group (for example eBay) it has not paid any money toward this effort. Nor has Burson Marsteller, which enjoys a relationship that is based merely on the informal exchange of ideas between our organisations.

Nor, contrary to your scurrilous assertions, does a company’s relationship with us constitute an agreement that we will not publicly attack a client. In a recent such example, Facebook (which is a paying member of the Consent Working Group) changed its terms and conditions in ways that we did not feel were appropriate. We immediately commented adversely in the press, e.g. see article 1 and article 2.

We are quite frankly stunned that a company such as Google would take steps to engage a former government spin-doctor to peddle groundless conspiracy theories in an attempt to besmirch a critic. Your actions are defamatory and disgraceful.

Privacy International's officials and staff have at all times acted with openness and integrity. We engaged very publicly when 80/20 was created. This was an effort to work with commercial organisations and distribute the resulting revenue to campaign groups and to good causes in developing countries. Indeed, as you will know from viewing the company's website, 80/20 has, to give just one example, funded important pro-bono work for the UNHCR. In fact, a large proportion of our profits went into advising and evaluating the privacy and security protocols of the UN Refugees agency, in order to protect vulnerable people and groups around the world.

We are happy to work alongside organisations that strive to do the right thing by privacy. I am sad to say that Google has failed to live up to such standards. All we ever asked of your company that it embraced transparency and good process in its activities. Unlike the other companies we deal with, you see incapable of grasping these concepts. While this failure continues, so too will the corrosion of trust in your company.

You should be ashamed of your actions. Google is coming across as a desperate company resorting to desperate measures.

Yours sincerely

Simon Davies
Director
Privacy International

Related:
An Open Letter to Google
Google accused of conducting smear campaign against Privacy International
PI files complaint about Google Street View