by Klaus Doring
Can you imagine life without computers and, especially, without the world wide web? Maybe two or three years ago I could live without the Internet. Nowadays, I am pretty sure, I can’t any more – especially when it comes to daily communication around the globe and business. But, somehow, I’m getting more and more scared when it comes to lack of transparency regarding user data.
Since a couple of weeks ago, and especially last December, we could note a lot of complaints. Germany’s commissioner for data protection said users of online social networks, for example, remain poorly protected by the privacy policies of most sites. He proposed an independent ratings agency to alert users to these risks.
Especially “Google” is under fire from all sides. Also, last December a French court in Paris fined Google 300,000 euros for digitilizing thousands of French books and infringement of copyright.
At this moment, while writing this column, I got the information that Germany’s minister of justice, Ms. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has chastised Google over its business strategy. Of course, the company should clearly inform users of what is happening with their data.
Do you also enjoy “Google-Street-View” and/or “Google-Earth”, which provide satellite images of almost everything? I do! On the other hand, the German minister is also very right with her opinion in saying that “they are absolutely worth exploring with regard to data protection”.
Can we sleep better after knowing Google’s spokesperson Kay Oberbeck’s statement, saying that it is an integral part of Google’s services and product development, that “full transparency and options” are given to users.
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More crisis-reports are coming up: 1,4 million! That’s the number of consumers and businesses in the United States that filed for bankruptcy in 2009, up 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December alone, as we learned in last week’s edition of EDGE Davao. Anyway, as a German national I’m glad to learn that despite years of weak performance in the US market, Volkswagen announced it aims to double the number of cars it sells in the US by 2012 or 2013. VW wants its cars to escape their niche status and hit the mass-market. Good luck guys!
