Google was toying with the thought of including extra privacy-focused options to its search engine that will not observe the websites visited by its customers, a senior Alphabet government revealed on the antitrust trial towards the corporate.
It was 2019 and tech corporations like Google had been on the again foot following the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed that the private knowledge of round 87 million Fb customers was secretly scraped and mined for voter insights, Bloomberg reported.
Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, whereas testifying at Google’s antitrust trial, revealed that the search large refused so as to add privacy-focused options as a result of an Incognito Google might harm the corporate’s promoting income.
Raghavan was grilled by Justice Division lawyer Joshua Hafenbrack in regards to the firm’s causes for rejecting the novel proposal. He requested the Google government, “One of many considerations was if Google adopted that proposal, customers would choose it and Google would lose billions of {dollars} in income, appropriate?”
Raghavan replied, “That was solely one of many considerations.” He added that the opposite was the issue of explaining to customers the distinction between incognito search and incognito mode within the Chrome browser.
What had been the really useful modifications to Google Search?
Google’s head of search, Benedict Gomes, had advocated making quite a lot of modifications to Google Search in response to privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo, together with not conserving details about customers’ search historical past and site.
In an electronic mail change, Gomes known as privateness a “delicate search spot” and an “essential positioning level that could be a potential risk”.
However Gomes’ recommendations had been rejected by Raghavan, who was working the corporate’s search promoting enterprise on the time.
Raghavan in response to an electronic mail wrote, “I agree that there’s one thing price exploring on this area of personal search. However the working groups need to do MUCH extra cautious work earlier than losing our invaluable time. I wish to see proof that there’s an actual impression on Google customers, attributable to this issue.”
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Up to date: 30 Oct 2023, 08:24 AM IST
