Try Googling 'Playa Haters'

Poor Google. All it's ever wanted was to ~~catalog every piece of information in existence, privacy and copyright concerns be damned~~ "do no evil." And now, after all the online search king has given the world (starting with a cool, new verb!), the backlash is in full swing. That's the thanks Google gets for helping you and a few select advertisers know what information is on your desktop, or in your email, or in your voluminous search records, which Google has kindly stored for you and a few select advertisers. And maybe, eventually, the National Security Agency. Datamation's own Josh Greenbaum was playa-hatin' just last week in a column that likened Google to "the Manhattan Project an assembly of the best and the brightest who, in the process of striking a blow for freedom, end up creating one of the most dangerous genies ever to escape from the bottle." Perhaps, but if it's 12:30 a.m. and I want to know who the drummer is for Golden Earring, what would you suggest I do? Google it or call Josh Greenbaum? (Actually, I'd probably Wikipedia it first, but you get my point.) Greenbaum also claims Google is "slowly sucking the life out of the mainstream publishing business, and along with it the profession of journalism and the role of the fourth estate in modern society." Nonsense. Journalism is as vibrant and relevant as ever. News bulletin:

[Paris Hilton] said a "spiritual adviser" told her that her spirit or soul did not like the way she was being seen, and that is why she was sent to jail.

Then, on Saturday, a British advocacy group called Privacy International issued a preliminary report in which Google was ranked dead last among more than 20 other sites in terms of valuing and protecting user privacy:

Google's increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user's life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook. Neither of these elements has been demonstrated. Rather, we have witnessed an attitude to privacy within Google that at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent.

Sounds like the authors of the report were caught in an unflattering photo on Google's new Street View. All kidding aside, I think Google has been great for the Internet and the pursuit of information. Like most people, I use it every day. But I also worry about so much of my personal information being in the hands of one company. And Street View does give me a queazy feeling. I'm not sure, though, that Google deserves to be singled out as the world's greatest privacy abuser, unless you're merely factoring in its size. Indeed, search expert Danny Sullivan argues as much here:

Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well -- and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn't seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn't appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed.

Actually, it is billed as a preliminary report, but Sullivan is right. It smacks of shoddiness. And language like this, in the "Justification" comments for Google's rating, does raise the spectre of bias: