CEO Tries to Soothe Qualms over Google’s Wireless Neutrality, Privacy Stands

CEO Eric Schmidt said Google’s wireless net neutrality stance has been badly misunderstood, and company policies have drawn lines in the sand against some tracking and personal identification practices. Google opposes discriminatory practices in wireless as well as wired broadband, he said late Monday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The company’s August outline proposal with Verizon for federal legislation didn’t change that, Schmidt said.

Google agreed to the proposal to take on wired neutrality first and “deal with wireless separately” because competition has meant rules for cellular haven’t been needed, Schmidt said. “What we were only trying to do here was move the ball a little bit forward.” He said “we generally prefer competition” to government rules as a solution. Some, including net neutrality supporters, saw the agreement as a setback for wireless neutrality and Google’s support for it (CD Aug 6 p1). Schmidt called Verizon Google’s “partner-slash-foe in the debate.” Verizon declined to comment.

"Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle” among the proposed bases for rules “would apply to wireless broadband at this time,” the proposal said. It said the GAO “would report to Congress annually on the continued development and robustness of wireless broadband Internet access services."

Asked about the impression that the Verizon agreement had foiled efforts by the FCC to negotiate a broad net neutrality deal, Schmidt said, “I'm not sure I agree with that. … I've spent a lot of time with the FCC. … Unfortunately, election fever took over, and I don’t think anything is going to happen until January or February” or later.

Government privacy rules are delaying product releases, Schmidt said. Authorities no longer defer to engineers’ views, he said. “Clearly the line we shouldn’t cross is facial recognition,” Schmidt said. Google shouldn’t enable “real-time tracking,” he said. That’s why Google Maps and Google Earth don’t show live images, Schmidt said.

Sticky problems will keep emerging, Schmidt said. “Society is going to have to confront all sorts of uncomfortable questions” about juggling privacy, security and the needs of the police, he said. The issues will only intensify as mobile technology increasingly can collect real-time information, Schmidt said. And privacy requirements vary around the world, he said.

Google responded to complaints by blurring images of faces and license plates that appear on Google Maps with Street View, but “in some countries, that’s not good enough,” Schmidt said. One is Germany, where the company went further by allowing people to opt out of having photos of their homes shown, he said. “Relatively few people” have taken advantage of the opportunity, Schmidt said, and Germans love Street View.