The Financial Times reported that One World Trust is publishing the results of a new world survey that ranks Google worst in the world on openness and transparency.
- This worst in the world ranking comes on the heels of a recent Privacy International survey that also found that Google was worst in the world on privacy.
- Now two independent and respected non-governmental groups have independently found that Google is worst in the world on the values that the Google claims are very important to Google: openness and privacy.
One World Trust "conducts research on practical ways to make global organisations more responsive to the people they affect, and on how the rule of law can be applied equally to all. It educates political leaders and opinion-formers about the findings of its research."
- Out of a possible score of 100 Google got a 17. Ouch. Even the math whizes at Google can see that is not a good score.
- And sense the top performer, UNDP, got an 88, their is no grading curve that will save Google's bacon on this one.
It is good to get additional third party confirmation of many of the themes I have been blogging about for over a year and a half on Google.
- A central theme I have harped on is Google's hypocrisy and double standard, where it has one standard of behavior it expects of others and another for itself.
- The most galling has been its push for "open" access and net neutrality for its broadband competitors but not for Google -- even though Google has more market share in its market than the competitive broadband industry has.
- For those of you who have not read my post on Google's Hypocritic oath, please do for some grins.
In my recent testimony before the Senate Antitrust Subcommitee on Google-DoubleClick I explained in detail (p. 8-9) how Google has "virtually no transparency or accountability"... "to consumers, competition, regulators, or third-party oversight."
Google is a "Black Box" company that says it is for openness but operates as one of the most closed public companies in the marketplace. Google shares precious little information with even their public shareholders. Talk to any analyst or money manager that attended their recent analyst/investor day and they will tell you that they learned very little and that, relative to other public companies, they were told nothing of substance. Google did not even provide a handout of information. Unheard of.
- Why? Remember, Google, when it went public, granted its founders super voting rights, 10-1 over public shareholders. Thus Google's public shareholders have near zero ability to learn more about Google. They have no openness or transparency. Weird in a post Sarbanes-Oxley world.
The best way to conclude this post is to link back to a satirical recent post I did recently about how Google could actually be this hypocritical about openness and privacy.
