1.

Headnote
It might be the biggest search engine in the world, but Google makes its money from advertising,
often to its users' disadvantage
Google's famous 'do no evil' motto has been under pressure in recent months. The actual words
published onits web site in a list of "ten things Google has found to be true" are: "6. You can make
money without doing evil." Well, Google has certainly been making money lately. It looks on track
to report revenues of over $10bn (5bn) for the financial year just ended, a phenomenal
achievement for a company founded in a Silicon Valley garage less than a decade ago.
Long-term Google shareholders have been sharing in the firm's good fortune. Its share price
pierced the $500 mark two months ago, marking a 500 per cent rise for any investor that
bought Google shares at the IPO offer price of $85 in August 2004 two-and-a-half years ago.
But although the share price is still riding high, some of the shine has been coming off Google's do
good image. Last month, the CEO of Central Desktop, an on-demand collaboration service, noticed
his company was consistently getting outbid for the top advertising spots on Google search results
by rival company JotSpot, which Google bought in October. He wrote about it on his blog, pointing
out that all Google's services seemed to be getting better positions than their rivals.
Google's response (once it had explained there was nothing in its ad ranking algorithms that
unfairly advantaged Google's own ads) was to signpost its own services in separate 'tips' at the top
of search results. This experiment proved even more unpopular than the alleged rigging of ad
placements and was quickly dropped.
Then at the end of last month, a browser bug (unrelated to Google) led to hackers wiping the
entire contents of a handful of Gmail accounts. Users discovered they couldn't recover the contents
of the wiped inboxes because - and here's the irony - Google doesn't keep back-ups for fear of
upsetting privacy advocates. A case of inadvertently doing evil as a direct result of trying to be
good.
Google must be hoping this run of slip-ups is coming to an end and it can restore its do-no-evil
image before it faces other challenges. But there's a contradiction between Google's public image
and its business model that might lead it astray once again.
To most people, Google is a search engine - the most popular by far, with almost two-thirds of all
web searches performed on Google. But search is not how it earns its money - at least not directly.
A huge 99 per cent of its revenues come from advertising, and CEO Eric Schmidt makes no secret
of wanting to expand into other media beyond search engines and web sites, hence the motivation
behind the firm's $1.6bn acquisition of YouTube last November and forays into radio and print
advertising.
That emphasis on advertising rather than search creates a quandary for Google: does it do good
by its users, or by its advertisers? Serving two masters makes it doubly difficult for Google to
stand by its pledge to do no evil.
Sidebar
"A huge 99 per cent of Google's revenues come from advertising"

2.
Numerous scholars have highlighted the extraordinary book-scanning project created by Google in
2004. The project aims to create a digital full text search index which would provide people with
online access to books and assist research. A few months after the original idea started being
implemented, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers-AAP filed a class-action
lawsuit, claiming that Google Books Project violated copyright law in the United States. The main
contention was that the books which were not under public domain could not have been scanned
without permission and compensation for authors and publishers. Googles Book Project radically
changed its character from the time of its birth until the negotiation of an Amended Settlement
Agreement - ASA with the plaintiffs. It has raised serious controversies not only regarding different
aspects of the future of the Internet but also over the issue of privatization of knowledge. Those in
favour of the initiative highlight the astonishing accomplishment of Google, allowing us to access
books more easily than ever before in human history. However, their claim is as dangerous as the
song of the sirens. While at first sight Google tells a tale of extraordinary inclusion, it excludes
those who cannot pay to access snippets or limited view of around 80% of the books available. We
will also discuss the Amended Settlement Agreement of Google with the Authors Guild and its
failure on March, 2011. Finally, we will explore the concept of fair use, or exceptions and
limitation on copyright, which provides for full access to books to any individual, library or archive
as long as they are used for educational or scientific purposes.

3.
Privacy[edit]
Google automatically scans emails to add context-sensitive advertisements to them and to filter spam.
Privacy advocates raised concerns that the plan involved scanning their personal, private emails and
that this was a security problem. Allowing email content to be read, even by a computer, raises the
risk that the expectation of privacy in email will be reduced. Furthermore, email that non-subscribers
choose to send to Gmail accounts is scanned by Gmail as well, even though those senders never
agreed to Gmail's terms of service or privacy policy. Google can change its privacy policy unilaterally
and Google is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to
make dossiers on individuals. However, most email systems make use of server-side content
scanning in order to check for spam,[79][80][81] and of course any email system must access email
content merely to display it to the user.
In 2004, privacy advocates also regard the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies as
problematic. Google has the ability to combine information contained in a person's email messages
with information from Internet searches. Google has not confirmed how long such information is kept
or how it can be used. One of the concerns is that it could be of interest to law enforcement agencies.
More than 30 privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service
until these issues are resolved.[82]
Gmail's privacy policy used to contain the clause: "residual copies of deleted messages and accounts
may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup
systems". However, this statement does not appear in Gmail's current privacy policy. Less specifically,
Google has stated that they will "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our
systems as quickly as is practical."[83][84]
Google defends its position by citing their use of email-scanning to the user's benefit. Google states
that Gmail refrains from displaying ads next to potentially sensitive messages such as those that
mention tragedy, catastrophe, or death.[85]
Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China were hacked in sophisticated attacks thought to
use phishing and exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer[86][87][88] in late 2009. Any (web mail or
other) mail system which stores and retains user's email contents is an attractive target for such
attacks, but Gmail is popular with security-conscious users because of its earlyHTTPS secure
(encrypted) connection support, and its more-recent HTTPS-only default setting. [6][89]
The launch of Google Buzz as an opt-out social network immediately drew criticism for violating user
privacy because it automatically allowed Gmail users' contacts to view their other contacts. Buzz was
discontinued in December 2011.[90][91]
In March 2011 a former Gmail user in Texas sued Google, claiming that its Gmail service violates
users' privacy by scanning e-mail messages to serve relevant ads. [92]
In July 2012, some California residents filed two class action lawsuits against Google and Yahoo!
claiming that they illegally intercept emails sent by individual non-Gmail or non-Yahoo! subscribers to
Gmail and Yahoo! subscribers without their knowledge, consent or permission. [93] A motion filed by
Google's attorneys in the case concedes that Gmail users have "no legitimate expectation of privacy".
[94]

A court filing uncovered by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog in August 2013 revealed that
Google stated in a court filing that no "reasonable expectation" exists among Gmail users in regard to

the assured confidentiality of their emails.[95] In response to a lawsuit filed in May 2013, Google
explained:
"... all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing
... Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's
assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their
communications are processed by the recipient's ECS [electronic communications service] provider in
the course of delivery.[95]
A Google spokesperson stated to the media on August 15, 2013 that the corporation takes the privacy
and security concerns of Gmail users "very seriously." [95]