Google affirms to customers that an AOL-style mishap won't happen

Looks like Google is already responding to questions in light of the AOL customer data mishap this week. With the Search Engine Strategies conference this week in San Jose, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the audience that customer web searches performed with Google won't end up as public record or otherwise as customer web searches did this week when AOL accidentally exposed the web search records of 650,000 customers, although names weren't attached to the accidentally-released data. That would have been even worse.

Schmidt told the audience that Google has systems in place "that won't allow that to happen", referencing the release of oft-sensitive customer web search records, indicating that releasing such information would be a violation of trust with its customers. That's pretty obvious, I think -- releasing customer web search records would be the *highest* violation of a customer's trust, something AOL is now having to deal with since that is precisely what happened this week. A quick and swift apology from AOL is already underway, which is a good thing -- immediate damage control is always good. Waiting is not.

One of the key things Schmidt said at the conference this week -- something I have talked about numerous times recently -- is that Google is "simply an aggregator of information". Google, by and large (with some exceptions), does not create content. It simply indexes it for the world. This is the reason why I think Google News is perfectly legitimate, it's an index of news sites by category, like the table of contents for a book. With many content producers incorrectly thinking otherwise, Google will be defending itself vigorously like it always does. But I share Google management's declaration that the company aggregates information only and that it's up to website administrators to *not* have sensitive data floating out where the public web can have access to it, accident or not.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.