I agree with you. I get the impression that data aggregation&analysis is so deeply ingrained in Google company culture that it's entirely possible the responsible people truly believes nothing went wrong here.
LIZ FIGUEROA, (D) State Senator, CA, 1998-06: We walk into this room, and it’s myself
and two of my staff— my chief of staff and one of my attorneys. And across from us
was Larry, Sergey, and their attorney.
All of a sudden, Sergey started talking to me. He said, “Senator, how would you feel
if a robot went into your home and read your diary and read your financial records,
read your love letters, read everything, but before leaving the house, it imploded?”
And he said, “That’s not violating privacy.”
I immediately said, “Of course it is. Yes, it is.” And he said, “No, it isn’t.
Nothing’s kept. Nobody knows about it.” I said, “That robot has read everything.
Does that robot know if I’m sad or if I’m feeling fear, or what’s happening?”
And he looked at me and he said, “Oh, no. That robot knows a lot more than that.”
> Nobody knows about it.
This idea that no person knows about it is suspiciously similar to the word games the NSA plays with their claims of only needing a warrant once a human searches for something they already captured and stored.
Coupled with the fact that the function of said robots could be changed with a code push...
Doesn't that create an incredible opportunity for monetization and therefore risk for future abuse?
Just because we could provide a perfect search result to any query if we knew everything about a person (including their current thoughts) doesn't make enacting that a reasonable or good idea.
At the very least, Googlers :believe: they're 'doing the right thing', so they :believe: their marketing and their mottos, at least.
It's up to us to convince Google that it's wrong.