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Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

Schmidt's quote is clearly out of context and overblown. Rather than crucifying the man, we should seek clarification of his position. Personally, I believe that his actual stance is along the lines of: "Google does everything it can to protect the privacy of users. Unfortunately, we are required to retain some data by law and some by practicality. If you are doing something you don't want known, the only way to be completely safe it to not put that data in the hands of others. However, if you had to put your private data in the hands of any major internet service company, I believe that Google is the safest choice."

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I cannot thank you enough for this comment. I've been hearing non-sense comments over this quote for a week now, including the original post on this thread.

People forget that CEOs, politicians, celebrities, and everyone else are people too. Everyone knows what it is like to say something, but mean something else. Everyone knows what it is like to have to clarify what you just said. People who speak publicly, as part of their job, make far fewer errors than us "normal" folk, but they still make errors. When they make a single error, it is perfectly acceptable to raise an eyebrow, but it is almost never acceptable to sound an alarm. Having seen Schmidt speak, both on video and in person, I have no doubt that he'd respond much better to a polite request for clarification than a misguided angry letter.

EDIT: And I don't even think he made that much of an error! The full quote was:

"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

It's wrong. I can imagine tons of things that I might want to hide form others, and none of these things necessarily are evil things. The problem isn't about hiding. It's about freedom of choice.

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