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Privacy: Google is not impressed by the world's legislation, and wants something better

Google's plans to target mobile users are being severely inhibited, it seems, by anxieties inside the giant advertising company about being seen as a privacy invader.

As a recent story about its proposed global privacy standard shows, there's an embarrassing discrepancy between the way Google "privacy counsel" Peter Fleischer sees the problem, and the way privacy activists view the matter. As the CNet piece put it:

While Google is leading a charge to create a global privacy standard for how companies protect consumer data, the search giant is recommending that remedies focus on whether a person was actually harmed by having the information exposed.

Of course, that’s not to say privacy legislation doesn’t have its place in setting minimum standards. It does. At the moment, the majority of countries have no data protection rules at all. And where legislation does exist, it’s typically a hotchpotch of different regimes.
In America, for example, privacy is largely the responsibility of the different states – so there are effectively 50 different approaches to the problem. The European Union by contrast has developed common standards, but as the UK’s own regulator has acknowledged these are often complex and inflexible.

If Google really does appreciate the need to start targeting mobile advertising which watches what you browse "over your shoulder" the way Adsense does, it has to satisfy its CEO that it won't be seen as "the bad guy" in this. His private White Paper on the subject is worth a read.