This would actually be funny if it weren’t so seemingly petty. No, wait, I take that back. It’s funny anyways.
Back on July 14th, CNet News reporter Elinor Mills wrote a story on Google and privacy. As an example of the lack of privacy one may (not) enjoy at the hands of someone using even just Google’s publicly available data (and the thrust of Mills’ story was “wow, what data has Google amassed privately, and how safe is it?”), Mills Googled Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt.
Mills then shared with her readers what she had learned about the ordinarily private Schmidt, all from publicly available data she’d found on Google itself, including that he was estimated to be worth at least $1.5billion dollars as of last year, that this year so far he’s sold $140million in Google stock, that he lives with his wife in Atherton, has attended Burning Man, and is an amateur pilot.
Nothing horrible, and indeed some things which might endear him to the local masses.
For her trouble, however, Mills got CNet blackballed by Google.
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For a year.
Yep, that’s right. CNet itself, and the New York Times, are both reporting that Google has decided to punish CNet for Mills’ indiscretion by refusing to talk to any CNet reporter until July of next year.
Explained Jai Singh, Editor in Chief at CNet, in his interview with the Times’ Saul Hansell, “They were unhappy about the fact we used Schmidt’s private information in our story. Our view is what we published was all public information, and we actually used their own product to find it.”
I guess from now on Mills should use Baidu when she wants to question Google. Perhaps a good first test of Baidu would be to search on “Is Google starting to take itself too seriously?”
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