Google CEO, Sundar Pichai says Android users are aware of the size of data they fetch on them, as they agree to the terms of use of its service. He said you are in total control of the data they have about you.
Google officially testified yesterday before the U.S. House Judiciary committee for a hearing – “Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices.”
In a response to an enquiry from House member, Bob Goodlatte, Pichai said, “For Google services, you have a choice of what information is collected, and we make it transparent. It’s really important for us that average users are able to understand it,” furthering that users do understand the user agreement for Android OS.
“We actually remind users to do a privacy check-up, and we make it very obvious every month. In fact, in the last 28 days, 160 million users went to their My Account settings, where they can clearly see what information we have — we ensure we show it back to them. We give clear toggles, by category, where they can decide whether that information is collected, stored, or — more importantly — if they decide to stop using it, we work hard to make it possible for users to take their data with them,” he said.
Also, the US Congress wants Google to improve its user console and tools in order to teach people how best to protect their privacy – turning off data collection and location tracking.
This may be a bit difficult for Google to actualize but it is definitely not an impossible task.
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“We want to simplify it, and make it easier for average users to navigate these settings…“It’s something we are working on,” Sundar added.
Earlier this year, an investigative piece by New York Times revealed that Apple’s products fetch user data including location and sell it to third parties. This situation is even more rampant now as many users proceed to engage an app without reading user agreement and without knowing the extent their phones and apps data is being accessed.
It has ‘no plans’ to relaunch Chinese search engine
Google is not planning to relaunch a search engine in China after it was blocked in 2010.
There have been issues being raised about Google complying with China’s internet censorship and surveillance law if it enters again the Chinese’s search engine market because of Alphabet Inc’s frantic efforts with new strategies to re-enter the country, which has largest number of smartphone users.
“Right now, there are no plans to launch search in China,” Pichai said. There are no current discussions with the Chinese government, maintaining that he would be “fully transparent” with policymakers if the company brings search products to China.
