Google’s chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, will depart the tech giant after 13 years, with no plans yet to replace him, as the company restructures its teams in charge of privacy and legal compliance.
Staff were informed of Enright’s departure in mid-May, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. One told Forbes the news came as a shock to employees, as Enright was well-liked and respected, having steered Google’s privacy team through years in which its data handling practices were held under a microscope by lawmakers, regulators and civil courts.
Matthew Bye, Google’s head of competition law, will be leaving as well, after 15 years with the company and during a critical moment for Google when it comes to antitrust. Last month, the company wrapped up closing arguments in a landmark competition trialbrought on by the Department of Justice, over Google’s contracts with device manufacturers that push users to Google search. Bye did not respond to a request for comment.
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Google had a privacy chief?
What exactly was he doing? Jacking off Pichai?
Google used to at least pretend to not be amoral, but I think this restructuring pretty much reveals them for what they are now.
He was entrusted with protecting Google’s privacy; not it’s customers!
Vest and rest I guess. :)
We can only assume he was doing a lot of work that made google just as evil as it is now compared to the alternative without him, which we’ll get now.
We know what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t preventing the leak of internal documents detailing how search works. Which is probably why he’s fired. Someone has to take the fall. Kind of wonder if he’s got a golden parachute.
He’s ex-C-suite of IBM and Macy’s I’m sure he’s fine.
20th century Google: “Don’t be evil.”
Wow. They sure let that motto slide, didn’t they?
I mean, it’s now the same as every massive corporation: “Quarterly profits.”
No single person will ever be as greedy as a Board filled with the fuckers. It will never be enough…
Don’t don’t be evil
They changed it to “do the right thing” around 2015 but never defined what “the right thing” might be - mostly shareholder value, I guess.
It’s definitely not Do Tha Right Thang
Do Tha Fiduciary Thang just doesn’t quite have the right sound
I was young in the 90s/2000s and it honestly felt like computing was a new stage for human progress.
I clearly wasn’t the only one. There was the “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
I think the moral of all this is that fundamentally technology doesn’t matter. If you don’t have the public structures to reign in the oligarchs, shills and liars, you’re not going to get anywhere.
Money always comes first, for most of these companies. The era where your data was private is truly over. Now most of these platforms only give you a choice between your data being sold, and your data being sold for like a 2% cut
Matthew Bye, Google’s head of competition law, will be leaving as well
Bye Matthew
In the past I have been surprised to encounter some genuinely privacy-minded folks working at Google.
It’s hard not to see this as an announcement that era is ending now…
I de-Googled awhile ago, based on my personal belief that Google wouldn’t keep those people. I’m not happy to feel like this verifies my worst expectations.
Matthew Bye is also leaving
Nominative determinism tells me he must leave a lot of jobs.
Nominative determinism is pretty accurate. Steve Jobs did generate a lot of jobs. Bill Gates had a lot of gates to his name.
</joke> just in case it wasn’t obvious
Privacy Schmivacy
Paywalled
Time to bring back AltaVista.
I’m trying my best to un-Google. i switched to firefox and ddg but the mapping… ugh. i cant quit the driving maps.
Magic earth is ok for nav but the problem with all openstreetmaps options remains the terrible search. This has been my experience for the past decade.
Recently the folks at jmp.chat released an alpha search which passes navigation intents in Android to the nav app of your choice, so I think we are getting close to a real alternative in the next few years.
Since when has google been about privacy in any form?
When they were a search engine 20+ years ago
Oh yeah i forgot heh
I hope this is not fallout from the 404 Media article
