Group Work 5

Question 1: How did Google’s stance provide the company with an advantage over its competition?

Google maintains huge databases filled with information on billions of Web sites. Google also maintains databases of search statistics that can be mined to learn about user interests and general search trends. Google and the other search companies also maintain private detailed information that includes the specific searches made by specific IP addresses. IP addresses can be connected to actual users through information provided by Internet service providers. All of the statements above are the commonly used in a company.

Question 2: What risk did Google take in not initially complying with government request?

In the global war on terror, and with government efforts to find terrorists, many businesses have been placed in that exact position. The United States Patriot Act provides the US government with wide-reaching authority to request information from businesses regarding the activities of suspected terrorists. Privacy advocates are working to limit that reach. In 2006, the Web search Company Google found itself stuck between corporation with US government requests for information and its commitment to preserving its user’s privacy. Its refusal to release database records to the federal government landed Google in Court.

Question 3: Do you feel Google was supporting or obstructing justice in its refusal to give up private information to its government? Why?

Google is multinational publicly traded organization built around company which popular search, cloud computing, advertising technologies and Web app, browser and operating system development. Google was chosen for its resemblance to the word googol a number consisting of a numeral one followed by a hundred zeroes as a reference to the vast amount of information in the world. Google's stated the mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." This mission and the means used to accomplish it have raised concerns among the company's critics.

While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming. Criticism of Google includes possible misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as antitrust, monopoly, and restraint of trade.

Therefore in my opinion, Google was supporting and obstructing justice because they have a lot of user includes us that we used every time when we doing research. Google and the other search companies also maintain private detailed information that includes the specific searches. The customer put a lot of trust on them. If the government knows all about this, our privacy will not save the government will knows everything our details. They won’t to give the privacy information to the government, but the government has the rights to get the information from Google. By getting information from Google it can help the government to find the terrorist or criminals by using IP addresses.

In conclusion, it is better that Google won’t give any information to the government because if it happen some companies will give the information to the government but with condition the government have to pay the information that the companies give and it will make some profit for that companies. Well, if this happen the customer will not trust to keep their information to Google because they can’t keep the private information.

References

Margaret Rouse (2011) Google
Available from: http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/Google, [Accessed on 22nd June 2012]

Question 4: Should government have the right to force a legitimate business to take an action that might damage its relationship with its customers? What does this imply about the action of the government and support of its citizens?

The U.S government with all due respect is trying their best to handle the global war on terror and so far doing a good job at it. Although, sometimes people tend to use extra force, more than they should be using. In this case, although the government is trying to tackle the problem but certain policies such as customers’ privacy should be kept that way; private.

The government has no rights to force a legitimate business to breach their “contract” with their customers. This, not only can jeopardize the relationship between the business and the customer, but can also cause Google to lose their customers or worst get sued for breaking the customers’ privacy.

This action shows that the government is doing all within their power to stop terror, and to avoid the same incident from happening again. Even if they get support from their citizens, majority of them will probably still want their privacy thus disallowing the government to proceed with their intentions.