Google loves speed? Not with user privacy

Marissa Mayer, Google Vice President of Search and User Products Experience, touted Google’s “speed” at the Web 2.0 conference: 

"Users really respond to speed."

Mayer’s public performances are generally well received, as her Google stand for a speedy user experience on Thursday appears to have been. 

In explaining why “slow and steady doesn't win the race" in a Web 2.0 world, Mayer said:

If you have each transaction take less time, you have expert users more satisfied. You want lots of small and fast interactions if speed is important. 

Mayer cited Google’s Gmail application as having benefited from speed tweaks.

Has Mayer read the Google GMail privacy policy lately?

The GMail privacy policy is oblivious to “speed” when GMail users wish to delete messages or entire accounts from the Google systems: 

Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.

In fact, Google is oblivious to all users wishing to delete data or entire accounts from the Google systems. 

Google umbrella privacy policy:

Accessing and updating personal information

When you use Google services, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort.

In “Free Google GMail; The high price you pay” I  note:

Do you believe the contents of every personal and business email you ever write or send should be recorded and permanently archived on third party servers located in countries throughout the world, to which you have no access? 

If you are one of the millions of GMail users, you have indicated to Google that you most certainly do.

SEE: Google: The Anti-Microsoft