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.
20th century Google: “Don’t be evil.”
Wow. They sure let that motto slide, didn’t they?
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:
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