Pay for Your Privacy - The Google Conundrum

How much is your privacy worth?  $10 per month?  $25 per month?  Would you just give it away for free?  All of your private data?  Information about what you like?  Your shopping lists?

Giving it away for free is exactly what you're doing when you use Google's products.  Now some people may not care all that much.  Maybe you think it's okay if Google and other big companies know everything about your online activities, but businesses and especially governments need to think again.

Image via CrunchBase

Think this is a whole lot of to do about nothing?  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) doesn't.  They filed suit against Google on February 8th to try to prevent Google from combining data from across Google's services in to a single profile, making all of your data available to all Google services.  In practice this means that you may see advertisements customized based upon the content of your Google searches.  You may also see advertisements when looking at your photos on Picasa based upon the contents of your e-mail or Google Talk chats.

Picture this: a friend is getting a divorce and asks you to recommend an attorney.  You do a Google search for "divorce attorney."  Later, your spouse goes to read your shared G-Mail account and is presented with a slew of advertisements for divorce attorneys.  Awkward questions ensue...

Another example with photos and instant messaging: you're having a discussion about good times at college with a buddy on Google Talk.  You mention playing drinking games and going to clubs of ill-repute.  Later that day you're sitting with your 5-year old looking at family photos on Picasa and a pop-up ad is targeted at you for Viagra (or something worse).  Mommy, what's Viagra?

privacy (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

So let's talk about Google Apps.  Google says that Apps' education, business and government customers are safe and that they won't use their data for advertising.  Apps isn't quite free, but it is a very low cost service.  Where is Google making their money then?  Is it from subscriptions?  Really?  I don't believe Google cares whether people use Apps or not... they're counting on creating new Google search customers.  Even if they aren't directly using the data that organizations store in Google Apps the 900 less-well regulated applications that you use when you're a Google Apps customer aren't covered by their privacy policy.  Don't tell me that Google isn't going to use information from those other apps to choose ads to display to users.

It's a slippery slope.  Get a discount on your cloud e-mail, file storage and sharing but be aware that there is still a cost for using Google's services.  It's your information... your privacy.  That's how you pay for low-cost and free services from Google.

So, am I going to stop using Google services?  This blog was published with Blogger.  I used Google search for some of the references and related articles.  I don't plan to stop any time soon either.  But am I going to trust customer's data to a company that makes 97% or more of their revenue on aggressive search advertising?

Not a chance.

Next time: is Microsoft a better choice for cloud e-mail services than Google?  See you soon!

Related articles

• Q&A: Google to dig deeper into users' lives (msnbc.msn.com)
• Are You In the Dark About Google's New Privacy Policy? (chikg33kstekntoyz.wordpress.com)
• Clock counts down as Google privacy change looms (news.cnet.com)
• Last Ditch Efforts to Halt New Google Privacy Policy (searchenginewatch.com)
• Developments related to Google privacy initiative (seattlepi.com)
• EPIC Files Emergency Appeal Against Google (webpronews.com)
• Google's new privacy policy takes effect (goerie.com)

Reasons to Keep Your Servers

Next up... with all the great reasons to move in to the cloud, why would anyone want to host their own server any more?

Stay tuned...

Why Move to the Cloud?

The primary reason most companies move operations in to the cloud is... MONEY.

In the traditional way, a company needing a new e-mail server would:
1. Buy a new server ($3,000 - a relatively inexpensive one)
2. Buy an operating system and the e-mail software ($2,000 - Windows Server & Exchange)
3. Pay employees or consultant (15 hours or around $2,000) to install the whole thing

That's a capital outlay of $7,000. It's likely that server will need over the course of a 4 year lifespan:
1. $2,000+ in electricity and cooling
2. Hardware and software labor services up to 4x the cost of the server (say $6,000)
3. Hardware upgrades and replacement ($500 for misc components probably after 3-year warranty expires)

If you consider the total cost of owning that server over the course of 4 years then, the total is $15,500 for one single server.

Let's just say that e-mail server was going to host 30 e-mail mailboxes and do nothing else. You can purchase as a service in the cloud the very same e-mail solution for $10 per month per user. For 30 users thats $300 per month or $3,600 per year or $14,400 for 4 years.

You just saved over $1,000. You'll probably get more for your money too. Consider that:
1. Your server will be hosted in a Tier 1 data center with redundant power systems. It'll most likely be up more when hosted than if you keep it onsite.
2. They'll provide backups which might cost you $1,000 or more to just purchase software for, let alone maintaining the system for 4 years.
3. You'll get highly trained engineers that are pros at keeping servers running 24/7 and that's all they do. This will include monitoring of systems, patch management, etc.
4. You have a monthly expense rather than a capital outlay. That means you get to deduct the business expense on taxes rather than tracking depreciation.
5. The service will always be on the latest version of the software. No upgrades for you to manage.
6. You can add more mailboxes as needed and remove them when you don't need them. Never pay for more than you need.

Rinse and repeat. Every four years you save your $1,000+ when you continue to use the cloud rather than buy a new server.

What is Cloud Computing?

Let's start with a definition from Wikipedia:

"Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility."

Now I'll break it down into something a little easier to wrap your brain around:
Any computing service you use that doesn't live on a traditional computer server in your office is probably "Cloud Computing."

Many companies use an e-mail filtering service that removes spam and viruses before delivering that e-mail to employee inboxes. That's cloud computing.

Some companies now send a copy of their data backups to the internet for offsite storage. That's cloud computing.

A recent popular example of cloud computing is Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management (CRM) application you access through a web browser. You could also consider Facebook a cloud computing application.

There are a couple different levels of cloud computing:
1. Applications (Facebook, Salesforce, Hotmail, etc.)
2. Platforms (places for people to build applications and not put them on their own servers)
3. Infrastructure (replacing or augmenting your own servers or networking equipment with some in the cloud)

For the purpose of this discussion we'll really just concentrate on applications and infrastrcture. We'll let people who do computer programming worry about the platforms for now.

The "Cloud" and Your Business

What is the "Cloud" and how will it affect your business? You may be using the cloud right now and just not know it. What's available, what's good and what are your peers doing?

In this series of posts I'll be starting off with some general information on the "Cloud" and how Redwood's clients are using it now. We'll move on to where I (and the industry) see it going in the next couple years. If you're not already using something in the cloud now I'd be surprised and you'll be doing a lot more there very soon!