How can web 2.x strategies enhance trust for Google?

Niki Gomez

‘Yeah, if it’s something free, man, I’ll give them my information.’‘No way, I don’t give my phone number to anyone.’ (Respecting Digital Privacy by Alison Black; blog entry, December 6th, 2007) You Have Zero Privacy, Get over it!Former CEO, Sun Microsystems, 1999

Web 2.0 & The Trust Issue

The ultimate goal of Web 2.0 companies is to create software that is intelligent with respect to the user's preferences such that the user's experience is personalized, and the information presented to them is more useful.

Companies must ensure users do not feel exploited by the use of their data to fund their business model.

Google- leader of web trends

According to Jeff Huber, VP of engineering at Google, these are the main factors why people love Google:

 

Open source - developer friendly.

Silicon-Valley based- gives some credibility.

The founders are young.

The ‘Don’t be evil’ credo and other new ways of doing business.

Transparency- “we are idealists approaching this subject”.

Products that give rise for privacy concerns:

1. Google Latitude- a location based application for Google maps; opt-in only and Google only stores your most recently updated location.

2. Google Ad Preferences- interest-based advertising targeted to each individual user. The default is opt-in but users can opt-out.

Relational contracts

Web 2.0 Companies and TrustInterviews with

Facebook- News Feeds and Beacon

Kiva

Linden Labs

Banking 2.0

Privacy and opt outsEssential: Is the default opt-in or do you need to

actively opt-out?

Theory A on customer advocacy

The firm can act as the representative of the customers needs, leading to transparency, unbiased advice, trusted advisors, and best products.

Build trust by morphing web sites to fit an individual’s cognitive and cultural styles

Glen Urban, MIT’s Centre for Digital Business

What can Google do to enhance trust?

Change their privacy defaults to opt-in only, but then many less people would sign up.

Give users much smarter and much more personalized searches.

Public education on the exact use of their data.

Share the data they collect with other companies,

Diversify and focus on other products that give users what they want. This distracts the consumer

Highlight Corporate Social Responsibility, philanthropy, new ventures, public prizes, etc that build on their trustable face.

Google Creative Labs- which will remind people what they love about Google says the director, Andy Berndt,

A New Deal on Data:

Treating data like personal property it is owned by the person who originates it but companies can borrow it. Think of data roughly the way you think of money - something you can loan to people but you want to get something back. It becomes then a currency. What would you swap it for? Then it might be a faster search engine that is more personalised, or real-time traffic information.

Sandy Pentland from MIT Media Lab

Conclusions

If Tim Berners Lee’s vision is realized, the Semantic Web will mean that raw data is shared between companies.

Need for change of the Web 2.0 business models - companies like Google will become more of a platform for other services and dissipate their knowledge of consumers even wider