Scott Cleland on The John Gambling Show, February 21, 2012

 All eyes are back on Google Inc. after a Stanford graduate student spotted a questionable code last week that breached user based privacy agreements.
 
The global technology company and three other advertising companies were bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Safari web browser on their iPhones and computers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
 
Google was tracking the browsing habits of people who specifically wanted that kind of monitoring blocked. Now, Microsoft says Google was doing the same with Internet Explorer as well.
 
Google has since disabled its code.
 
This isn’t the first time Google is put under fire for questionable behavior. Unbeknownst to Android users, the smart phone was tracking people’s movement a few thousand times a day last summer, according to Scott Cleland, author of “Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.”

Google’s actions may be a reflection of the hypercompetitive space media giants play in. To many CEOs, including Google’s Larry Page, consumer personal data makes for a free, open Internet (and lucrative) outcome.  
 
Cleland tells WOR, “People don’t realize that the Internet is at its very essence a giant recording device, tracking device and surveillance device.”
 
“If you don’t have sanctity or sovereignty over what you own and what you should control, you basically don’t have anything. You’re at the mercy of everybody else,” he added.
 
Google has defended its practices and denies Microsoft’s claims. On March 1, Google plans to combine data from users’ across its sixty services to be used for targeted advertising.