Sometimes you hear the military or sports metaphor “the best offense is a good defense.” That would seem like a fit strategy for most situations, like those involving military and sports, but it hasn’t been working out so well for Google since they announced their new Privacy Policy last week. No, it seems that they’re tired of playing defense and are now going on the offense with the purchasing of ads that look to explain away the anxiety and confusion created by the changes to users’ privacy.
Jeff Roberts at paidContent.org spotted the following ad on WashingtonPost.com earlier today:
I visited WaPo’s site and clicked around for quite a bit trying to find this ad somewhere but it was elusive. I saw a lot of political ads, ads for Internet Explorer, ads for tax refund services, ads for WaPo’s tablet app, but didn’t see the Google ad you see above (I clicked until I ran out of free articles to open). Ironically, I did come across one of Google’s Good to Know ads, which was supposed to be a marketing campaign to explain how Google uses the data culled from users of their services and how to protect yourself from having your personal data looted.
So much for ameliorating people’s fears of privacy violations.
It’s peculiar that Google chose to buy the ads on WashingtonPost.com since it was WaPo who Google named as the instigator for creating the initial “misconceptions” about the new Privacy Policy in the first place. I guess they figure if a news contagion started once with WaPo, maybe it can happen again.
At any rate, the ads are out there and at least in some corners of the Internet and if Google’s initial defense to the privacy frenzy has shown us anything, expect the company to reach into the inventory of tricks to spread the word that they’re not trying to change your privacy controls.