KonzeptioNerd

Google or: more than two ways of looking at things

A few weeks ago, German weekly Die Zeit dedicated half their busiess section to Google and its machinations: Google weiß, wo du bist, Nichts zu verbergen, Homo Faber 2.0. Great scepticism all around: it can’t be ok for a company to know what you’re doing (unless its your streetcorner grocer, your hairdresser, your banker, the guy who dives your bus or god-knows-who). Overleaf from Homo Faber, there’s a article on the surveillance scandal at Deutsche Bahn AG (In den letzten Zügen) and I take a while to realize we’ve changed the subject and professional data warehousing is not being put on the same page with illegal surveillance of employees. At roughly the same time, Business Week has a Google-cover story (podcast: Could Google Fix Detroit?) with Jeff Jarvis of buzzmachine and “What Would Google do?”.

To sum up the Google-way in Jarvis’ words: “Join a network / Be a platform”. Sadly, that’s not the German way of looking at things. “Publicness” is not a concept we embrace easily. It’s tempting to start bashing Germany’s love of privacy now. And I’m hopeful that generation studiVZ (German facebook) grow up with enough online literacy to face the likes of Google (or Deutsche Telekom whose employees have been heard to boast that they can reconstruct every bit of data that has ever passed their lines and trace it to its sender through years, ISPs, email-addresses, nicks and handles) as empowered customers.

But from an advertiser’s point of view, it’s good to be reminded, every now and again, that as of today, Germans tend to use the transparent worlds of Web 2.0 differently and rather more hesitantly than the benchmark USA.

One Response to “Google or: more than two ways of looking at things”

1. The Dude Says:
   

   Anja,

   just quit reading “Die Zeit”. The more copies they sell, the more misinformed and irrelevant they become.

   Believe me, it helps. You will feel better.

   Cheers!

   February 28th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

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