New Yorkers couldn’t miss the Orwellian message of this Consumer Watchdog ad attacking Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his company’s Internet privacy policies. A short version of the ad ran repeatedly Sept. 2 on a 540-square-foot JumboTron screen looming over Times Square.

The ad urges citizens to ask Congress for a “Do Not Track Me” list similar to the “Do Not Call” list that seeks to limit the intrusiveness of telemarketers. An official with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission told the New York Times that the FTC is considering the idea. As the wags at This Week in Google pointed out, this capability already exists: turn off the cookies option in your browser.

For the record, Google responded to the ad with this statement:

We like ice cream as much as anyone, but we like privacy even more. That’s why we provide tools for users to control their privacy online, like Google Dashboard, Ads Preference Manager, Chrome incognito mode and ‘off the record’ Gmail chat. You can check out these tools at google.com/privacy

Coverage by the NYT and BBC did not discuss where Consumer Watchdog gets its funding, but TWIG suggests that the group may have a less than transparent connection to Microsoft. The Techrights blog claims the group is an astroturf operation (yes, that means fake grassroots) hosted by Edelman.

I honestly don’t know where the creepiness begins and ends here. Even George Orwell would have a hard time fingering the Biggest Brother in this game.

Danah Boyd was the Opening Speaker for the 2010 SxSW Interactive Festival in Austin on Saturday. This clip includes about 8 minutes at the beginning of her talk, Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity. She posted the talk via apophenia, where she seeks comments.

One of the world’s foremost authorities on social networks, Boyd works at Microsoft Research New England and also serves as a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Boyd recently completed her PhD in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley.

Whatever one thinks of Google (and all publishers think about Google), there is little doubt that in just a few years, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have become the most influential people in the publishing industry, at least in the U.S., taking that distinction away from Jeff Bezos.

… Google is now the defining entity in the information landscape.  To flourish, as best as publishers can hope to flourish, it’s necessary to find a place within the Google ecosystem.  There is no world elsewhere, no little pocket of commerce beyond the reach of Google’s audience aggregation, no opportunity to erect protectionist barriers or to appeal to the legacy of one’s own institutions.  To those who resent Google’s huge bulk and ambition, it has to be said:  Get over it.

… With the invention of the motion picture by Thomas Edison, the book lost its place as the center of the media universe.  All other innovations, from radio to television to the Internet, helped to push the book out further.  Now we live within a media landscape that has no center, but which does have a dominant issue, and that is the matter of online discovery, for which search engines, and Google in particular, are the dominant modes.

For publishers, this is the Google century, or maybe just the Google decades, but either way, not to engage this extraordinary organization is likely to lead to obscurity. Read more

Thanks to Eric Rumsey (Seeing the Picture, @ericrumsey) for pointing me this post.

According to NPR:

[Google] announced recently that it has an e-book plan in the works that could be ready by the end of this year. The Google model promises a different e-book experience, one that doesn’t require a reading device like Kindle. Instead of downloading books, users will buy online access to them. As long as readers are connected to the Internet, they could conceivably access the book from their local bookstores’ Web sites — maybe even right from the publisher.

Gabriel Stricker, the director of book search communications at Google, says the company’s plan is to create a “digital-book ecosystem,” which he describes as “online space where you have the ability to have your books be discovered and make money off of them.”

Stricker emphasizes that the idea is still in development, but he says that eventually Google’s e-book service should be what he calls “device agnostic.”

“We want to be able to have folks search for books anywhere, and not just when they happen to be at a computer,” he says. “That could be when they are on a PC or a smart phone or a netbook or a dedicated reading device.”

Publishers, who have been concerned that the Kindle would allow Amazon to control not just the e-book market but also the price of e-books, are likely to welcome Google’s device-agnostic concept — especially since Google has the size, money and technical know-how to compete with Amazon.

Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant and CEO of the Idea Logical Company, says Google may also solve a problem for publishers that has haunted both the recording and film industries.

“What Google accomplishes here is that they totally sidestep the piracy and digital rights management issue, because there is no possession of the file, [and] therefore there is no way for you to give the file to anyone else,” Shatzkin says.

But the question remains: Are avid readers — who are just starting to accept the idea of electronic reading devices — ready for an even more intangible notion of the book? Google is betting they are.

This story was followed immediately by another NPR report on Google’s deal with publishers:

Antitrust investigators at the Justice Department are looking into a deal between Google and book publishers. Critics say the deal will give Google too much power over what could become a large segment of the online book market.

See, for example, “#Amazonfail, the Google Books Settlement, and the importance of open access for preserving cultural heritage: In honor of National Library Week” posted on April 16:

Over the past two years for National Library Week, I have posted about the importance of openness of publication and accessibility of government information and the limitations of relying on Google. Free Government Information, Public.Resource.org, OpentheGovernment (PDF),  and others, are continuing to do a great job of promoting openness in regards to government (and scholarly) information. Unfortunately, most people are not aware of the great usefulness and importance of government information. But they do know about Amazon, Google, and YouTube, with many among us using them everyday. What would many do to find information if they stopped working?

The #Amazonfail censorship/ glitch / griefing situation last weekend shows the power of publics working together and the organic nature of much of tagging and movementsourcing; people will often be able to create a simple way of communicating information with each other (the first person to use the #Amazonfail tag on twitter used it because it worked as a folksonomy of the situation and it spiralled from there because it was effective). But it also shows the difficulty for all when most rely on one source — Amazon — for information about bestsellers and similar items.

Great work, Learned Fangirls!

Amazon in Big Push for New Kindle Model NYT 020909

Amazon introduced several new features for the Kindle. A new text-to-speech function allows readers toswitch between reading words on the device and having the words read to them by a computerized voice. That technology was provided by Nuance, a speech-recognition company based in Burlington, Mass.

Amazon is also allowing Kindle owners to transfer texts between their Kindle and other mobile devices. Amazon said it was working on making digital texts available for other gadgets (like mobile phones), though it did not specify which ones.

One competitive threat Amazon is facing in its effort to dominate the world of e-books is Google, which has scanned in some seven million books, many of them out of print. Google has also struck deals with publishers and authors to split the proceeds from the online sales of those texts.

Google recently said it would soon begin selling these books for reading on mobile devices like the Apple iPhone and phone