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Google rant: Ungeachtet der Höhe Ihres Budgets, huh?
Submitted by Ellen Wallace on March 27, 2007 - 15:36.
Google finally got my goat. I'm tired, tired, tired of having things on my computer suddenly appear in German because someone at Google has not studied Google Earth, or any atlas, enough to know that German is not Switzerland's national language. Paypal, I hope you are listening because you have the same ridiculous problem: you insist I say where I live before I can continue with your forms but once I do, you decide I want to talk to you in German, which I don't.
Switzerland = German is an equation that doesn't work in nearly half of this country. I want my Google language to be English and I live in a French-speaking area.
Yesterday I attended a meeting with a group of about 35 top web managers from the Lake Geneva region. I mentioned this little problem with Google and there were several appreciative nods and groans. I am not alone, but that's no comfort.
Changing the language does nothing, if you can work out how to get to the place where you can do that.
Today I decided the time had come to sign up for Google Analytics. In order to get past the second or third bit of the form I had to select a box to say I accept their conditions. I selected it even though the conditions were in German. For all I know I have signed away my 95-year-old mother in Kansas City.
Why would anyone do such a dumb thing? Because the alternative is to forget the product and I need it. But the incident raises serious questions about Google's commitment to careful handling of data and privacy issues.
At the meeting yesterday we discussed how important it is for web managers who collect data to be very clear in their own minds about what they are collecting and why, and to communicate this clearly to the public. Communication being a two-way street, in theory, this also means listening to the public. Our speaker, Jim Sterne of Target Marketing, said that complaints are especially useful if you want to improve your product. Someone else wondered over lunch if this isn't mainly an American thing - Europeans aren't comfortable filling out complaint forms, he said.
Data privacy should be of concern to everyone. This has nothing to do with paranoia, and it has everything to do with believing that systems are fallible. Data holes will happen but I'm happy to give things like my name and address to people I believe are both willing and managerially capable of trying to safeguard my personal information. Show me a company that doesn't listen to me screaming that I don't speak German and you show me a company whose management doesn't give me confidence that it understands its customers.
I wrote to Google as follows. I doubt I'll hear from the Big Cheese but I feel better for trying.
"Hi. I have an increasing number of Google things I do, like a lot of web site owners - Adsense, Adwords, G Analytics, Google calendar, an old Blogger account. I had no choice but to click that I've understood the agreement in order to open a G Analytics account, when this is clearly not the case. I do not read German. But you send a German text to someone who has selected English as her operating language. I attended a meeting yesterday of 35 web managers of large international organizations and Google came in for a SCATHING discussion because of this: we all think you are on legally weak ground because of this. I'm personally really annoyed because far too often a Google feature I'm using suddenly appears in German and I can't even work out how to get out of there! For a start, I've selected English. Worse, Switzerland's majority language is German, but 45% of the population is French-speaking, not German. I do wish for a change someone would send this message right up to the top of Google, and we'd see some action on it. You are in an absurd position, as an organization.
Thank you, Ellen Wallace"
A final word on the letter of complaint above. I was going to edit it here, correct the number of French speakers (I unfairly decided all Italian speakers also speak French) but decided that it reflected, in its very incoherence at times, a true state of angry mind that Google needs to be aware of. Is it really only Americans who get angry? Or who have faith or perhaps just hope that companies might listen? Who think that behind every web page there really is a human being capable of trying to improve the world?
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Google finally got my goat. I'm tired, tired, tired of having things on my computer suddenly appear in German because someone at Google has not studied Google Earth, or any atlas, enough to know that German is not Switzerland's national language. Paypal, I hope you are listening because you have the same ridiculous problem: you insist I say where I live before I can continue with your forms but once I do, you decide I want to talk to you in German, which I don't.
Switzerland = German is an equation that doesn't work in nearly half of this country. I want my Google language to be English and I live in a French-speaking area.
Yesterday I attended a meeting with a group of about 35 top web managers from the Lake Geneva region. I mentioned this little problem with Google and there were several appreciative nods and groans. I am not alone, but that's no comfort.
Changing the language does nothing, if you can work out how to get to the place where you can do that.
Today I decided the time had come to sign up for Google Analytics. In order to get past the second or third bit of the form I had to select a box to say I accept their conditions. I selected it even though the conditions were in German. For all I know I have signed away my 95-year-old mother in Kansas City.
Why would anyone do such a dumb thing? Because the alternative is to forget the product and I need it. But the incident raises serious questions about Google's commitment to careful handling of data and privacy issues.
At the meeting yesterday we discussed how important it is for web managers who collect data to be very clear in their own minds about what they are collecting and why, and to communicate this clearly to the public. Communication being a two-way street, in theory, this also means listening to the public. Our speaker, Jim Sterne of Target Marketing, said that complaints are especially useful if you want to improve your product. Someone else wondered over lunch if this isn't mainly an American thing - Europeans aren't comfortable filling out complaint forms, he said.
Data privacy should be of concern to everyone. This has nothing to do with paranoia, and it has everything to do with believing that systems are fallible. Data holes will happen but I'm happy to give things like my name and address to people I believe are both willing and managerially capable of trying to safeguard my personal information. Show me a company that doesn't listen to me screaming that I don't speak German and you show me a company whose management doesn't give me confidence that it understands its customers.
I wrote to Google as follows. I doubt I'll hear from the Big Cheese but I feel better for trying.
"Hi. I have an increasing number of Google things I do, like a lot of web site owners - Adsense, Adwords, G Analytics, Google calendar, an old Blogger account. I had no choice but to click that I've understood the agreement in order to open a G Analytics account, when this is clearly not the case. I do not read German. But you send a German text to someone who has selected English as her operating language. I attended a meeting yesterday of 35 web managers of large international organizations and Google came in for a SCATHING discussion because of this: we all think you are on legally weak ground because of this. I'm personally really annoyed because far too often a Google feature I'm using suddenly appears in German and I can't even work out how to get out of there! For a start, I've selected English. Worse, Switzerland's majority language is German, but 45% of the population is French-speaking, not German. I do wish for a change someone would send this message right up to the top of Google, and we'd see some action on it. You are in an absurd position, as an organization. Thank you, Ellen Wallace"
A final word on the letter of complaint above. I was going to edit it here, correct the number of French speakers (I unfairly decided all Italian speakers also speak French) but decided that it reflected, in its very incoherence at times, a true state of angry mind that Google needs to be aware of. Is it really only Americans who get angry? Or who have faith or perhaps just hope that companies might listen? Who think that behind every web page there really is a human being capable of trying to improve the world?