Gets to the heart of decision making, trust. What assurances have we that Google will look after our stuff as if it was their own?

As someone who’s recently started using Chrome, I wonder if I should think more about what I’m giving Google in return?

To call that “biased and unjust” seems to me to come from an impossible position – one that will never be adopted as a strategy.

WWGD is surely a great title – if you want to sell the book? When I read it, I was clear that I was reading Jeff Jarvis view.

Better go read Diarmuid’s story.

Diarmuid’s blog post was very interesting and well thought out. I’d have to agree with Frank’s sentiment though and I’m surprised you thought they would respond!

Jeff Jarvis may be a proponent of individual engagement, however his book is misleadingly named and would be more aptly titled “What Jeff thinks you should do”…

I think it’s a pretty tall order to expect a company with hundreds of millions of users to respond to the queries of every customer, which is why I don’t agree with Jeff and his “Dell Hell” approach. To me this is nothing more than cyber bullying as companies are forced to deal with the issues of those with the loudest voice. It’s unlikely that Dell would have been as qucik to respond to Granny’s complaint as to a blogger with a huge following – this I personally feel leads to a biased and unjust approach to customer service and customer engagement….

I haven’t read “What Would Google Do” but in my experience Google are notoriously bad at communicating directly with individuals.

As you point out yourself, the size of the company must make it incredibly difficult to respond individually, but given that you did get a response, you would expect (as Barney says), a document to already exist which lays out data ownership policy.

I agree with you on the broad front re. Google. I myself can’t understand why Google wouldn’t pass the blog on internally to someone to answer clearly the points raised by Diarmuid. I suspect it’s their size and this lack of response is not typical of their underlying ethos. I’m also surprised that Jeff Jarvis hasn’t picked up on it – dissappointed actually. By the way his book is worth a read – much to glean from it.

The essence of Diarmuid’s blog invites Google to set the picture straight and/or to ensure any mis-understandings are ironed out. It is highly unlikely that they have not considered data protection and ownership as part of their transition to being a true cloud provider for business. With this in mind, I would have thought a reciprocal blog or statement would have been a simple way to alleviate the concerns raised.

It will be interesting to see whether you do eventually get a response – keep us posted!