Andrew Orlowski, whose disdain for all things Google is never veiled, takes apart orkut’s privacy/TOS policy in this Register piece. Andrew points out that orkut’s policies are an awful lot like MSFT’s were in the first version of Passport, policies which caused an outrage not too long ago. MSFT changed its TOS as a result, but Passport has yet to become a web-wide standard.
This is and interesting case study. So far, there has been little outrage about orkut’s policies. I’ll posit an obvious theory: Folks generally trust Google more than they trust MSFT. (Well, most folks do. Not Andrew.) They’re willing to give Google more rope….and see if anyone’s hanging at the end of the day.
