From the Washington Post
Google’s announcement that it is sharing more user data across its services has already raised the hackles of privacy advocates, technology writers and caught the attention of at least one national data-protection agency.
On Tuesday, the search giant announced that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the company to share data between any of those services. (Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome are excluded due to different regulatory and technical issues.) Any user with a Google account — used to sign in to services such as Gmail, YouTube and personalized search — must agree to the policy. Users who don’t want to have their data shared have the option to close their accounts with Google.
The guys at Google apparently learned nothing from Netflix's nightmare. The Netflix lesson is simple: Don't try to rewrite your social contract with your stakeholders without consulting them.
This is the problem with PR that is based on messaging. The assumption is that, if you just get the words right, the stakeholders will accept any action you want to take. It's crap. PR is no longer (if it ever was) about getting the message right; it's about getting the relationships right. It's about understanding your stakeholders, anticipating their concerns, and sharing the process of making key decisions.
Netflix didn't get that, and paid a steep price? Will Google?
