Google held their Pixel 3 Hardware event in New York City on October 9, 2018, and unveiled their newest and anticipated phone, the Pixel 3 Smartphone and a few other hardware devices Home Hub, a smart display; and the Pixel Slate. But on the heels of this event, was the news that the company would shut down Google+ over the next 10 months due to a data security breach which put 500,000 user records at risk three years ago.
Mark Skilton, Professor of practice and innovation systems management, Warwick Business School, in the UK said the Google+ design flaw has existed since 2015. “So the network was vulnerable for two years or more, but Google reported they only became aware of this data breach between March and June 2018 this year, before the GDPR deadline on May 25, 2018.”
“Giant internet companies are increasing their cybersecurity, as we have seen with Facebook’s response to the recent data breach affecting 50 million users. These companies can never be completely safe because of their sheer size,” said Skilton. “The issue is more their behaviour in reporting breaches that may impact their legal defence in other issues, such as bias.”
“The fact that the US Government is reviewing social media and search engine bias, and the threat of external regulation, is more likely to be a driving factor behind firms like Google shifting their business strategy,” added Skilton. “Google was required to disclose a data breach within 72 hours, but seems to have avoided mentioning it as the company was scared of the impact on the US Government’s media bias case.”
But looking at the impact of corporate social responsibility, Skilton says that it isn’t possible to say that Google has more social accountability than Facebook or is more aware of the damages that something like this could cause.
“I think Google was able to take such decisive action because it has its core search business to fall back on. Facebook, on the other hand, cannot just switch its entire network off. Facebook has 2.35 billion active users per day, whereas Google+ has ‘just’ 300 million monthly users,” said Skilton. “It was a much smaller part of Google’s future and revenue stream, making it easier to lose.”
The cost of this breach is unknown at the moment, but Skilton points out that Google may be fined at pre- or post-GDPR levels.
“In the worst case scenario that is four percent of the company’s turnover,” said Skilton. “It is claimed the breach affected a maximum of 500,000 users, and there is no direct evidence that the developers of 540 or so apps that were able to access this data actually exploited any of the information, but we do not know for sure.”
Skilton also says he doesn’t think Google+ is a great loss for Google.
“It was a failed social media experiment. They never invested enough in the user design and the functionality was awkward. It never matched Facebook’s level of investment and functions for community building. Google saw Google+ as another advertising revenue stream, but it was incompatible with their search engine culture,” said Skilton.
Source: forbes.com
Author: Jennifer Kite-Powell