Google pitches for user trust with expanded privacy controls

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The latest sales pitch to users by the company is that it will try to do more with less.

At its I/O 2022 developer conference on May 11th, the tech giant announced a range of privacy measures that it says will help users retain more control over how their data is used.

The My Ad Center interface, which was introduced at the conference, will allow users to choose from a range of topics they are interested in or choose to see fewer ads on a given topic.

My Ad Center will give users control over how their data is used and how it affects their experience of the web, according to the company.

A new tool that will be accessible from a user's profile page was one of the announcements made at the conference.

Some of the most significant privacy announcements involved changing approaches to software engineering, which was expected for a conference geared toward developers. The safety and security segment of the event was led by Jen Fitzpatrick, who is the SVP for core systems and experiences.

More data will be processed on devices without being sent to the cloud. The use of differential privacy and edge computing will help to keep user information out of the public eye.

Fitzpatrick said that the changes were about justifying the trust that users put in the search engine.

She said that protecting your privacy requires us to be rigorous in building products that are private.

The safety and security presentation acknowledged that users expectations of privacy are changing and that the company has a need to recognize and adapt to them. It is notable that the company is trying to prove to users that it can keep at least some of their data out of the hands of advertisers.

Under the guiding statement, "secure by default, private by design", and "enhance user safety by implementing additional security measures out of the box", the company is pushing to boost user safety.

The security announcements made at the I/O event included a number of measures meant to increase user protections. A new account safety status icon will show a warning on a user's profile when any security issues are identified and direct the user to correct the issue.

Two-step verification for accounts will be expanded by the company by sending a notification to phones when a user tries to sign into a account elsewhere on the internet.

Phishing protection will be coming to the workspace suite with warnings about malicious links in documents soon.

Overall, the safety announcements suggest a company that wants to be seen as centering users' security concerns. At an I/O event full of new and creative uses of user data, it is heartening to see that privacy was not forgotten.