Privacy advocates take to the sky over Google I/O developer ‘festival’

Well that’s certainly one way to get your point across. 

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in Mountain View, California, and the troll or trolls looking down on the developers and Google employees at the annual I/O “developer festival” made it all the more so. As a company executive droned on about 3D models, a plane circled above the Shoreline Amphitheater displaying a decidedly non-festive message: “Google control is not privacy.” 

Audience heads turned as the plane made repeated passes above the crowd. Appended to the message was the hashtag #SaveLocalNews — a search of which on Twitter turns up numerous messages related to the plane itself and earlier posts involving World Press Freedom Day. 

Interestingly, privacy appeared to be very much the topic du jour for today’s keynote speakers, who repeatedly assured the audience that it’s an important consideration for Google as well. Clearly, whoever paid for the plane doesn’t exactly buy the messaging. 

Speaking of which, who did pay for this thing? Unfortunately, it’s not exactly clear at this moment. We’ll update this post when and if that changes.

But hey, in the meantime, we won’t begrudge privacy advocates their privacy.