Google's Eric Schmidt Wants People to Escape Their Teenage Mistakes

Google has long been criticized about its privacy mishaps, sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not. And, until very recently, the company didn't just seem to say the right things to appease people and politicians.

The problem is that Google thinks like an engineer – it analyzes a problem pragmatically to determine whether it is or not a problem and to determine a solution.

But most people don't want to think pragmatically and don't want to hear how it's actually all their fault in the first place.

People want to hear some reassuring words so they can continue to act exactly like they did before they realized there was a "problem."

And Google seems to finally be figuring this out. Former CEO, current Executive Chairman and unofficial ambassador for all things Google Eric Schmidt has a long history of saying things that, while true, didn't do much to bolster's Google's credibility around privacy.

Lately, he's been singing a new tune, the same one over and over again, and it's a good one. Schmidt believes that people should be able to get away from their past and that some things from their history should disappear in time, which they don't online.

That's in stark contrast to the same Schmidt who, a few years ago, said that the only people who are worried about their privacy are those who have something to hide, arguably the exact opposite opinion.

The fact that the European Union has been working on a new privacy law which incorporates the concept of the "right the be forgotten" may or may not be a coincidence.

The idea is that people should have the right to have some things from the past hidden and forgotten which, of course, rarely happens anymore since the advent of the web.

In many cases, it's Google itself that's targeted for retrieving factual – though unflattening – information about people even if the actual info is hosted by various third-party sites.

Schmidt, speaking for Google, now believes that people should be able to get away from their teenage mistakes or from things they've already paid for.