Google recently announced that it will soon start more closely stitching user information together. Effective March 1st, Google will monitor user behaviors, habits, preferences, concerns, desires, and activity closer than ever before. Information gleaned from YouTube (say, watching a Rush video) may be used to place a relevant ad in Gmail, perhaps for concert tickets.
Many people are crying foul. They lament the privacy ramifications for Google users and the world at large. Are these real concerns, or are they overblown?
Google already touches the lives of nearly everyone on the planet every day, whether they know it or not. As such, everything that it does faces intense scrutiny. As I write in The Age of the Platform, the company for years has been about so much more than search. Its diversified platform includes many popular and integrated "planks" -- including, Gmail, YouTube, Docs, and Maps. As such, a change to its privacy policy potentially has profound implications.
From the books and articles I've read (as well as the conversations I've had with Google employees), the company has had the ability to do this for years. I for one commend Google for being transparent about its change in policy. After all, no longer can companies sneak through important changes. We are all journalists now.
The larger question concerns the fairness of the new privacy policy. After all, you can't opt out of the new policy. So, what's a Googler to do?
For one, realize that Google makes your life simpler. It saves you time. It saves you money. To me, the "cost" of seeing an increasingly relevant ad in my search results or next to my emails is inconsequential compared to the significant benefits that I realize using Google's products. You don't have to click on ads.
Second, realize that Google is a business. It has to monetize the different planks on its platform. It is a publicly traded company with a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. Along these lines, don't single out Google for this type of thing. If you think that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and scores of other companies don't use customer and user data in similar ways, you're grossly mistaken.
Finally, in point of fact you can opt out very simply: Don't use Google products. I can't think of a single Google product that has no substitute. Vote with your virtual feet. You can leave Google at any time.
What say you?
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1) Locations traveled and amount of travel
2) Party places visited on social network sites
3) purchase decisions
4) volume of posts/emails/text messages.
If the data was collected legally and you agreed to give it to google under the precept of "making your experience better", then you are in agreement that google knows what makes your experience better; you agree that Google can pick who gets your data and you must agree that Google will have your best interest in mind.
2. Google won’t suddenly “harvest more personal data about you.” Let's say Google currently knows A about you on Gmail, B about you on YouTube and C about you on Search. Under the new system, Google will know ABC about you on each of those three services. But Google doesn't know more about you. They still know ABC about you, just as before.
3. Of course you can opt out. You can also log out, and log-out is now much more powerful. When you log out from, say, Gmail, you log out from everything.
In reality, Google is merely consolidating and unifying far-flung services to create a single, personalized experience across Google properties that will keep the company relevant and enable it to move to the next phase in the evolution of the Internet. And the company is doing so in a transparent manner that I wish more companies would embrace.
Acxiom, the digital data mining/marketing company, knew more about the 9/11 hijackers than law enforcement did. Bad on law enforcement, but it gives you an idea of how powerful this information is.
Thanks for this nice bit of spin. Good to know where HP stands on internet privacy (and journalistic integrity).
I looked at lamps back in October, and Google is still littering my screen with lighting adverts. (Go away. The kitchen is finished. The lamps were bought before Halloween, and have long been installed.)
A friend had a miscarriage. She is no longer pregnant, and won't be having a child. Yet Google is STILL littering her screen with adverts for baby and child-related stuff.
I'll pass on Google.
I can't believe they are doing The Zuck.
It's disappointing.
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