This piece was originally written in 2008 after Google released more search parameters to get more result for specific search queries.
Search Engines such a useful piece of the net and if we can find out so much information about ‘prospective’ colleagues with some clever searching you have to think here that if ‘WE’ can use all of this for exploitation what about the owners of the search engines themselves? Where is THEIR line? THEY have access to a lot more data then what is displayed to the end user, and they have the money and resources to exploit this information that they receive.
This article by Shady (XMCP) goes through all of the current ‘free’ application and services by Google and gives a hint of how much of our information is truly out there with JUST Google.
Now before continuing I suggest you go have a read of the article and all the comments there as he explains the dilemma very well.
Google and marketing
The information gathered by Google from a marketing point of view is the ‘holy grail’. In the offline world companies spend thousands on market and customer research, giving out free prizes for completing short surveys and questionnaires etc.
The problem with such methods in essence is down to the psychological makeup of humans. We see ourselves in a different light, we want other to perceive us differently and we lie to achieve this. Therein is the flaw for the standard methods. Sure there will be some people telling the truth but for that one there will be 10, 20, 100 that don’t.
Now arguably all this data collected by Google is just ‘raw’ data it is not collated it is not analysed and it not processed in anyway. If this is true the Google are stupid from a business point of view.
Daily computers track stock market data, and this is analysed, discussed, elaborated on, and reported every day and this is just one niche.
Google of course algamate all the data they have and thus allowing theme to create a profile for each user. Thus creating one for each user. Lets look at what possibly could be achieved by this data.
They would know when I logged in to my computer and went online (Gtalk autosigning in), They then know which sites I went to (The IP addresses linked now to my Gtalk correlated with google analytics across the huge number of sites that use them). If I used orkut or Google checkout they would know my real name addresses and my average spending rate and add the fact they can track the searches conducted via Google search they would have a better idea what I am looking for.
What can they do with this?
They now with all this information can target certain ‘adds’ to me that have been tailored to my ‘profile’ thus allowing for greater conversion for them.
The problem now being I am assuming they are using this ‘profile’ only to better ‘adsense’ conversions. What if they were to sell this data say to an insurance company? to a car dealer? this would enable them to pitch me a car or insurance at my price range. Not a bad thing you say?
What if they sold this data to a porn company? what if they sold it to a pharmaceutical company? At any given time, any ‘authorized’ person will have access to virtually unlimited knowledge about anyone.
Fraud, theft, mayhem
Now lets assume for arguments sake that Google with all this data just improve their adsense conversion and aggregating data to help the planet as mooted by Jeff in Artificial Omniscience.
The fact remains they have this huge profile which can include name address and bank/card details. Throw in the fact that no system is secure, take a look at the recent British government ‘loss of data’. Or as XMCP points out loss or leakage of data around the board.
If ID fraud is so easy now imagine the power one would have if they could access Google servers, there would be fallout.
Lets assume then they make the data super secure and (no matter how improbable) the data cannot be stolen or leaked. we’re all good then right?
Intervention
I would like to highlight two points of information before continuing is a) The no2id Cards site and b) the recent fine by the EU to Microsoft for anti-competitive measures.
You may ask now wait a minute what the correlation?
Firstly the government has a lot of data on us already and IF Google keeps growing (as it will inevitably will) it will have an abundant amount of data on a lot of internet users.
Give it long enough they will piss off the wrong government which will result in ‘investigations’ ala Microsoft ‘anti-competitive’ fines by the EU.
During such an investigation along with the ridiculous abuse of ‘terrorism act’ powers (such as a recent example in the UK where they were used to track dog owners who didn’t pick up after their pets). This information could well indeed become in the hands of governments and other unscrupulous corporations and as mooted by me before having all this information with one party would be a big breach of liberties.
Maybe not to a noticeable extent here in the UK EU or the states but imagine if China got their hands on this? Cases such as this and the more recent arrests in an attempt to suppress freedom of speech would be a lot easier if state powers had such data or access to it.
Conclusion
I have talked about two main points the potential abuse of Google as per a marketing basis (which XMCP dwells on more) and if this data were to fall into the ‘wrong hands’ as to warrant abuse of rights, and for me that is the more scary and fighting prospect.
This data which is currently being accumulated by Google may be harmless but if it is accessed specifically to track down and stop freedom of speech, it could be a problem indeed. Sure the flip side states if the government had the ability to access this it may be easier to track down certain careless terrorist cells. Lets moot the government took control of Google …this would result in censorship and that in itself is never welcome.
It is something to ponder about…. your thoughts are welcome.
Great points. From a marketing point of view I’ve often wondered if all of us are really just banging our heads against a wall. Take Clickbank for example. Anyone can see which Clickbank products have a high gravity and are selling well. So what would stop an affiliate paying a Google employee half of all his revenue in exchange for getting his blog and website at the top of the organic Google search listings? Or worse. What if Google has a division that does nothing but set up affiliate websites for top selling Clickbank products and then they list their own blogs and websites at the top of their own organic search listings? It’s not illegal. After all, it’s Google’s search engine and they can list and do what they want with it. There is no regulatory oversight. There is no Office Of Search Engine Fairness acting as a watchdog group. Google is free to do whatever is in its own best interests even if it means at the expense of yours. So why not have a Google Affiliate Division and have five guys working full time setting up affiliate websites across every Clickbank product that is popular, and then placing those affiliate websites at the top of Google Adwords for free, or place those websites at the top of the organic listings. Google could make hundreds of millions of dollars each year doing this. Is it really that far out of the realm of possibilities?
Now I’m just throwing out a rather paranoid rant inspired by this article. I have no proof or no reason to believe that Google has ever done any of this. But it is certainly something to ponder with Google controlling what 70% of all web surfers see on Internet searches.
We know that Google has got caught with its hands in the cookie jar over the years. The recent one that comes to mind is the lawsuit by five book publishers.
Five major publishing firms filed suit against Google to stop the company from creating a digital index of millions of copyrighted books. The lawsuit, coming weeks after a group of book authors also sued Google, sets up a legal showdown over the limits of intellectual property law in the age of global computer networks.
The publishers — the McGraw-Hill Cos., Pearson Education Inc., Penguin Group (USA) Inc., Simon & Schuster Inc., and John Wiley & Sons Inc. — are trying to halt the Google Print Library Project, which Google unveiled in December 2004. The project aims to make digital copies of millions of books stored in the libraries of major universities, including Harvard. Google will then use its search technology to create an index of all of the text in each book, and make this index available on the Internet at no charge. The result would be the world’s largest and most powerful index of books. A user could instantly search millions of volumes for information on a particular topic, and receive a list of relevant books. The index would also display small portions of the text, to help a researcher decide if he or she has found the right book.
Google’s plan outraged the Association of American Publishers, the trade group representing the nation’s leading producers of books. The association’s president, former Colorado Democratic congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, said that the Google Print Library Project is a blatant violation of copyright law.
”Traditional copyright has been that you can’t make a full copy of somebody’s work without their permission,” Schroeder said.
In their lawsuit, filed in US District Court in New York, the publishers do not seek damages. Instead, they want the court to order an end to Google’s digitizing of copyrighted books, and the destruction of any digital copies already made. The publishers accuse Google of trying to profit by ”massive, wholesale, and systematic copying of entire books still protected by copyright.” They say that Google hopes the service will attract lots of new users to its website, thus allowing the company to increase its advertising revenue.
”They have a hell of a business model,” Schroeder said. ”They’re going to take everything you create, for free, and sell advertising around it.”
Google ultimately settled with the publishers by creating a system where you can upload your book to them, and they will display no more than 20% of the entire book. They will run ads around the 20% of your book that is displayed so that they can collect advertising revenue. However, they will place a link to buy the book online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Wow a essay and a half there man, but yes Google ‘niche’ requires getting thier ads in as many places as possible and making an online library will just make their ‘revenue potential’ grow and grow.
Regarding copyright it has been mooted since the first disputed cases that copyright now is outdated to an extent…but that is another rant altogether :p
and yes regarding clickbank or affiliate marketing in general and the risk if google entered it is a topic discussed over at slightly shady seo.
Though if you were google’s shareholders wouldn’t you WANT to make them do that?
What trips me out even more than the concept of “artificial omniscience” is virtual reality crossed with artificial intelligence. What will be the consequences of an artificially intelligent organism capable of producing virtually real environments while using the entire Web (i.e., Google) as its information source? “Eagle Eye” may be closer (and more dangerous) than we think..
hmm will have to watch eagle eye then sounds good :p
Though a virtual reality crossed with artificial intelligence could be beneficial, it would be seeing real time consequences of actions to the planet etc. Could be very useful.
There is definitely reason to wonder what Google will do with all this information they collect, and based on some ways I see them doing things, it makes you wonder if everything they’re doing is, in the end, for our benefit, or for some other nefarious reason.
A big part of what they do that has scared me has to do with paid advertising. It’s bad enough that they’ve figured out how to track sites down, no matter how big or small, and remove their page rank, but knowing that they can then decide to delist someone, as they did with John Chow, and there’s something scary in knowing that they can change their algorithms such that they can totally eliminate someone without notice.
Indeed their ‘power’ and unfiltered access is to be considered; its like the proposal earlier this month about the EU telling USA that the internet (ICANN etc) should be under UN supervision so to protect the end user better…but the states said stuff you….oh well since the inception of copyright it was seen as flawed and privacy rules have always been shaky with different regulations for each ‘part’ of it. We’ll just have to see how this plays out.
Thank you for dropping by Gail; Yes it is amazing the naivety of some people, think myself included! Though after but 18 months working in the ‘real world’ out of academia you see how marketing works, how information is used, how most of my time is spent explaining to people the intricacies of the law and what these organisations can and cannot not do with the information you give them, and WOW they CAN do a lot, and do know a lot.
Thank you SO much for commenting in my recent post related to this topic. I have an entire section on privacy and data mining in my blog because so few people understand the serious implications of us allowing Google to have all this power.
I linked this comment to my post When FREE Is Definitely Not: What Those Free Services Are Really Costing You because it is most relevant to this topic. How naive are people that they think Google gives all these tools away out of the goodness of their heart.
One thing that always jumps to mind when I think about Google. Have you ever known anyone truly honest? I know people like that including many Mennonite families who live uncorrupted by mass media propaganda. They would NEVER think of a slogan “Don’t Be Evil” because evil is not in them.
Think about the stereotypical used-car-salesman who says “Trust Me”! The less honest someone is the more they reveal it in their words.