Source: Vordaan Advocaten
Imagine it’s 1984. The Big Brother is watching your every step and controlling every aspect of your life. You live in the totalitarian state Oceania where every citizen is under constant surveillance. Sounds familiar?
In 2016, the narrative described by George Orwell in his famous novel “1984“is still relevant but for different reasons. In the past, the role of the Big Brother was played by political parties and figures while today – the Big Brother is represented by large corporations with access to huge amounts of data. Such companies are Facebook, Google, Amazon and others, but this blog post will focus on Google.
Google can possibly track one’s every movement online as one of its products is the most popular search engine, taking 73.02% of the global market share (NET Applications, 2016). According to Wikipedia, there are about 100 Google apps available on Google Play, although some of the apps might no longer be active or might have different names. As of 2016, Google has 7 products with more than 1 billion users: Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, Youtube and the Google Play Store (Popular Science, 2016). I mean, this is the amount of world population using these 7 products!
All the information from these 100 apps and billions of users gets accumulated and stored by one company. All Google apps and products are interconnected so that the company can make use of the large amount of data for statistical purposes as well as to get customer insights by storing the information from each individual separately. Thus, information from all products is stored at a person’s Analytics account. By joining data sources, the tech giant is aiming at providing better and highly customized services.
Find out more about data privacy concerns from the following video featured on CBSN.
Customer- centric
Google is customer- centric indeed, but who is the customer? One would probably think that Google serves individuals and companies for free or for a very small fee. Although the tech giant does provide some of its services and products for free, it actually earns 95% of its revenue from advertising. This is how it works – AdWords enable advertisers to publish ads on Google search results pages as well as on the websites of Google affiliates (AdSense publishers).
Initially, Google management thought that revenue will come primarily from licensing and providing Internet services. However, as technology evolved, Google started using auctions technology to allocate ads, and thus completely changed its business model. So technically speaking, people are tools for acquiring revenue, and companies using the advertising services are the primary customers of Google.
Google Might Create a Problem
One problem that has been caused due to Google’s business model is personalization. Google claims that customization helps it better tailor ads and information to one’s needs. However, in the future, people might get more polarized as Google blocks their access to diverse opinions, i.e. as people fall in the so-called filter bubble. Since Google personally tailors results, two different people who search for the same word or phrase would get different search results. For example, as democrats tend to lick more on links with news about democratic views and democratic politicians, and republicans do the same – each group will get search results based on their interests and thus not have access to other opinions.
Find out more about the filter bubble issue in the following TED talk by Eli Pariser.
Google Might Create a Solution
On the other hand, a problem that Google can solve is the information asymmetry. Imagine that you are using the Google Fit app and Google starts selling health insurance companies people’s data. Health insurance companies would know how healthy one is and would be able to better predict diseases and potential health-related expenditures. This solution would reduce the information asymmetry, but it will also pose some security, privacy and ethics questions. Although currently the company does not provide personal information to third parties, there is no guarantee that it will not start doing it in the future.
Conclusion
The Big Brother will keep watching you and will keep collecting data about you. Sometimes its actions will favor you, sometimes they will favor corporations and/or other people. Although Google provides technological platforms, the data and decision related to the data usage pose ethical questions. As Google algorithms evolve, they might start making ethical decisions. But as people are not impeccable, and machines are made by people, machines can’t be errorless. It is indeed interesting to see how far Google and its algorithms can get.
Here you can find out more about the type of information that Google has potentially stored about you and where it is located.
Sources:
“Big Brother Google Is Watching You!”. Voordaan.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.
“Google Ads Case Study Analysis”. Ecommerce-digest.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
“Google Has 7 Products with 1 Billion Users”. Popular Science. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.
“Google Privacy | Why Data Protection Matters”. Privacy.google.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.
“List of Google Apps for Android”. Wikipedia. N.p., 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.
Pariser, Eli. “TED Talks – What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE Are Hiding From The World – The Filter Bubble”. YouTube. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
“Search Engine Market Share”. Net Applications. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.
Stiles, Jackson. “Google Is Watching: Find Out What It Knows About You”. The New Daily. N.p., 2014. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.
“The End Of Privacy “The Data Brokers: Selling Your Personal Information””. YouTube. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
