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Free Website Content
Google As Big Brother
Is Google Really Big Brother?
By S. Housley
Anti-Google sentiment is on the rise.
Web pundits have tossed around monopoly theories and
privacy advocates have warned of a day of reckoning.
While Google has made friends on Wallstreet, it has
disappointed the technical evangelists who were once
its fiercest followers. Google has grown into a big
scary company and web watchers are expressing their
concerns about the information Google gleans from their
various services.
Google Analytics is free, no one can beat
the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your
data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone,
when aggregated with other information Google has access
to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection
of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns
and trends in large volumes of data.
While any of that information independent
of other data, might be non-threatening or irrelevant
to someone doing analysis, when combined with other
data Google has access to, it can paint a very clear
picture of how, not only individual companies are performing,
but the aggregate data could possibly paint a picture
of how entire business sectors or industries are performing.
The big question is how will Google use
this information? Will it affect search engine ranking?
Will it influence keyword costs?
Paranoia? Lauren Weinstein doesn't seem
to think so, her blog post entitled "The Dark Side of
Google" http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000108.html
, paints a very clear picture of the danger of a
single entity possessing all of the data.
According to a recent USA Today article
"In just seven years, Google has emerged as one off
the most influential companies of the 21st century,
a multinational whose recent forays into classified
ads, book publishing, video, Wi-Fi and telecom make
its data empire ever more powerful." The article goes
on further to quote Jeff Chester, head of the digital
Center for Digital Democracy saying "Google could easily
become the poster child for a national public movement
to regulate data collection".
Lets take a look at Google's new analytics
tool. As a reporting tool, Google Analytics offers good
features and functionality. Google Analytics tells publishers
who their website referrers are, what pages visitors
are viewing, the length of the visitor stay, what items
are purchased. Google Analytics data can be used to
develop new technologies, and optimize pay per term
influence ranking.
Google wants to make money, and like it
or not, data is a commodity. Google will likely use
the data from their various ventures to develop new
technologies and personalize content. Conspiracy theorists
believe that the Google's aggregate data will also be
used to optimize the fees charged for pay-per-click,
influence organic ranking or worse yet sold.
Unbeknownst to many users, privacy advocates
say that Google's technology give Google the ability
to collect enormous amounts of data about interests
and online habits of web surfers. That said, Google's
growth will continue to motivate privacy advocates and
those in the technology field behind the Attention Truste
movement to work together, to improve how personal information
and subscription information is used online. I expect
we will see a lot of energy and effort in this arena.
Lets face it, Google wants to make money;
no, now that they are public they *need* to make money
and like it or not, data is a commodity. Whether Google
will use your data or not is still to be determined,
but the fact remains they can if they choose to. Google's
storage capacity, is as deep as its pockets, meaning
that it is far ahead of competitors. All of this has
motivated privacy advocates and eyes are on and will
continue to be focused on Google and the type of data
they are capable of collecting.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds
and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for
NotePage http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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copy of the issue or a link to any online posting would
be greatly appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
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