James Spillane
It’s a question many are asking – can we still trust Google? (In fairness, it’s a question you could ask of any social company).
I’ve written about my falling out of “like” with Google on here a few times recently, and they still continue to piss me off. For example, I completely deleted my Google+ account but folks on there are still allowed to send me updates via email because Google thinks that’s okay.
Or, I tried to access my Google Analytics from my simple Account tab in Gmail, and Google wouldn’t let me progress any further until I “upgraded” to Google+. Yeah, right – piss off, Google, and take your spammy account growth ways with you.
However, I recognize that I’m biased, so I thought this infographic from BackgroundCheck.org was fairly interesting. It gives a nice cross-reference of Google’s history, missteps, and how the general public views online search, privacy and tracking.
For example:
- I didn’t know that Google had been listed as “Hostile to Privacy” in 2007 by Privacy International, which is the lowest rating you can get.
- 65% of web users don’t want their search personalized based on prior search history.
- 73% of web users don’t want their results tracked.
It’s pretty telling stuff, and perhaps another reason why Google is getting so heavy-handed in its Google+ sign-up charge (they’re still quoting incorrect numbers due to the enforced Google+ sign-ups via using new Google products).
I don’t know – I never thought I’d see the day when I preferred Zuckerberg’s machine over anything else when it comes to privacy and operations. But Google’s making that easier every single day.
Ah well… onto the infographic.
Hosted by: Online Background Check Guide
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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What we’ve been finding recently (talking to people who use our B2B website analytics software) is that people aren’t satisfied knowing which company visited their website but they want to know the actual person. Obviously, that’s not going to happen but it does make me wonder what would happen if the data available to Google ‘got out’. So, someone is at work browsing both work-related and also personal content … Google knows what they’re doing of course. What if there is some sort of data breach and a combination of the persons ‘business’ and ‘personal’ searches data becomes available – that gives ‘business’ the opportunity to dig deeper into each individual person and find other angles to target them. I think that would be pretty scary.
Is Google using such data already? I think they could do if they wanted to. If they suddenly found themselves in a position where PPC etc. goes downhill, would they then start to ‘use’ data they’ve got (about people)? It’s a possibility.
We see stories of personal data being compromised on a fairly frequent basis – how long is it before someone breaches Google’s defences and gets their hands on what is the most powerful data known to man?
Good article Danny – while I’m within the analytics industry, I do fully agree with the increasing numbers of people who are very concerned about the power that Google has.
Totally agree! It is too bad that Google has gain so much power and now many people are just wondering how can they stop relying on them.
I took some steps…
I made Yahoo my homepage, I started to Bing it! and I will be deleting Google chrome.
The hardest step is stop using Gmail I am so use to it now it is so sad LOL
I did get a Yahoo email account though. I must say I kind of like their homepage better since you see the latest news etc. Anyways it seems that more and more people are leaning towards stopping to use many of the Google products.
Also many webmasters are breaking up with them and not relying on them for traffic.