As I was driving into work today and listening to KGNU (our local public station), Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman came on. I just caught the end of an interview she was doing with Harry Lewis, the author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion. I looked for the transcript but didn’t see one. To paraphrase, Lewis was talking about how great Google was because they can predict a flu outbreak right as it’s happening, and well before the CDC, because they can track an increase in searches for flu related symptoms. I agree that this is pretty cool, in fact, it’s amazing. He then went on to question what this does to the role of some people at the CDC who do a similar thing, I thought this was an interesting line of thought. But then Amy Goodman, in her incredibly paranoid voice, says, “Well who is going to keep Google from using giving all that data out to other people?” Again, I am paraphrasing because I didn’t see the transcript, but that’s close.
Who is going to keep Google from sharing that information?! No one! It’s not private information. Do you have any reason to assume that it’s private? You’re not logged in to anything normally (though you could be). You’re not on a secure connection. Google doesn’t say it’s private. Google’s whole business is based on ads. The way the tailor the ads to get you to click them more is by analyzing ALL the content you feed to Google. Did you ever notice how Google is free? They need to make their money somehow. Google pans through all the crap that comes across its search engine and tries to tailor the results to you as an individual. I don’t have a problem with this, I know it’s part of the ‘contract’ that I have with Google. As my high school history teacher Mr. Martin used to say, TINSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I could see a point in the future when Google has a paid version where you information is guaranteed to be secure or not forwarded on to any other services, but I really don’t think they’d do this. Google’s gold mine is all the information they have. If they loose that, they lose their real power. Google is not your priest. There is no ‘Google-Searcher’ privilege that you can claim in court. When you put this information on the internet, anywhere, not just Google, you shouldn’t be surprised to see it show up elsewhere.
What I think is amazing is the sort of trends that Google can pull out of a data cloud, especially when it doesn’t match with what people say in polls. When someone answers a poll, I think there is often some sort of effect going on where they answer ‘the way they should.’ That is to say that they answer in a way that they wouldn’t mind if someone questioned them on it later. But when you sit in front of a computer and enter search terms, believing (or hoping) that you are an anonymous user, your true nature starts to show. It’s one of those actions speaks louder than words situation. What you search for is what you want to know about or something you’re interested in (except for when I search for satanism.. it’s research!). What you answer in a poll is what you want someone else to ‘think’ about you. For that reason, when looked at carefully, I think Google trends can be a much better indicator of a person’s ideas than a poll. You are what you do (or search) I suppose.
Should you care to read it, you can find Google’s privacy policy here.
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