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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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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource box
is included and the links are active. A courtesy 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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