Google's privacy policy: love it or hate it, it's how the web works.

A couple of days ago, google announced a change in their privacy policy. The new privacy policy has, what I call a human-readable version. Which I've red and agreed to. In a world where new technologies seem to arise every day, I understand that people are concerned with where their personal information goes. What irritates my though, is people shouting about abuse of their info, abuse of cookies and other technologies, without knowing what they're talking about. In this blog post, I'll try to explain the privacy policy, and give my opinion about it.

The new policy states what kinds of information google is is collecting. The really obvious part there, is what you type into input fields on google services. It seems logical to me, that if you type something into a form on a site, and hit submit, that you know that the site displaying the form will use that data in some way. If you don't want a site to know something about you, then don't type it into a form.

It gets more complicated when it comes to data gathered in less direct ways. It is logical that google keeps records of queries people typed into the search box. But analyzing those queries to know types of products you're interested in, and even logging the links in the search results, and other usage data, that gets a little scary. I can imagine that you don't want google to know that you're searching for a lawyer, which you'll need for your upcoming divorce. And this is where it becomes a matter of truest. In google's privacy policy, they also state how they will use the data they collect. The data will never be shared with other companies or individuals without your explicit permission. And therefore, I think it is no problem that google knows that I'm getting divorced (for the record, I'm not, I don't even have a girlfriend at the moment.) There's nothing thhat could be harmful to me, that google could do with this data without breaking their policy, nor would it be in google's intrest to do so.

What's new in the policy, is that the data is combined across services. This means that any data you marked as publicly visible data on one service, can also be publicly visible on other services. Anyone who knows your email may be shown this publicly visible information (profile image, name,...) If you don't want this single identity in different services, you can still make different accounts for different services.
This may be inconvenient, but remember that most of google's services are free, you're not paying them for convenience... wel, you are paying them indirectly, by allowing google to show you ads. And now we get to the most controversial part, ad targetting.

Most of google's services are free, because google uses ads to bring revenue. The more people use their services, the more people will see the ads. Free services obviously bring more viewers, and thus more $$$. Many advertisers don't pay just for views, but for actual clicks on the ad. Therefore, it's important for google to show you ads that are relevant to you. They use the data they gather, to select ads that you'll probably like. I'm a nerd, especially interested in the web. So it's not unlikely for me to earch on google for things like web hosting, programming languages or web design techniques. I notice that as my interests shift from one domain of web development, the ads do too. And I personally like that. I'd rather see an ad that's interesting to me, than getting screen estate taken away by an ad for viagra, I certainly don't need that. Best of all would be to have no ads at all, but then I'd have to pay for the service I'm using, they need some income to keep the servers running.

I save lots of money by not buying any magazines. I only read blogs and news sites, and I get all the information I'd get from the magazines, but for free. I like the business model of ads much better, than a paid subscription, and I do not mind ad networks such as google adsens, using data I've provided, to show me ads that are relevant to me. I don't find that abuse of my data, and I'll continue to give google my data, so they can keep their datacenters running. I love gmail, I'm a huge fan of google+, and I couldn't live without youtube. If google wants to use my data to provide me with more interesting ads, so that I can keep using these services, I'll gladly keep giving my information.

however


Google is in a very strong position. Many internet companies rely on google to exist. They need the visitors google brings. Visitors would otherwise have no way to find them. Some have adsense as their only source of income. In my opinion, this isn't smart, you need to diversify, but still, some people don't do that. This brings google in a very strong position, you could call it a monopoly. Companies like that should by watched very closely. At this point, I don't see google doing anything wrong with the power they have, but as soon as i notice them, selling or even giving my info to third parties without my permission, I will delete my account.

Voice your opinion.

This is my first post on my blog. There are many more of these flying through my brain, waiting to come out some day. but what I'm writing here, is just my opinion, and my opinion is, and will never be set in stone. If anyone feels they can lead me to a point of view that is better, whatever that may mean, I encourage them to leave a response here, so we can have a nice discussion/debate.