Search engines have become almost a way of life for most of us. They are an excellent way of satisfying our "need to know" on just about any subject. But what we don’t think about is that these same search engines are finding a lot out about us – information that we would prefer to remain private.
We jump on a search engine with the idea that it’s "all for free." But is it really? What price do you put on your personal information? Is your computer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address really just a number or is it a record of where you go online, what you like, what you search for, what you buy, etc?
Frank Cook, editor of ALG/Real Estate Intelligence Report, puts his finger directly on the issue when he asks the question:, When is the availability of too much information online an invasion of privacy?
Recently the New York Times retained comScore, a company specializing in Internet metrics, to examine “targeted advertising.” They looked at the information being collected such as: pages displayed, search queries entered, videos played, advertising displayed and ads served on pages. That’s the information that is then being sold to business looking to target specific customers – increasing their sales potential considerably.
The problem is that anytime you give out any information it is being collected and you don’t have any control of what is being done with it. The Swanepoel TRENDS Report considers this one of the most important topics of 2008 and dedicates an entire chapter (Trend #3) to the New Digital World.
So as Google continues to release new services, aggregate more data and enter into more industries, it becomes harder to wrap you mind around what exactly the company is – and more importantly what it may become.
Google says your IP address merely identifies the location a computer, not who the individual user is. They say it needs to store search queries and gather information on online activity to improve its search results and to provide advertisers with correct billing information that shows that genuine users are clicking on online ads. Others consider it as strictly “personal data.”
Enter Web 2.0 and a whole new twist.
It is very clear that Google wants to get in between social networks and websites that want to access their data. To that end they just released “Friend Connect” as a way of becoming a huge social network without actually having a social network. You can read about the details of Friend Connect on just about any tech site but suffice it to say here, its purpose is to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites. The draw for the public is that you only have to put your profile information into one place and it can be ported effortlessly through a simple bit of HTML code to any website.
In essence it allows content from any selected social network (Facebook, Google Talk, MySpace, etc.) to be viewed in a predefined window on a website. The purpose is to allow individuals to interact with their social network on these websites. They can connect with their friends without leaving the website or view comments on that website from their social network.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I guess it depends on which table you are sitting. It certainly raises a lot of questions concerning confidentiality. Is there now a greater chance for misuse of personal data? Perhaps that is why Facebook is balking at allowing Friend Connect into their arena. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, “We’ve found that it (Friend Connect) redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without the user’s knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.”
“Google’s Friend Connect puts Google in the middle of the social graph by mediating the relationship between people’s content (their bogs, etc,) and their friends – a smart but also a bit devious as a competitive move,” says Caroline Dangson of the research firm IDC in a recent Information Week article. From Google’s perspective it would no doubt also dramatically increase the number of people who see their ads. Maybe it’s not just a simple facilitation for various social networks.
In a recent blog a comment pointed out that … “in the worst case scenario Google’s Friend Connect , MySpace’s Data Availability and Facebook Connect might just herald the Web 2.0 version of spam as we indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages to our ‘friends’ about things they know little of and care less about.”
Is this bothering you? Well it is New York assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky. He has sponsored a bill that will make it a punishable offense for certain Web companies to collect personal information about their users for advertising purposes without their consent. This bill could set a precedent that would through a monkey wrench right in the middle of the whole thing. In essence the question is … can private information be gathered and sold without permission.
Does this quote from Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, make you feel any better … “The net is like the real world, there are bad people and good people out there and we have to be prepared for dealing with both.” Right! But then it’s your private information the good and bad are after.
Web 2.0 is here and we are participants – willingly or unwillingly. |
