What Google Really Knows About Me: Mystery Revealed
Google needs no introduction. Founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this has been the default search engine for millions of people around the world for over two decades, with its counterpart, Google Chrome, similarly becoming the leading internet browser for over 63.5% of the global market share.
But while Google has likely been a part of your life for many years, so too have you been a part of Google’s life. For over two decades, anyone using Google has been voluntarily inputting their data into its system. This information doesn’t just disappear. In fact, Google knows everything that you’ve ever searched and deleted.
Data Collection On Steroids: Google’s Vast Information Gathering
Every time that you use Google, you are accepting that your experience is a two-way street. You’re going to use Google to get exactly where you need to go, and Google is going to be repaid with the same information. It will track everything from your searches, your browsing behaviour, your purchases, your YouTube activity, and even your location history.
There may also be more information about you that it collects, but it’s hard to know, because Google hasn’t officially revealed how much they collect from users and why. According to experts, however, Google is likely to collect and store around 3.5 billion searches per day, which amounts to 1.5 trillion a year.
The Personalisation Puzzle: How Google Uses Your Data To Tailor Services
Google will say that they do not “sell” data. Instead, the data is used to tailor their services, creating personalised search results and advertisements, and improving the functionality and personalisation of its apps. But personalisation nearly always requires a third party to get involved.
While Google can say it doesn’t actively sell data, it still uses your data to build up an individual profile based around your demographic and your interests, and then lets advertisers target groups of people based on the information that they’ve gathered.
As well as this, Google often shares data with advertisers directly, meaning it is part of the automated real-time bidding process (RTB), allowing advertisers to bid on individual ad placements and make the user experience more streamlined, personalised, and productive.
Privacy vs. Personalisation: Navigating The Trade Off
If reading all of this is making you a little uncomfortable, then good! There should certainly be more legislation and knowledge on how to minimise data collection – so far it is up to users to do something to stop it.
Thankfully there are ways for you to remove your personal info from Google, as well as remove the digital footprint that companies have accumulated over your time online, and this is especially true when you consider that Google isn’t even a data broker.
Google might be collecting your data and tailoring ads, but the data brokering industry – where your data is collected and monetised by third parties – is currently worth over $320 billion, so that should be enough incentive to focus on the problem.
Even if it’s just from an ethical standpoint, everyone should have the right to their data privacy. As the world moves more and more online – and new tech trends are introduced to accumulate data – it is essential that you use all the tools at your disposal, working to get your digital footprint back under your control.
