The facts
Google is an easy target for discussions about (lack of) privacy on the Internet. Popular websites operated by Google include:
- Google.com (search software)
- Gmail (email software)
- Google Maps (mapping software)
- Blogger (blogging software)
- DoubleClick (enterprise website ad serving/statistics software)
- Google Analytics (free website usage statistics software)
- Google AdSense (free website ad serving software).
It has been a long time since I read the Privacy Policy or Terms of Use on their websites, but let’s assume the following to be true unless someone reads the fine-print and reports back: Google maintains the right to scan, index, store, republish, or basically do whatever they wish with any and all content entered into any of their software packages for perpetuity.
This means that Google has the right to do whatever they want with the text, images, links, and any other content in all emails sent to or from Gmail users. If I, as a non-Gmail user, send an email to a Gmail user, then Google has the right to do all the same things with my email as it does with a Gmail user’s emails. So you can assume that Google maintains the right to do whatever it wants with many, if not most, of your emails, regardless of your own usage of Gmail or other Google products.
When you do a Google.com search, you are allowing Google to store and use as they see fit the search terms you enter and the links you click for perpetuity. Same with searching Google Maps for addresses or directions.
Any Blogger blog you read will also track your usage of the blog, including which posts you read, how long you spend reading them, comments you leave, where you are in the world while you read the blog, what links or buttons you click, etc. Same deal with any site running Google’s ad products, such as Google Analytics, Google AdSense, DoubleClick, etc: your usage is tracked and stored.
If you happen to be a registered Google user, chances are that your usage of Google.com, Blogger blogs, Google Maps, and any site running a Google ad product, is being merged and linked into a single profile of you and your behavior and interests online. If you are not a registered Google user, websites have for a long time been smart enough to still be able to link up all your various accounts and usages and be able to build profiles about you based on all these various component pieces. So you don’t really have to be a registered user in order to be profiled by Google, although it probably makes their profile even more accurate if you are.
The present reality
We know that Google scans and indexes your emails and usage patterns online – this is how they determine what ads to show you on websites. They choose the ads that their profile of you indicates you are most likely to click, and your clicking of ads you find interesting is how they make the vast majority of their vast profit.
Google is a company that relies upon the good-will of its customers. If customers suspect that Google is doing nefarious things with their emails or web behavior profiles, the customers are likely to stop using Google products. So it’s unlikely, in the present, that you will discover that Google is doing anything horrible with your personal content – that would ruin their business quickly.
If you were a US government organization trying to find out whether a citizen is a terrorist or not, you’d be silly not to ask or demand that Google provide you access to that individual’s emails, web searches, map searches, behavior profiles, etc. Whether that requires a warrant or not is not really relevant.
The future
If, for some reason, Google declines in popularity in the future, it will have a gold-mine of valuable profile information on almost everyone in the country. Without the social limitation of trying to maintain the good-will of the already-atrophied user-base, Google will be free to do whatever it wants with all the emails, images, links, blog posts, reading material, usage statistics, map location searches, Google chat messages, Google phone calls, etc, of each and every user and more. That will feed Google employees’ children for generations to come.
If the banks where everyone’s money was invested were too big to fail when they hit a storm, it might not be crazy to think that Google and other giant Internet companies are in a similar boat.
PS: this website uses Google Analytics… your usage of this page and the contents therein have just been logged into your and my profiles.
I recently registered for (yet another) gmail account and was surprised that they wanted to verify my identity by either a phone call or a text message. Not by email. So, the creation of a gmail account necessitated giving them my phone number. I was stopped for a minute, but upon reflecting that the reason I was starting a gmail account was for the accompaniment of my google voice account which has already registered my cellphone number and to which I have uploaded my phone’s complete contact list (where I have your contact info stored, and birthdate), the stop became go.
So it was really just out of politeness that the Google asked for your number again.
Yes, the field was prefilled. I could have put one of my six other cellphone numbers in but…
Now think about all those facebook users.
Not only are the users giving away their privacy but they are working for these companies for free.
It’s called “cognitive slavery”.
google that. :)