Maggie ’19

If you are online, (whether you know it or not) chances are you are using a Google product. From Chrome to Google Search, Youtube to Gmail, Google Map to Google school related products, these products are ubiquitous. Google covered every aspect of product that can be conceived, and one might start to appreciate how comprehensive and thoughtful Google is; but stop right there. Is convenience equal to safety of privacy? The answer for Google product is NO. There has always been news showing that Google tracks its users’ search results and use users’ privacy information without permission.

Recent news by Quartz has discovered that Google collects Android users’ locations even when the location service is turned off. Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular tower and sending the data back to Google when they are connected to the Internet. Google has access to data of individual’s locations and movements, which is far beyond a reasonable expectation of privacy. Not only so, a limited number of its newest products, Google Home Mini, was acknowledged by Google that they have issues with owner’s privacy. Instead of  “listening” only after the owner says their “wake” words — which are “Hey Google” or “Okay Google” — they eavesdrop and accumulate information all day long from every conversation.

Adding to the intrusion into personal privacy, there are more threats posed by this company.   Google is a monopoly and it history of abuse of power and its capabilities are terrifying.  Doubleclick, one of the early ad-serving companies purchased by Google years ago. Doubleclick invented a system called DFP(DoubleClick for Publishers), which chooses ads from Adexchange (an ad inventory of purchased by Google) according to page views and visitors and publish them on different websites. Its exact market penetration is unknown, however, it is a hugely dominate player for certain in ad serving across the web under Google. Then there is Google Analytics, the benchmark audience and traffic data service. It analyzes and collects data of visitors, pageviews per month, and geographical distribution of the audience of websites.  Advertisements are not wrong; however, letting one company holding all your information and selling them to the advertisers for their interest is not only beyond user’s expectation, but it may also cross ethical lines concerning privacy, and may pose dangers to the consumer.  There are also Google Search, Gmail, and Chrome.  As you use these three Google products longer, your digital persona grows more. Activity in web search history, location history and audio history are only few examples that Google have access to and collects data from them. From the data they collect, it builds a profile for you to serve ads.  This information includes age, gender, location, income, and other demographic data, and there are rumors information from daily habit may also be used. Basically, advertisers purchases ad spaces through Google, and Google runs the online advertising ecosystem besides Facebook. Their actions on analyzing and collecting data are ethically wrong, taking advantages of consumers’ privacy to benefit their own needs cannot be tolerated.

As the adage said, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. You exchanged your personal information and interest to Google for the free use of their products, and they sell them to advertisers. Nothing is truly free.

Monopolies are structural problems.  They are bad both economically and politically. They can sell substandard products and practice price-fixing (which will lead to inflation) because they know consumers have no alternate choice, they also stifle innovations and creativity. Google, as a mammoth monopoly in both search and advertising, unfortunately shows they are not capable to resist the misuse of power. Another good example for its corruption of the power is the Barry Lynn case. He was a former employee of Google who was fired by Google because he openly critiqued and supported the European Union for fining Google for violating antitrust law. It is important for us to protect our online privacy, and realize how much afflictions that monopolies can bring to us. To take into action, one must start to ditch Google products. Here are some safer alternative options that you can check out:

Google search —> DuckDuckGo (you can set it to default mode on Safari and Firefox. Another good thing about DuckDuckGo is that you can search directly to thousands of sites by using DuckDuckGo, it is called !Bang. For example, if you type in “!g”, you will be taken directly to Google, and the most important — it is encrypted.)

Gmail —> Protonmail, Outlook, Fastmail (the best option if you want your own domain name)

Chrome —> Safari, Firefox

Unfortunately, there are some products that they are somehow un-ditch-able. Such as Youtube, and Google Voice.