The multi billion dollar global giant knows more about you than you think and it will soon know more.
Google first became an incorporated business in 1998. (GOOG) was first publicly traded in 2004 and has been a stock sensation ever sense, more than sextupling its price per share. It's truly amazing how far the company has grown in ten years. Google is the true epitome of success for an internet company and has become the standard by which all other search engines and for the most part web companies are measured.
In fact, for a web company to succeed, being indexed by Google is essential and without adequate indexing a web company is doomed to failure. Google utilizes what it calls "crawlers". These crawlers constantly surf the net looking for new and updated information and that information is then indexed into the results you get each time you Google your own name. Even the name Google has turned into a verb.
There is no question Google has made many lives easier, created jobs and brought the farthest reaches of the internet to the doorstep of anyone with a computer but at what cost?
Google is scooping up fledgling internet companies like a wangdoodle scoops up oompa loompas for breakfast (pat on the back for that analogy). Lets look at some of some of Google's acquisitions.
Picasa
Youtube
Panomario
Feedburner
Pyra Labs (Blogger)
Keyhole Inc. (Google Earth)
There are about 40 more significant acquisitions not even mentioned.
How does Google know so much about us? Well, there is gmail, so they know who we are friends with. Panoramio and Keyhole help them know where we go, where we want to go and what pictures we take when we go there. The Google search engine keeps track of your web statistics; what sites you visit, how often you go there, how often you go there during work. Blogger lets them know what interests us and our opinions. You get the picture. They even use us to get to know more about each other which then funnels right back to them. Talk about targeted marketing!
If you haven't done it already I would encourage you to enable google's web statistics, you can do so easily from your google homepage after you have created account, which you've already done if you have a blogger blog, or an adsense account. Check back on your statistics after a week or so. You'll feel all dirty inside knowing Google has you in its sights 24 hours a day. While tools->internet options -> clear history might help cover your tracks at work, Google still knows. If you don't have a Google account, sign up for one.
If you think the government knows to much about you, think about who knows even more about you.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Google is Big Brother
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4 comments:
Yes, Google has sucked up all sorts of other internet ventures. Yes, they know what you do on their pages. I am sure they use that information to help them make even more money by giving that info to people who want to sell you stuff. But why tell people to sign up for an account? Isn't that just encouraging the big brother-ness of it all? (Not that I am opposed to Google. I even personalized my own Google homepage until it went to iGoogle!)
The idea is that even if you don't want them to know about you, in one way or another they will. That aside, google offers some very powerful applications that everyone should take advantage of.
Google seems to be following real player by making so many applications so that you can do pretty much everything through Google. It's helpful but it does give off that 1984 vibe-o-evilness
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