i-eclectica.org

I just stumbled across this new acronym FOG - Fear Of Google. Metaphorically and conceptually it seems highly appropriate. Google collects a lot of personal data which we hand over fairly unconcerned. Why? Probably because we don’t connect Google with the state, even though there have been subpoenas for publicly collected data, and we we have a naive view of the potential of the state’s misuse of its power, despite illegal phone tappings, CCTV cams everywhere, ID cards, a rush to implement new identification technologies, etc.. We also underestimate the power of advertising, we like the free toys, gimmicks and services Google offers, we like that there is someone counteracting Micro$oft, we buy into Google’s self-image as young, dynamic, innovative, etc, and we naively believe that Google will do no evil.

It’s all a bit too credulous and uncritical for my taste. I wouldn’t say I’m paranoid about Google but I do have a healthy skepticism. After all: Google is not in the business of doing good, it’s in the business of making money. It does so through advertising, and its intertwined strategies are to attain market dominance and to collect as much personal data as possible. Commercially it therefore makes sense to

• buy DoubleClick (just think about the cookie archive it got its hands on)
• have Google Checkout (credit and purchase card data)
• have access to tetrabites of personal emails, office documents, calendar information, fotos, videos
• have a stake in Sergei Brin’s new wife’s company collecting genetic data

In terms of advertising data, I’m sure the pressure on Google is on to collect even more data. Robert Scoble pointed out that advertising agencies are more and more forced to produce ROI data for each of their ads, and what better way of doing it than counting mouse clicks. But that of course is not all - agency executives want to know more than just the number of clicks - they want personal data to increase ROI for their clients, so Google, Yahoo and Micro$oft have to become even more effective and efficient at spying on and spotting anything personal, from our postal address to our deepest secrets.

But Big Brother does not only come in the new clothes of the multinational corporations. They have to protect their commercial interests and they do that by using the old school omnipresent and seemingly benevolent authority over our lives: the state. Let’s just remember how easy it was for the Bush Government to push through parliament the Patriot Act or to subpoena user data from phone and search engine companies. All it takes is to whip hysteria over a real or imagined enemy, declare a state of emergency and the state can suck down our secrets from commercial databases.

But Google does not only have the information we hand over so innocently and trusting; it also collects it without our knowledge or even awareness. This is why, for example. I am less than enthusiastic about Street View. It just seems to add to the overall picture of potential misuse and abuse and therefore the Google Big Brother feeling.

I am quite dumbfounded and confounded by the raving reviews (see also Brady Forrest on Techmeme) that Google Street View gets. What about your ex starting to track down your every movements, or the well organised burglars wanting to break into your place, or your boss checking that you’re really sick and not enjoying a day off downtown (we already have GPS spying on the movement of company vehicles). And all that doesn’t even address the possibilities of the authorities spying on you for various reasons. As long as we are not in such situations and the technology is in its infancy, we feel these concerns have nothing to do with us. Let’s hope that by the time we do get worried, it won’t already be too late.

[Thank you to Between the Lines for some inspiration and the Street View image]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 1:42 pm and is filed under political structure, world of money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.