Too much information?
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald asked “Does Google know too much about you?“:
“Google, the world leader in web search services, is the focus of mounting paranoia over the scope of its powers as it expands into new advertising formats from online video to radio and TV, while creating dozens of new internet services.True, the Silicon Valley company has millions of people telling it daily what’s apparently on their minds via simple Web searches, generating mountains of information about consumer behaviour.”
This is a very interesting question that seems to be coming up more and more frequently these days, particularly during the lawsuit between Google and the US Government, who had been trying to force the internet monolith to open up its search queries.
Suddenly, what had once been seemingly insignificant time wasted online was taking on a life of its own. Your search queries weren’t disappearing in a poof of smoke; they were being stored somewhere - potentially for a long period of time.
Moreover, those who embrace the social software and social networking movements in particular volunteer extraordinary amounts of information that over time combines to present a very holistic picture of who we are - to anybody who cares to look. We write our innermost thoughts in blogs; post pictures of our loved ones, our houses, our friends, and our neighbourhoods in our photo sharing pages; even provide up to the minute updates on the fact we’re drinking coffee in our pj’s on our Twitter pages.
So once again the question arises: Does Google, and indeed the greater web in general, know too much about us? Or perhaps equally importantly: What do you hold back from sharing - or do you?
Monday, June 18th, 2007