Imagine the day you go online, type in Google’s web URL, and
find its page blank. Next you search for Yahoo!, Bing, Ask – or any other well
known search engine – to find that its web pages also lead to a dead end. What
now? How are you going to verify whether or not Miley Cyrus smoked a joint
onstage at last night’s EMAs? What about the growth on your foot? How are you
going to find out if it’s cancerous or not? As a college student, I use Google heavily
for its academic and entertainment purposes; yet it is our society’s reliance
on Google that is a bit problematic.
Google
plays a greater role in our lives much more than we think it does. In Siva Vaidhyanathan’s
book, The Googlization of Everything, he explains that Google impacts
our social lives, the way we retain knowledge, and our privacy. Google
dominates our lives through the number of platforms it owns: Gmail, Blogger, StreetView, GooglePlus, and now, YouTube. Our
present generation lives in a culture where we view Google as a ‘seal of
validity’; after all, it’s only true if it’s on Google, right? So far, Google sounds like a life saver. The services they offer are free and its technology makes our lives easier, online and offline. But it is actually all that great? Vaidhyanathan argues that our participation with Google comes with a sacrifice: our privacy. Google's default privacy settings are set to maximize the benefits of the company. For those unaware, this means that the patterns, locations and content of our searches are logged. Google's success comes from the participation of its consumer base. It uses our data to perfect its 'search algorithm' to better order its web searches.
On March 1, 2012, Google updated its privacy settings to share the data it collected about users between all of its platforms. Prior to that, Google's web searches has always been cordoned off from its other products. This protection was important because search data can reveal sensitive information about a user, including age, race, sex, health, and religion. Recently, Google proposed yet another plan that will further expose our personal information. These new privacy settings will allow Google to share its users' data with ad companies; thus, increasing Google's ad revenue, but more importantly, further exposing its consumers' once "private" information.
Google begins to sound more and more like a death trap. On one hand, Google's mission is to organize information and create better service; on the other hand, it is continuously updating its privacy settings to further expose its users. More eloquently put, Marc Rotenberg, director of the online privacy group EPIC, argues that Google users "shouldn't have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change." A simple search of 'Google + Websearch + Privacy' shows more links in relation to how users can protect themselves against Google's privacy settings than anything else. Clearly, it's time for a wake up call. Google continuously tests our tolerance with every new push; ergo, the new question becomes, "How much do we care about privacy? and "Do we need Google?'
Users can opt out from most of the Google-related dilemmas I mentioned above by continuously updating their personal privacy settings. If we are worried enough about the effects of publicizing user data, then we should take care to check our account settings once in a while. But an easier solution to this problem is to eliminate Google altogether. In this day, this world, and this age, life without Google seems a bit impossible. This is mainly because Google is becoming synonymous with the Web itself. Vaidhyanathan brings up another point that our lives are becoming so reliant on Google that it is starting to impact our knowledge - what we know and learn. In a way, Google is the 'glass wall' of the American society - it is changing the way we process information and the way we learn. As Nicholas Carr explains to us in his article, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?', our reliance on computers to understand the world is problematic. The current young-adult generation is adopting a 'We know only what is on Google' mantra. Our reliance on Google causes us to sacrifice something not only within ourselves, but most importantly, something within our culture.
On March 1, 2012, Google updated its privacy settings to share the data it collected about users between all of its platforms. Prior to that, Google's web searches has always been cordoned off from its other products. This protection was important because search data can reveal sensitive information about a user, including age, race, sex, health, and religion. Recently, Google proposed yet another plan that will further expose our personal information. These new privacy settings will allow Google to share its users' data with ad companies; thus, increasing Google's ad revenue, but more importantly, further exposing its consumers' once "private" information.
Google begins to sound more and more like a death trap. On one hand, Google's mission is to organize information and create better service; on the other hand, it is continuously updating its privacy settings to further expose its users. More eloquently put, Marc Rotenberg, director of the online privacy group EPIC, argues that Google users "shouldn't have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change." A simple search of 'Google + Websearch + Privacy' shows more links in relation to how users can protect themselves against Google's privacy settings than anything else. Clearly, it's time for a wake up call. Google continuously tests our tolerance with every new push; ergo, the new question becomes, "How much do we care about privacy? and "Do we need Google?'
Users can opt out from most of the Google-related dilemmas I mentioned above by continuously updating their personal privacy settings. If we are worried enough about the effects of publicizing user data, then we should take care to check our account settings once in a while. But an easier solution to this problem is to eliminate Google altogether. In this day, this world, and this age, life without Google seems a bit impossible. This is mainly because Google is becoming synonymous with the Web itself. Vaidhyanathan brings up another point that our lives are becoming so reliant on Google that it is starting to impact our knowledge - what we know and learn. In a way, Google is the 'glass wall' of the American society - it is changing the way we process information and the way we learn. As Nicholas Carr explains to us in his article, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?', our reliance on computers to understand the world is problematic. The current young-adult generation is adopting a 'We know only what is on Google' mantra. Our reliance on Google causes us to sacrifice something not only within ourselves, but most importantly, something within our culture.
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