One of the biggest things that struck me during our discussions about Google this week was the controversies over Google’s policies in regards to privacy and how people seemed annoyed they had to use Google given those policies. According to our reading “Google Controversies”, its been one of the biggest grievances people have with Google. For instance, with GMail, Google has the policy of taking keywords from their emails and using it to better help target advertisements. Google also tracks what you’ve searched for a similar effect and they track the sites and items you’ve viewed to also help target ads even more.
Now, understandably, people are going to be put off by this idea that their habits and words are being watched. But I find a number of things rather silly about all the rage being thrown Google’s way for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the most pertinent reason in my opinion, Google is its own company with its own guidelines. It provides the service to store and send messages back and forth through GMail, so it has a right to use create the guidelines for that service, in whichever way they see fit so long as they adhere to those guidelines. To my knowledge, Google hasn’t ever deviated from its guidelines, which are all very public. It’s a company and GMail is its service and property. And it’s not like they are breaking the law either. They adhere to federal standards of storing information, and won’t release information to the government without proper procedures (warrants, etc.).
The second reason I find this rather silly is a notion I’ve always been a supporter of. “If you don’t like it, don’t use it.” I feel this is very true, especially in this instance. Using Google isn’t a requirement for using the internet. There are numerous other options:
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Hotmail
- Firefox
- Internet Explorer (IE 9 and up is actually useable again)
- and many others!
Many people may respond with “Oh but everyone else uses Google and it’s so integrated that it’d be dumb not to use it.” Then use it, it’s up to you. Google is a company and has a right to what it does with its services.
A lot of people feel like Google is becoming too big and powerful, and that it will monopolize the internet.
The only circumstance in which this could happen is if net neutrality goes down the drain and Google cashes in on that, paying for their services to run the fastest (which wouldn’t happen anyway if Google has any moral compass). Aside from that circumstance, the internet will always have options. It’s in its nature. There will always be sub services to use if you aren’t a fan of the major one. Yes, maybe Google will be the biggest in major services one day, but it will never be the singular one. It won’t become an evil empire.
