The list of issues with Google is nearly endless but interestingly, their slogan is, “Don’t be evil.” When reviewing all of these things that cause me to become skeptical about this company, I start to wonder if their motto is merely ironic. The aspects of Google that we have yet to uncover are those most concerning. In my opinion, there are many questions that the public will never get an answer to. The most crucial of these is privacy.

Almost everyone I know, including myself, uses Google for their daily inquiries above Bing, Yahoo!, and any other search engine combined. The convenience and speed of looking up anything and everything we may need to know has become priceless. Does this mean that we’re willing to utilize Google at any cost? Before reading about “Google controversies,” I never took into consideration how much information I was feeding Google. Typing a keyword into the search bar on my laptop really does not take too much thought. Unfortunately, this lack of thought could lead to many problems down the road.

Google saves all of my searches so that my search results in the future are better customized. Another feature that is meant to make my life more convenient is autofill. My name, address, phone number, etc. are stored so that I can generate them rather than redundantly filling in this criteria myself. These features are often viewed as beneficial because of how much easier they make our lives. The key question concerning all of this is the storage of our person preferences and information.

Google’s privacy policy states that they use information they collect “to offer [us] tailored content – like giving [us] more relevant search results and ads.” The company shares this information with all of Google’s “affiliates,” although there is no list provided to clarify exactly which entities this includes. (We could safely assume that AdSense is one of them though.) Our information is given to these third parties for processing reasons. There are also several other times that their policy says Google may share information. Most of this has to do with governmental and legal reasons. While the rationale may seem sound and the policy transparent enough, there is still some skepticism to be had due to accountability.

If we want to use Google, we have no other choice but to trust their policies and trust the company with our information. Even if everything in the privacy policy looks to our liking, there is the question of whether or not these are the exchanges of information that are actually occurring. Unfortunately, there is no oversight board that is looking out for the best interests of the consumer. Google has essentially expanded into a monopoly that has almost no accountability regarding their practices.

So, is Google evil?

This question brings up the main issue once again: there is so much that we don’t know. I do not think we can really distinguish whether or not Google is evil without the full picture. Of course, one could try to make this determination based on the information that is provided to us but the conclusion may be largely inaccurate. We may never be able to answer whether or not Google is evil because we may never know the company’s true practices.