‘Googlization‘ – “the harvesting, copying, aggregating, and ranking of information about and contributions made by each of us” – Vaidhyanathan, Siva (pg 83)
Googlization is the process that Google uses to sell it’s product, which is its users. Although almost all Google services are free, the reason they’re free is because Google wants as many users as possible, because it can then sell ads targeted at those users. This is the same reason that Google is looking to provide free mobile data on Androids, and provide free (albeit fairly slow, and besides the $300 installation fee) fiber internet. Googlization is Google saving a good chunk of your personal information so that it can sell it to third parties, but doing it with high quality, useful software, that people readily accept into their lives. Because Google products are so well made and ubiquitous in most of our lives, most people either accept the breaches in privacy or just don’t know about them. And some of the personal data storage that Google does can be useful. It can remember your preferences and know what area you’re in to help give you more relevant search results, which many people rely on and would miss. But that comes at the cost of having your private information be available to Google and whoever else Google wants to share it with. They also require that you make an account in order to access some services, which isn’t at all abnormal, but it does make it easier for them to keep better tabs on who you are and what your behavior online is. Another concerning aspect of Googlization is the fact that the NSA can easily access almost any information from Google that they want. Now that we know about widespread government surveillance, should we be more cautious of providing large amounts of personal information to a single corporation, never mind the internet in general?
