Don’t Be Creepy, Google
Over the weekend, my mother and I were discussing my apartment where I go to school. I was telling her that I thought it was okay, but she wasn’t so sure. I assured her that I would go up to check as soon as possible, but she was also worried about that eventuality because the Murfreesboro/Nashville area is one of the hardest hit areas in the state with virus (at least initially). Somehow the discussion turned to insurance, and I went to look something up on Google to show her. I noticed the first couple of results were ads for an insurance company I’d never heard of before, Lemonade–yes, I promise you it is an insurance company and not a drink maker–but scrolled down to my results to find a site that had the information that I was looking for to show her. Imagine my surprise and consternation when, later that night, while looking at videos on YouTube (owned by whom? That’s right: Google), 15 second ads for Lemonade insurance began popping up before my videos. All through the day, I was “served” ads for various home and auto insurance companies, even though all I wanted was “information,” and not looking to purchase a product or service.
Scary, right?
Sketchy, Google, Very Sketchy
Now, I try not to curse, but I’m going to use a term that is in wide circulation these days as euphemistically as possible: Google, selling ads to consumers is one thing, but selling ads to information seekers is “sketchy AF.” I’m a writer, and if I search for “famous mass murderers” for research purposes for a story or an academic paper, is Google going start serving me ads for local “hitmen” in the area? Yes, I’m being reductive here, but I’m trying to illustrate a point. How does Google know that what I’m searching for have any correlation to what I’m looking to purchase?
The answer is: they don’t. They rely on their almighty algorithm to guess at my intentions. I know what I’m going to purchase when, and I don’t need Google, or any other company, selling ads to try to influence my purchasing decisions.
Yes, I know all this could be avoided by searching when I’m NOT signed into Gmail on browser, but I’m trying to 1) winnow down the absolute deluge of email that has come about recently and 2) I’m moving to a new email address and need to have them both up as I switch email accounts over. Now I’m going to have to go and find the settings that controls Google’s Ads and pretty much turn everything off. See, Google, we trust you “not to be evil” and you betray that trust. This is why it is so hard to ever give corporations the benefit of the doubt–you betray the trust over and over again because you become either a monopoly or part of an oligopoly and take out all the competition to necessary services.
Alternate Browsers/Alternate Search Engines
After turning off my ad preferences, the next step that I intend to take is to start using other browsers outside of Chrome. Now obviously, since I use a Chromebook as my main computing device–at least, for now, as I finish up by graduate work, a lot of searches will still go through Google. However, there are other lesser known search engines out there (although most have gone thanks to Google’s stranglehold on the market). A quick search (on Google) shows that its service handles over 91% of the world’s searches.
There’s a reason why America had such strong Anti-Trust laws in the past, but over the past 100-125 years (as of this writing), there has been a slow, but concerted to effort to weaken these laws (this movement accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s) until we are where we are today. I can “turn off” the controls provided to me by Google (and I’ll see what effect that has), but I don’t have a true competitor to Google if I want to find information on the web effectively. Companies move to limit choice–through acquisitions or market share–and then the consumer has a limited number of options should they want to take their business elsewhere. Companies “lock in” consumers rather than competing on price/service–look at the web search engine market, or even the cell phone industry.
My point is that we always hear that competition is great for the consumer as if forces companies to compete with one another on prices, services, etc. to win customers. However, Google doesn’t compete for me–instead, it entangles me in a web of other companies vying for my (limited) amount of funds in order to entice me into purchasing (consuming) things based on what it’s algorithm perceives that I “need”/”want” whether that assumption is valid or not.
Hey Google, how about letting me make the choice on where and how to spend my time and money and not your algorithm, okay?
Sidney
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