Google Wants You To Stop "Googling"

As anyone who has passed within earshot of me over the last few years knows, I’m a Googleophile. Of course, this hardly makes me Robinson Crusoe. Millions of people around the globe believe Google is more than merely a hyper-successful technology company; it is a force for human advancement.

Central to Google Inc.’s vast empire is the issue of trust. As users, we readily use the company’s impressive array of free online services – the most popular of which is still its flagship internet search engine – in return for granting it permission to retain our personal information, which Google uses to deliver us advertising so targeted that it hardly seems like an imposition at all.

I respect Google. At times, my trust in the company creeps beyond the limits of reason. I trust them with my emails, even though they place ads for flowers and chocolates alongside romantic messages to my girlfriend, like a love coach waving me in. They also hit me with ads for pesticide when I’m sending emails about Anthill – an ever-present reminder that algorithms, not necessarily common sense, drive the Google machine.

A MATTER OF TRUST

A friend recently put it this way: “I have been trusting Google with my personal information for seven years, but I have only been banking online for three.”

In many respects, it is not difficult to argue that this trust is justified. When the US Justice Department demanded to see a sample of users’ personal search queries earlier this year, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and others rolled over. Google did not. Cynics claimed that this was purely a business decision. After all, Google stands to lose millions of dollars in advertising revenue if users are given cause to question the privacy of their personal information in Google’s hands.

But Google has always done things differently. It is not just another company but the vanguard of the new media wave. And even though the company recently agreed to enforce censorship regulations in exchange for gaining access to China’s booming online market, its presence in China, however curtailed, is sure to have a liberalising influence. To be sure, there is a commercial case for everything Google does. But surely it’s not to the exclusion of all else. Not from a company with a mission statement that reads: “Don’t be evil”.