The power of Google should be limited before it becomes too much of a monopoly in the world especially with its deepening relationship with several of United States Government programs such as the CIA and NSA. With these governmental aids, who knows what is Google’s true potential. Who knows what privacy issues will occur in future. Even with Google’s mission statement “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” pretty much says in itself that Google doesn’t care about anyone’s privacy. Google’s mantra “Don’t be evil” is its reassurance that the information obtained by Google will not be used in a bad sense, but what is evil in Google’s eye.
Didn’t you ever wonder how Google can supply free tools online such as g-mail and its toolbar? The answer is easy, Google provides these tools for free because there is an unrecognized agreement by many when you sign up for the usage of these tools and it is that Google can scan anything too collect data. For example, in your g-mail, Google scans all emails in g-mail that are being sent and received. Let alone whatever Google scans, they store. So that private love affair that you think is so private on that g-mail account, think again, because Google knows.
So why does it matter that Google scans all of this information, what makes it so bad. Well going back to Google’s partnership with our government. Google can supply our government with so much more information then is imaginable. Some see this as a positive thing, that now we can catch undercover spies or terrorists who use electronics to communicate. Grant it that is great, but is it worth everyone’s privacy. With the information obtained by Google, the government can know what everyone is doing at what they are looking up on Google. Your Google searches make it possible for Google to track you. For all searches Google records the cookie ID, which is a cookie that places a unique ID number on your hard disk and anytime you land on a Google page, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. This Google tracking has already has been done. Google has a tool called Google Flu Trend and what it does is that it gathers information in a region about how many users searched flu remedies, flu cures, flu vaccines, ect. and estimates how bad the flu is spreading in that region. Shockingly the numbers produced with Google Flu Trend are considerably accurate with the CDC, Centers for Disease Control. The chart to the left is a comparison of Google Flu Trend and the CDC, the blue line being Google and the yellow being CDC. So with this stunning accuracy in mind, what sense does it make that Google has the power to track anything. With this potential power, it would seem that any authoritarian government would love to have access to Google's data to manage their country. Another simply amazing, yet free application Google offers is Google Earth. Google Earth is a computer program that offers users a look at a detailed satellite image view of the earth’s surface and as well as a street view of most cities, towns, villages, ect. How did Google provide this for free? Again Google had invaded privacy in a scam called Google Wispy. What was happening was that the Google Street View Cars, which are the vehicles used to take photographs so Google Earth users could use street view, were “accidentally” picking up data such as e-mail, browsing habits and other information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as they went around taking photographs. This has stirred controversy on a global scale. Some European countries such as France, Germany, and Spain are demanding Google to provide the original hard drives that had stored the data from the open Wi-Fi networks. Artemi Rallo, the director of the Spanish data protection agency said this in an interview, “we had a remote view of the Spanish data, but for a matter this important, we really need to see all of the data, including the original hard drive,” ( O’Brien 2010). Luckily Google had to stop this Wi-Fi data collecting from its street view cars. One thing though is that it is unclear what Google’s intent was when they gathered this information. Let alone that Google has yet to make any announcements of it.
These privacy issues are extremely troubling to one’s mind especially when it is not really clear that Google is doing all these things. Most people are unfortunately ignorant towards Google’s privacy issues. How is it possible that a high school student looking up information on a topic for a research paper possibly know that Google is keeping everything that the student is researching including where they are through there IP addresses. It’s outrageous. There should be a limit to what Google can gather about a person or offer the option for a user of Google to permit certain information about them to Google. Google shouldn’t have the authority to automatically store the user’s information. Let alone who has access to these data bases is another key issue.
There was an actual case that a Google engineer had used the data bases from Google to essentially stalk teenagers. Google Site Reliability Engineer, David Barksdale, accessed the user accounts of four minors. A Google Site Reliability Engineer has full access to any user account that they oversee. In one incident, Barksdale had tapped into a fifteen year old boy’s Google Voice and it was used to track information about the minor’s girlfriend. Barksdale had invaded their privacy and was soon fired by Google. Fortunately no one was hurt but this just shows that information that is retained by Google could never be safe because it is such a high target for abuse. (Hernandez) How is there suppose to be any trust with Google to see that information is protected when it leaves people with this kind of power. Now imagine if the CIA had access to that kind of information that Barksdale had with Google. It would almost be like Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel 1984 because the CIA would have all sorts of information on any given single person at anytime. This is slowly becoming a reality with the new company Recorded Future. This is a company that would monitor websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. Both the CIA and Google fund this company. What is scary about this is that the information that Google can provide along with the power the CIA has, privacy would be non-existent. Government would have complete control over what people do with themselves just because mostly everybody uses Google. This is also not the first time that Google had worked with the American Government either.
In conclusion to this, what would be Google’s next ambition be. Google is slowly buying the internet, from YouTube to Double Click, who knows how much longer until Google has complete control over the internet. With the lack of competition on the internet, Google can easily take control of it. The only other company that seems to be on par with Google is Apple, as it is the only company that continuously competes with Google over a variety of products. Its only comp Google is going to continue its binge spending until someone or something intervenes, hopefully our government. Why would our government try to limit Google tough? With the relationship between Google and our government get closer and closer, what could happen? The information Google can provide the government could in theory lead to the government monitoring every aspect of a person’s life with ease. With Google, our government can easily step up to the role as Big Brother. Who knows what kind of abuse Google might eventually suffer that can turn a brilliant idea to an evil plan for control.