What Google Knows About You
Two people who each search on Google for “Egypt” may get significantly different results, based on their past clicks. Both Yahoo News and Google News make adjustments to their home pages for each individual visitor. And just last month, this technology began making inroads on the Web sites of newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Full article on how the Internet “gatekeepers” are determining the content we see online.
Like most ominous trends, this is self-limiting as long as there is a competitive marketplace. Eli Pariser, president of the board of MoveOn.org, says “They need to give us control over what we see — making it clear when they are personalizing, and allowing us to shape and adjust our own filters.”
Good idea, is there an app for that (yet)?
I’m afraid that Google knows more about me than I know about me.
There was an article on the Health Business Blog a few years ago about… What if Google knows you have cancer before you do? Over the course of years people who Google symptoms and later research cancer could identify a set of symptoms that are associated with cancer. In theory, someone could go online looking for answers to symptoms could end up being bombarded with cancer therapies by Google Ads before the patient even knew they had cancer.
The justification of this is that by personalizing what one sees based on passes history, it increased the value of the ad run by Google, as there is a greater chance the person will consume what they want to see, and not waste time on erroneous ads. However, personalization of content could impede one’s ability to be academically enlightened. How can challenge their way of thinking, if you are fed what you are supposed to want to see… without knowledge.