Privacy? What privacy (Google)?

So delivering products in the industry that I do, privacy is always on the agenda.  So I thought I’d dive into what Google knows about me today.

Firstly, 50% of the world’s top 1,000,000 sites by traffic have Google analytics tags on them.  So every second page I see on average, Google sees me seeing.

Secondly, I do 99.9% of my searches on Google (sorry Bing).  So Google captures over 90% of my intent (maybe 10% of the time I might go direct to Amazon/Ebay etc.).

Thirdly, I decided to login to Google’s “profile” data area, and take a gander. Here’s what else El Goog knows about me:

• All my personal mail goes through Gmail partly for its spam filtering ability, partly as I’m Android phone-wise
• I’m signed up for G+, so they know my social network
• Some of the sites I am involved with are linked through my Google Analytics account, so they know who’s visiting my sites
• They have my credit card details, and home addresses (Google Checkout)
• They have access to my voicemail (Google Voice)
• They know what videos I watch (YouTube)
• I have an Android phone, so they know all my app choices, and my web browsing through there, also all the pictures I take, and my location….

Bottom line, they know more about me than I do myself.  There is no such thing as privacy with Google in the game.

OK, so I admit I explicitly or implicitly opted in to all of this.  I COULD just about opt out, but it would take some doing, I’d have to use second-choice online services, change my phone and browser, and clear down my cookies very regularly.  And I’m unlikely to do that.

Ultimately, I’m not concerned about Google’s motivations – I saw Eric Schmidt speak at a Media Forum, and his response was “who else would you rather have all your personal information – your government?  Microsoft?  Apple?”.  He has a good point.

(thanks for the Venn Diagram, GeeksAreSexy)

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