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Is Google Good or Evil?

August 11th, 2010 | Data and Information Analysis,Online & Small Business Resources,shopping,Small Business,Small Business Tips | No Comments »

I was reading this article today on Gizmodo about how a “Vision document” recently released to the public was created by Google 2 years ago and makes reference to the fact that Google was considering selling Internet surfing and search data from visitors to their site.

This would be a big deal for a few reasons if it is true because Google has claimed for years that they would never user their customer’s personal data for “evil” reasons like making billions of dollars.  This would also be big news because there are other companies like BlueKai and Exelate that currently offer similar “tracking services” for help companies determine what the best keywords are to use in their ads to get the most clicks.  Needless to say, if Google decided tomorrow that they were going to be in this business, these companies would instantly be put out of business and Google would be the leader in this area.

I think that this would also be big news for consumers and merchants because it just might change the way people think about and/or use Google.  If you knew that you were going to get a bunch of emails or targeted ads based on the words you searched on in Google I think you might actually think a little a more before you made that search or before you automatically typed “Google” into your web browser.  This may very well end up being the reason that Google also never does become “evil” and start selling this data because unless their competitors start to do the same, consumers may start moving to Bing or Yahoo if they feel like Google is “selling them out” or carelessly sharing their previous search data.

Would you consider stopping to use Google if they started sharing your searches with other companies for money?

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