And probably better than you know yourself. As you very well know, Google is the supreme being who knows the answer to any question you have ever had. Surveys show that the average Internet user visits the single fielded site and asks a question no less than five times a day. I don’t have to verify that stat, just look it up and you’ll find it somewhere.
All very well, you rub the search lamp and you get your answer. But there is a darker secret. Everything you do is tracker, maybe not personally to your name but at least to a digital ID that can be tracked back to you. It’s the equivalent of writing your thoughts on little post-it-notes and sticking them on walls all over town.
So why does it even matter? Unfortunately you eventually begin to rely on the webs for answers to everything from work to health to that strange itch you’ve been having in your bathing suit area.
Technically, if I could see every search you have ever made over the past few years I could tell a lot about you – your goals, your problems and your progression over time.
Match that up to your Facebook account and I can even draw a timeline with pictures and commentary from your friends – don’t forget that Facebook now owns your content for life (and beyond). Your footprint is large, very large.
But forget about that, nothing we can do about it right now – just don’t implicate yourself in any crimes – yes online searches are now being used in court cases as evidence, in particular don’t look for methods about the crime you want to commit.
There’s a taste of whats to come, on Google’s main page, just type in a search query and it begins to complete the phrase for you based on the most popular searches.
For a more detailed look, try this version
Ok, so I played around with it a bit, here we go:
So based on this first one, a lot of people are worried about the world ending – although not as many as when the World Series Starts, I’ll take that as good news.
This one got me, a little bit worrying. You do know there is a clock on the computer you are using to type this right now? Apparently there were 7 billion times when people did not know this.
Ok, ok, Google knows a lot – and probably helped the 700 thousand odd people who wanted to know when they will feel their baby move, however the level of personalization is not there yet to satisy the billion people worried about the day they will die.
Jesus Saves, and is still beating the fight against diabetes.
Ok, you get the idea, be careful out there especially when trying to figure out which STD you’ve picked up.