*for a better reading experience, we advise you to click on every link, especially if you are logged in to your Google Account.
Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth: Google is CREEPY. Unlike researching the internet with tools like Sentinel, Google is tracking you way more than you know — and you have willingly given it permission to get into the most private corners of your mind, and to profit from it.
Google is a tracking company, not a search one.
Google used to be just a search engine with a colorful friendly logo that allowed us to find things online. It was good, it made sense and, most of all, it simplified our lives.
Since then, we have been slowly adopting each and every one of Google’s new products because, hey, what the heck, it’s just so convenient. We Google stuff, save our Docs to Drive, find locations in Maps, schedule on Calendar, watch videos on YouTube, save our passwords and financial information on Chrome, plan our vacations through Flights, chat with our friends in Meet or Hangouts… the list is endless and we interact with it daily.
It seemingly simplifies our lives, gathers everything we do online in just one place and, interestingly enough, always seems to know what we want to buy next, read next, watch next, do next, think next, be next.
How do they do that? How do they know you even better than you know yourself?
This is because Google has long ago stopped being a search company. It’s a tracking one.
Google has created a very detailed profile of who you are
Google keeps your search history forever, which means they know every single thing you have searched for since you created your Google Account (when was that? 12, 13 years ago?).
That alone is a whole lot of personal information, but by no means the only thing they track.
According to Princeton’s WebTAP privacy project, Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites. This leads to Google knowing almost all of your browsing history. If you use Chrome and you are logged in, they can also track your activity on sites like duckduckGo and the remaining 25% of the internet.
If this isn’t enough to creep you out, things get way darker if you use more Google products.
Do you use Android? They know which apps you have downloaded, when you open them, how long for and who you interact with. They also of course have access to all your emails on Gmail, Photos, events on Calendar and text messages (which, btw., are not encrypted by default).
Like Gmaps? They keep a record of absolutely all your location history.
What about YouTube? Yep, there’s a record of everything you’ve watched there, too.
The same happens with every Google product you use: they track the s#*! out of you.
Now the question is, why do they even bother? I’m not that interesting, I’m not even a celebrity. I just look for furniture and articles on the efficiency of Covid19 vaccines. What can they possible do with my data?
Google profits from your attention
If you think Google products are free, you don’t understand how the mainstream internet works nowadays.
Google’s main business is online advertising — meaning they make money cashing out on your attention. Google builds a scarily precise picture of you (how could they not, if you have — probably unconsciously — given them permission to track everything you do) and uses your profile to sell ad space. Companies then fight for your attention and you are subjected to extremely personalized ads that, when clicked on, enlarge Google’s bulky wallet and make you lose focus, time and energy (and probably money, too).
In short: you — not Gmail, not YouTube, not even the search engine — are Google’s product. They make money off their ability to manipulate you. According to the company’s 2020 report, over 80% of Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) revenue came from Google’s ads business. It amounted to $147 billion.
Google has turned your personal data into a billionaire business.
However, there are ways out of this. You can avoid being exploited with tools such as Sentinel. We don’t track you (we don’t even know who you are, to be honest) and, also, we are a hell lot faster (30x to be precise) and efficient. Also, since we don’t craft a profile of you, we don’t deliver biased results according to your private data looking for more money making clicks.
You might still think: yeah, and so what? I still get to use Google’s amazing products and to me they seem free. I don’t care if they make money off me since the service they provide is so good.
Is it?
Google doesn’t want you to learn and grow: it wants you to keep on clicking. It’s embedded in their design.
Google’s algorithm curates the internet for you to get you hooked
Google filters results by “relevance”. Relevance to you, that is. Meaning: you get shown results you are more prone to like based on your profile. This is done by means of the infamous algorithm, which basically acts as a gatekeeper: it filters what gets in and what stays out of your filter bubble. This has been shown to happen even if logged out and/or using private browsing mode.
This sort of curation has spread all across the internet, creating bubbles of single individuals and an illusion of connectivity rather than actual empathy, compassion and connection to the world. You basically get your beliefs reinforced and are denied of the possibility of expanding your mind by being exposed to different perspectives. This explains why we are now living in a world in which most of us think we are right: it’s the way we are using the internet or, actually, it’s the way the internet is using us.
This sets a fertile ground for confirmation bias, conspiracy theories, spread of fake news and further polarization between groups holding opposing beliefs.
The dangers of constant exposure to one sided stories and worlds views can even expand to great influence on political elections, stands surrounding public health and virtually any sensible topic on the planet.
The bottom line is: there is no standardized Google experience anymore. There is, actually, almost no standardized internet experience anymore.
Why does Google do this?
Once again: because that is how it makes money. By making you click. And you are more prone to click on what you like than on what you don’t.
Which gets us to our final, and scary, conclusion.
Google has become the internet.
We have equated Google with our experience as internet users. We gave it access to our most intimate privacy and the extremely powerful ability to let it shape OUR THOUGHTS. All of this in exchange of convenience, comfort and pictures of cats.
It’s a very unbalanced equation, don’t you think?
This is how we use the internet today:
If almost literally everyone uses Google, then any project, person or company that wants to succeed must abide to Google’s rules.
Have you ever tried to get support by Google? Because there is none. If you forget your password or are locked out of your account for random things like using a copyrighted song on a YouTube video, it can be very hard to get access back into your account. This means that, if like most people you have centralized most of your digital life around Google products, you will be in trouble. You even lose access to all the websites you log in to through your Google account which, by the way, are most of them. Not to mention Google data breaches, which show how vulnerable your data is.
We now live under a monopolized, advertised, individualized, unprivate, filtered internet.
TAKE BACK CONTROL: DE-GOOGLE YOUR LIFE
It is no longer enough to hope for regulation: you must take control of our online life. As Sapiens writer Yuval Harari said: “One key rule is that if you get my data, the data should be used to help me and not to manipulate me. Another key rule, that whenever you increase surveillance of individuals you should simultaneously increase surveillance of the corporation and governments and the people at the top. And the third principle is that — never allow all the data to be concentrated in one place. That’s the recipe for a dictatorship.” ⁵
De-googling might sound like a daunting task when you first think about it, but it’s possible and, most importantly, necessary if we are to fully experience the potential of the internet. The fact that it is so hard to leave only shows how dangerous and addictive it has become.
This is why we created Sentinel: An A.I. powered information researcher and synthesizer that surfs the internet 30x faster at scale. No information bias, no ads, no data recollection, no tracking. We don’t build a profile on you. Heck, we don’t even know who you are.
Sentinel’s closed beta will be released soon and we would love to have you on board. Sign up on our website and experience the internet in a much more meaningful way.
We want the internet to be a free and safe space by providing a deep, all-encompassing experience and educating users on a conscious exploration of this fantastic world that the internet can be.
Thank you for your time.
Find out what Google knows about you:
Tracking of your activity:
Ad personalization and the profile Google has made about you:
Your location history:
Your entire Google Search history:
Your YouTube search history:
If you liked this story follow us on https://twitter.com/@get_sentinel for more stories and find out more about the project at https://get-sentinel.io
Sources:
- [1] Photo by Erik MClean from Pexels, https://www.pexels.com/photo/old-security-camera-on-shabby-building-wall-4592239/
- [2] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/OpenWPM_1_million_site_tracking_measurement.pdf
- [3], [4] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
- [5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yuval-harari-sapiens-60-minutes-2021-10-29/
