Tech Talk

Here’s How to Find Out What Google Knows About You

Or at least, what it thinks it knows about you

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

197 items. Google tagged me with a list of 197 ad groups to show me. Thirteen of them were specific advertisers such as JetBrains and Facebook, and 184 are my interests, traits, or profile.

In Q3 2020, Google generated $5 billion through its advertising service, Google Ads. This number comes from advertisers that pay Google to put their ads for display, but what makes Google ads so widely used?

Google uses AI-powered targeted marketing, which means they will only show the advertisement to relevant people. Relevant people are the intended target market, for example parents of a newborn will be more likely to click on an ad about baby stroller compared to average individuals.

So, how does Google get this kind of information about a person?

It’s pretty easy actually if you think about it. Over 1 billion people use Gmail. If you have booked a flight or a hotel and Google adds them automatically to your Google Calendar, you know they are automatically going through your emails and their attachments.

In March 2021, 64.2% of Internet users use Google Chrome. YouTube also claims…