Google Says It’s Committed to Privacy. What It Isn’t Saying Should Worry You
The company says it will stop tracking users across third-party websites, but that’s not the important part
By Jason Aten
Google is really a brilliant company. I don’t mean that in the sense that the people who work there are probably exceedingly smart, though every indication is that they are. What I mean, however, is that it’s a brilliant idea.
Build a utility that billions of people will use every day to tell you exactly what they’re interested in at that given moment, and then get companies to pay you to display an ad about that very interest right above the rest of the search results.
It’s a pretty incredible idea, and it also happens to be a very good business. Most of the money Google makes comes from those little ads at the top of the search results pages after you type in something you’re looking for. Those ads brought in roughly $100 billion in revenue for the company last year.
There is one problem, however: Privacy.
Specifically, Google’s entire business model is based on tracking just about everything you do online. A Princeton University study in 2016 said the company tracks as much as 67 percent of all…
