While Google is 20, its reputation is under threat

A few years after the launch of Google in 1998, his name has become synonymous with web search. It was not just the best search engine in the world, it was what instantly connected us to the things we needed. While the company was constantly introducing (or acquiring) a growing range of free and other free services, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs and the mobile operating system Android, people loved them for the most part.

But Google has grown. And consumers have also grown up. As the company celebrates its 20th anniversary today, our relationship with it is no longer as simple as it was.

Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal on Facebook and fearing that the Russians have exploited Facebook and YouTube to influence the 2016 presidential election, people are increasingly suspicious of technology companies, particularly those who collect personal data. This trend will not reverse anytime soon. Google, given the enormity of its presence in our lives, will bear more than anyone.

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Over the years, consumers have become more aware, in part because of Facebook's privacy blunders, that the reason for being these free and free Google services is due to Google's massive advertising activities, fueled largely by part by the personal information of the users. .

"Corynne McSherry, EFF's legal director on privacy protection," said that "Google has become a leader in surveillance capitalism, following our use of the Web in order to win money." money for herself and others. Fast Society.

Google started showing ads next to search results generated by search keywords. But he quickly began placing advertisements for customers via a sprawling advertising network on websites and mobiles, and this location also depends on personal data.

It works. Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported revenue of $ 32.66 billion in the second quarter, of which 86 percent was advertising revenue. The online advertising space is a duopoly of two giants of personal data collection: eMarketer predicts that Google will take 37.1% of total US advertising spending this year, with 20.6% for Facebook.

"In recent years, people have understood Google's reach in all areas of digital, and in particular its impact on privacy," said Tim Bajarin, President and Long-time Analyst at Valley Strategies. "Now he is perceived as less trustworthy, and his credibility has been questioned as to how his technology could be used for good and bad."

A compromise game

Many consumers are now right to use Facebook and Google services as compromises. They balance the utility and necessity of the services against the personal information that they have to give up.

Facebook won the poster work for the personal data collection business model, but perhaps only because of its rapid growth and unbridled approach ("move fast and break"), its life attitude private and its clumsiness to respond to the public and regulators about the abuse of privacy.

But Google has not been immune to the general erosion of the confidence of large technology companies in recent years. In 2016, Harris Polls ranked third in the world's top 100 most visible companies in the United States. This year, Google's reputation has been reduced to 28. However, the US Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows Google. down just two points from 2016 to 2018 on a 100-point scale. The company achieved an average score of 81.6 years between 2002 and 2018.

A Recode / Survey Monkey survey conducted in April of this year showed that 56% of people trust Facebook with their personal information, the least of the big technology companies. But another investigation by The edge and Reticle Research have found that users view Google as slightly more transparent than Facebook about how it uses personal data for advertising.

Google's privacy breaches are not as dramatic as those of Facebook, perhaps in part because it has proved more competent to respond, both in terms of words and actions.

But from a surveillance and privacy point of view, we should look at Google the same way as Facebook. Google can actually collect a wider set of information about a user than Facebook New York TimesBrian X. Chen, although Facebook's data can be more personal and therefore more powerful for targeting many types of ads.

"Google has had some difficulties when its innovations have crossed the line," said Theresa Payton, director of information for the White House under the George W. Bush administration and CEO of security consulting firm Fortalice Solutions. . In 2010, he says, Google Street View cars were caught in the act of listening to Wi-Fi. In 2012, after finding a workaround for the policy of restricting cookies on the Internet. Apple's Safari web browser, Google has been the target of a lawsuit and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined $ 22.5 million.

In 2012, Payton continues, Google has combined and consolidated its many privacy policies into one comprehensive policy. This has simplified things, but has also allowed the company to personalize search results and targeted ads by tracking users in almost all of its services, including Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Search and Youtube. This made some customers feel "betrayed that they were a way to sell ads," says Payton.

After promising to protect the privacy of users, Google changed its privacy policy in 2016 to allow the combination of web browsing data collected via cookies in users' browsers with personal information collected through Google services such as search and Gmail. The result was that DoubleClick ads could then be targeted to users with the help of personal information that Google holds, reported ProPublica. "It also means that Google can now, if it wishes, create a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything he writes in the email, from each website. visited and research that he performs. "

The latest news that Google has signed an agreement with Mastercard, which will allow it to track and establish correlations between purchases of people and online shopping, also resulted in a break.

On the other hand, Payton gives Google substantial credit to address privacy concerns, including providing consumers with tools to better understand what data has been collected, by providing them with ways to remove personal data from personal data. Google servers and options close some types of tracking.

Big company, big target

Google's image issues have been exacerbated in some ways by its size. It has become a huge target.

The company was fined $ 2.7 billion by European antitrust regulators in June 2017, after being accused of using its immense market power to block potential competitors to its many services. Just over a month ago, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sent a letter to the FTC asking her to investigate Google for possible anti-trust behavior in the United States.

"Many are justifiably wondering if it has become so powerful that it will crowd out the emergence of alternatives – the next Googles that can change the world as much as Google," McSherry said.

Like Apple and other corporate giants, Google has been called to tax evasion. He has been accused of being less neutral in the way he adjusts his algorithms to get search results. Advertisers have been frustrated by YouTube's risky attempts to remove graphic, hateful, and toxic content from its video platform.

In 2010, Google received praise for its decision in principle to withdraw from China, a major emerging consumer market, rather than giving in to government requests for censorship. Lately, the company has been criticized for apparently having worked on a plan to return to the market. the Intercept reported on August 1 that Google was working on a new search engine (under the code name Dragonfly) that would 'blacklist' websites and search terms on human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful demonstrations ".

"Google's own employees are worried about the direction the company will take, for example by considering moving to the Chinese market where it would provide censored service to an authoritarian regime," he said. McSherry.

On Wednesday, Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, testified before a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on potential privacy legislation. Things are a bit difficult. Enright was reluctant, but he finally admitted, in a roundabout way, that the project does exist. But he did not say anything, insisting Cable) that he was not "clear on the outlines of what is in the field or out of reach of this project". Google has once again emerged as a secret and willing to say all that is needed to keep regulators out of business.

This has been the main position of the technology industry in Washington since forever, but it may not work much longer. Legislators have become aware of privacy and antitrust risks built into Google's considerable size and reach. Europe and California have passed laws on the confidentiality of tactile data, and lawmakers are being pressured to adopt privacy protection measures at the federal level. And this is happening as the country is still trying to determine the extent to which foreign entities have used several major technology platforms to influence the 2016 elections.

Learn more about Google's 20th birthday:

How did I go from Google intern to Google Maps?

What did eight Google products look like when they were new?

With his legions of lobbyists in D.C., does not Google understand that? Judging by his recent appearances on the hill, maybe not. In early September, Google gave up a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on electoral interference by refusing to send Larry Page alongside Twitter and Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook. Google has instead offered to his lawyer, Kent Walker, who is very competent, but whose face at the witness table can not symbolize the real concerns of Google on the issue and its respect for the concerns of the government. So the non-presentation of the page discouraged some senators. The committee even left an empty chair at Google at the witness table to play the snub.

"In order for Google to continue to grow, it will need to address this credibility problem and work to convince governments and individuals that it will not betray people's privacy and that it will be fair and equitable in their lives. activities, "said Bajarin.

This is especially true when you plan to develop Google. CEO Sundar Pichai often points out that AI is at the heart of the future of the company. He has already begun to infuse his existing products with AI, and is developing new ones, like his Duplex robot with its strangely human sound, which will do completely new things and potentially play important roles in our lives. Given the concern we already have as to where AI will reach the benevolent / dystopian scale in the future, Google will need all possible trust in 2038 and beyond, as today.