2007 April 20

Google Web History: Moths to a flame

Continuing on my theme of yesterday about Google and them being the flame to which moths like us are flying straight in to — with little knowledge or regard for that fact that we could get burned whether or not Google continues to “do no evil” going forward — I give you Google Web History.

UPDATE: CNET has news on a complaint on Google filed at the Federal Trade Commission with links to some articles and sites that are really enlightening. Copy of the complaint is here (PDF) and contains this point, “The acquisition of DoubleClick will permit Google to track both a personâ€™s Internet searches and a personâ€™s web site visits. This could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America, 314 million Internet users in Europe, and more than 1.1 billion Internet users around the world.“

One reason I turned off Google Search History a few days after turning it on (the predecessor to Web History) was that I had a keen sense that allowing Google to have an audit trail of my seeking and viewing behavior was a really bad idea — especially in a day of subpoena happy law enforcement — even though I’m the prototypical model citizen. Let’s look at six applications and see why I sometimes ask myself whether I’m being paranoid, an alarmist or just watchful:

1) Gmail allows Google to match IP address to user. As long as I’m logged in and use the same browser, they’re aware of other Google services I use and could (not saying they do) collate all Google services traffic emanating from that IP address/machine (Gmail’s state is pretty persistent and perhaps you notice that their requirement to re-login are few and the session length is pretty liberal…they almost never kick me off)

2) Google Search gives them a Database of Intention (to use a term coined by John Batelle in The Search) that — since I’m logged into Gmail — is a capture of every single search ever performed. Google can undoubtedly capture my search use regardless if I’ve got Google Search History turned on or not

3) Google Analytics is so robust and free that I’ve placed their tracking code all over the web sites and web assets I own or am involved in as has virtually everyone else I know. So Google doesn’t just have the ability to spider sites, they also now have a view into process (someone’s clickstream through a site)

As the days go by it seems like Google is delivering extremely scalable, easy to use (yet butt-ugly) services designed to attract as many humans as possible to use them. The more we connect through Google services, the more tracking and analytics they’ll have in their Database of Intention (to use a term coined by John Batelle in The Search).

Appears that Google’s acquisition of Marratech (UPDATE: they only acquired the Marratech web conferencing software) is an internal use acquisition (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) but I agree with Pete Cashmore that it’s most likely designed to add to the productivity suite they’re building with the alleged Microsoft Office killer (i.e., Google Docs & Spreadsheets; Google Presentations) and their likely Sharepoint killer (i.e., Jotspot). Add to that what I’m viewing as "table stakes" to be in the collaboration game — screen sharing and conferencing with voice, video, etc. — and you have one helluva hub that will attract we moths to the Google flame.

Add to that the build-out of what Eric Schmidt dubbed "the Google supercomputer" at the Web 2.0 Expo and you can see what they’re building and their strategy becomes clear: they’re not just collecting and delivering means to place the world’s information at our fingertips, they’re also giving us the tools to mix and mash it around together as a collective…

…and insert ads at every appropriate junction, custom tailored to each of us since they’ll be able to track an amazing wealth of data. Perhaps it’s time for the ‘sphere to pressure Google to open up and let us at least have some level of understanding of what data they’re compiling on us.

Filed Under: Web 2.0