Google's Sins Anti-Privacy "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" ~Eric Schmidt, Former CEO of Google, right before being laughed at by the entire world Google has a terrible record when it comes to privacy. It's well-known that Google collects your data and sells it off to 3rd parties, so much so that it seems like every year Google is in another anti-privacy lawsuit. Your personal data online should belong to you and you alone. Google should have no right to sell your personal information without consent. Examples of anti-privacy actions by Google Google opts you in to "personalised ads" by default, allowing them to "follow you around" all over the web and allowing them to serve you "personalised ads." Gross! Google has a deal with Israel, "Project Nimbus", which some Google employees said could be used to better track Palestinians. Who's to say Google isn't using this on you too? Google can and will share any information they have on you with US authorities, and possibly any other authority that asks, as was the case when a Google Doc owned by Indian climate change activist Disha Ravi was shared with the Dehli Police, leading to her arrest. Google puts cookies on your computer. These cookies can be shared with authorities without approval from a judge Google Chrome sends all your browsing data back to Google. Chrome also has features that can be considered spyware, you can read more about this here. Google and Youtube were fined $170 million for violating Children's Online Privacy Laws Google misled users about location tracking policies by tricking users into thinking they turned off location tracking, when in fact Google kept collecting that information Google didn't tell users that a bug in Google+ exposed their information to outside parties At one point, Gmail scanned emails to better target ads at users Google has dealings with the CIA and NSA. In particular, Google was one of the many companies the NSA worked with to collect information on non-US citizens. Censorship Google, unsurprisingly, censors a lot of information, both due to national interests and personal interests. Examples of censorship by Google Google removed ads in Russia that called for protests in support of a Russian opposition party. This was done at the request of the Central Election Commission. The ads were not shown even in areas where the protests were allowed or where no voting was taking place Google removed the Smart Voting app from the Google Play Store, an app created by associates of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This was after a meeting with Russian officials, where it's said Russia threatened Google employees with imprisonment. Google censors sexually-explicit content. At one point, the SafeSearch filter settings changed from "On, Moderate, Off" to simply "On, Off". It's been noted that the new off function doesn't deliver the same results the old off function did, forcing users to be more specific when searching. Google was quick to remove pictures of celebrities during the 2014 ICloud leaks from its search engine Google censored search results during the COVID-19 pandemic without telling anyone Google blacklists certain phrases In 2011, Google's autocomplete wouldn't include popular torrenting applications uTorrent or BitTorrent. It didn't autocomplete "torrent" in general. YouTube removes and censors videos when asked by governments Google closed the account of a father who took a picture of his son's gentials, which was only to be shared with their doctor. This means Google can and will regularly scan your personal photos without your consent to find content they deem as "inappropriate." Why would you want a company to have access to your most private documents?! Monopolies, Trusts, & Antitrusts Google has, for years, been called a monopoly (or at least, an overly-powerful conglomerate) for its dominance of the search engine market. Before Google, the search engine market was pretty diverse, including Yahoo, AskJeeves, AltaVisa, Excite, Lycos, etc. Nowadays, the average consumer probably has no idea a search engine other than Google even exists. Hell, some consumers might not even know what a search engine is, all they know is Google! Examples of Google's antitrust tactics and stories Google has insane control of Android. I know for a fact on my phone, I can't even uninstall some Google apps like YouTube! (Nathan Lineback would be disappointed in me) Google Shopping, a price comparison website, caused many other price comparison sites to lose traffic or go out of business entirely. Alphabet Inc (Google's parent company) was fined 2.42 billion euros after the European Commission found them guilty of abusing their power. Google was accused of tilting search results in its own favour in a 2011 US Senate antitrust panel. The EU filed an antitrust complaint over Google's dominance of Android Jedi Blue Back Last Updated: November 6, 2024 Page Created: February 5, 2024