I love Google Alerts. I choose the keyword around a topic I’m interested in (’Zoopy’ is one example) and every time the keyword appears in an indexed web page, news article or blog post, I’m mailed a quick link that takes me straight to the keyword mention.
I love that Google is free. But if it wasn’t, yes (in answer to Eve Dmochowska’s question) I would pay for Google search and Gmail. In the meantime, I really don’t mind seeing Google Adwords around the place.
But as much as I love Google, I love my privacy more. And I believe that Larry and Sergey have gone one step too far with Google Health.
Firstly, as a concept, I would never, ever publish anything to do with money, health, advanced personal identification or trade secrets online. For me, Google started to blur this personal privacy line of mine with Google Docs. While I can obviously see how this could be useful for many happy campers, I would never be able to populate Google-hosted, web-accessible documents/spreadsheets with anything but a shopping list (or something equally superficial) for fear of it being seen by eyes other than mine. If I was collaborating with others on a project that was connected to income or intellectual value of some kind, I would never put it at this kind of risk. I have been known to be overly-protective, but rather safe than sorry is a good motto when it comes to business.
Secondly, and more specifically to Google Health, the user is being asked to make a gigantic leap of faith. They’re being invited to store everything from lab results to permanent medical records of all their conditions/diseases/ailments, accessible by medical practitioners, Google staff and technicians, your friendly neighbourhood hacker and the entire human population (if Google gets hacked, which has happened before by the way). And if your family GP happens to be checking your records and leaves it open while he nips out for lunch, how happy are you to have all your innermost (and outermost) secrets revealed to anyone who passes by the computer screen, from janitors to medical assistants to other patients even?
The fact that anyone is willing to use this service is frightening. We live in the age of phishing, 419 scams and a million ways to have your information stolen/copied/sold. Why is it that some people are so ready to put their entire lives on a virtual platter, for anyone who’s hungry enough to get at it? The most I’ve ever put into Facebook is a username and email address. I don’t think I even identified a location. Sharing is good, to a point. Sharing personal, private, secret information is (in my very humble opinion) just asking for trouble.
In a brief Twitter conversation with Rob Stokes, Jacques Marneweck and Tyler Reed about this topic last night, the argument in Google’s defense was generally twofold: That Google records all our searches anyway, so they probably know what medical conditions we have; and that users were probably equally shocked at the prospect of having Google Ads displayed on Gmail and other pages when Adwords first rolled out.
I don’t agree with either of these arguments really. In the first instance, there is a light year’s difference between Google knowing that a user with IP address 196.32.5.22 (who is logged in as bluesmurf101 in Gmail) is searching for ‘red warts on nose’; or knowing that Jonathan Jacobs from 104 Avalon Heights in Orange Tree Road in Vredehoek has chemical depression (with a prescription of 10mg of Cipralex per day), high blood pressure, 17 X-RAY scans and the prognosis attached to them, and a pending HIV test.
But more important than Google Health in isolation is when or where Google is going to draw the line. They’ve already branded our planet (Google Earth) so what’s really stopping them from going from the sublime to the ridiculous?
If you’re prepared to open yourself entirely to whatever Google wants to know about you, and if you continue to fill in all their forms and make full use of all their services (ignoring all risks and privacy concerns), here are a few new projects I’d like to suggest to Google, to help you truly become one with your mothership in Mountain View, California:
Google Oxygen — an online tool to help you record how many breaths you take each day, with graphs to display the percentage of nutrients in the air you’re breathing, and the efficacy of your body in processing them. You’ll be allocated a generous limit that will increase monthly in proportion to your Gmail counter. You will also be asked to undergo surgery to insert a transplant Google Lung, with an embedded WiFi transmitter. Costs will be no problem because you’ll be able to have the operation at a Google Clinic, under the expert supervision of a Google Surgeon.
Google Spirit — a convenient way for you to back up your spirit/soul/mind for easy access via any Google Body you may inhabit in the future. Via your Google Lung, you’ll be able to quickly download your Spirit in any number of lifetimes (Google’s not going anywhere). You’ll also be able to track your Google LifeLine, an interactive timeline of your reincarnations where you can collaboratively edit your events or invite other Google Spirits to join you in this Google Life on your Google LifeLine.
Google Consciousness — once you’ve inhabited your Google Body, transplanted a Google Lung and attached your Google Spirit, Google Consciousness will allow you to transport yourself via Google Teleport to any planet in the Google Galaxy. Start your journey at Google Earth and bypass Google Holes in Gspace with this magnificent 22nd century technology. Note that Alpha users may find Google Limbs detached on the other side but a quick visit to any corner Google Clone store will have you back out and transporting in no Gtime.
Where’s the line? I’ve got mine. Have you got yours?
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9 Responses to “I love Google. But I love my privacy more”
And herein lies the problem with the personalised web. The moment services become personal, that information has profit potential. No real surprise there - so why should things like Google Health come as a surprise?
I was quite surprised - in all honesty - to learn that the Mozilla Foundation was considering implementing Phorm-like technology into Firefox. Effectively, Mozilla would keep track of your browsing habits, and somewhere down the line, use that information to serve ads back to you (Phorm minus the ISP).
I draw the line at email. Besides - anything on a Google server sits on a backbone that may well become inaccessible, if American Telcos get their way. I don’t want all my collaborative work disappearing behind a stonewall with “Sorry, your country is not permitted access to this network”-type error messages thrown at me. And I feel much safer if my data is on my harddrive.
What about Google Brainwave? An implant that tracks your thoughts, submits the data to Google Trends, and uses it to refine the filters used by AdWords to serve the most relevant ads humanly possible? Plus, with 14TB of free storage, you’ll never forget another thought again!
You’re right about email. It’s something I hate to admit that I rely on - purely from a portable storage point of view. I’m not mad about flash drives (mainly because they can be lost so easily) so I rely on gmail for remote copies of presentations, urls and other info that I need on the run. But yes, this shouldn’t be left to Gmail’s servers and technical staff to sift through at their leisure. I should insist on an Exchange server setup at the office - but on our eternal To Do list, this is such a low priority. But I might just nudge it up slightly now that it’s front of mind again.
I think we should end the Google ideas here and now. They might come trawling and actually sprout some of these. If that ever happens, I’m buying myself a Cape Union Mart tent and going to live in a cave
Jason, this is definitely a pertinent issue, but I suspect you’re being a little alarmist. Seeing Google Health definitely made my eyebrows jump through my cranium - but I simply won’t use it.
I ask: why would Google (or anyone, for that matter) be interested in an insignificant blip on the interwebz like me? I’m not a hacker, I’m nothing particularly important, and I’ve got no plans to become either of those. So I shrug and use Gmail, because it’s damn cool. (But I am careful about what I give to Marc Zuckerberg by putting stuff on Facebook. Employers can see that shit.)
Then again, perhaps you’re not being overly paranoid, and I’m just being naive… I am open to being corrected.
Half of me thinks you’re right, Paddy. Maybe all this flapping is unnecessary. But the other half of me really thinks that the scariest part of this all is not even the idea of users sharing health information without giving it a second thought, but the fact that Google came up with the idea in the first place and then still went ahead with building the service, launching the service and staring at the public straight-faced, ready to collect our private bits and pieces. Did no one at Google raise their hand to say ‘um, aren’t we going a bit far now?’. And if someone did, and they were ignored, what kind of villain is Google becoming? It’s like a James Bond movie and Google’s sitting stroking their persian.
Imagine if any company other than Google launched a happy dandy come-share-your-medical-history-and-lab-results service online. It would surely be hounded to hades by Techcrunch, bloggers and even mainstream media. Instead, everyone’s carried on as though Google just launched a tweak to their algorithms. Google has license to do anything, ask us anything, demand anything. This is what’s so scary.
The underlying problem is not the fact that Google did this, it is the fact that the public love Google enough to just love the idea purely based on th fact that its Google!
Google CLEARLY knows this, leverages this and rolls out the most brilliant plan to take over the world without even blinking in a stare-down competition!
Jason, you are already publishing your personal stuff on-line. Just from reading this article I know certain behavioral traits from you. I know your first name and last name…the rest I can pretty much find out by searching the wev, reading a cv hear and there and the rest facebook or myspace will help me with. My point: Sooner or later everything will be on-line Google will index it, the display it for you in nice categories for easy browsing
@Win You’ll have a hard time finding Jason Elk on Facebook or Myspace or any other social space. I only use my full name for professional/business instances (like TechLeader) and for the rest I use a mix of fantastical fictional noms de plume.
Jason - interesting points…but again you tag in conspiracy versus true reality! Do you really think that your current medical records; printed in some folder somewhere in a hospital, or scattered around disk drives in some medical data center…is safe and sound? (Especially considering the state our public health institutes…including the private hospitals) The objective of Google Health is not to take from a user what’s out there today…unsafely recorded and utilized… but to actually give control over various aspects of your own health record! This is about you gaining more control and thus more security and flexibility. With some lunch money I would bet I could head out to the medical institutes where you’ve lived and with some incentives get copies (if not the originals) of your entire health record! Nevermind the big brother conspiracy here… having control over your medical records ensures you can self diagnose and be assisted in a better way when in a medical crisis. This is the real world Jason!
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Growing up with Beltel, Trumpet Winsock and a 2400 modem, Jason has been online since high school in the nineties, with the IRC logs to prove it! After heading up web initiatives for an international online marketing group for six years, he left to start his own internet strategy consultancy, establishing a global affiliate revenue stream along the way.
Jason is now co-founder and CEO of Zoopy.com, a social media playground where users upload and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs.
What started as a trickle of a problem a few months ago has bubbled over into a series of unfortunate, unstoppable, unbearable and unbelievable events...
Few things infuriate me. In fact, very few things make me use the word infuriate. But today, as a survivor of rampant, blatant bandwidth theft, I have...
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Google will index it, the display it for you in nice categories for easy browsing
And herein lies the problem with the personalised web. The moment services become personal, that information has profit potential. No real surprise there - so why should things like Google Health come as a surprise?
I was quite surprised - in all honesty - to learn that the Mozilla Foundation was considering implementing Phorm-like technology into Firefox. Effectively, Mozilla would keep track of your browsing habits, and somewhere down the line, use that information to serve ads back to you (Phorm minus the ISP).
I draw the line at email. Besides - anything on a Google server sits on a backbone that may well become inaccessible, if American Telcos get their way. I don’t want all my collaborative work disappearing behind a stonewall with “Sorry, your country is not permitted access to this network”-type error messages thrown at me. And I feel much safer if my data is on my harddrive.
What about Google Brainwave? An implant that tracks your thoughts, submits the data to Google Trends, and uses it to refine the filters used by AdWords to serve the most relevant ads humanly possible? Plus, with 14TB of free storage, you’ll never forget another thought again!
// Silverwing
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