Welcome Finance Enthusiasts !!

Before AI (Artificial Intelligence) became a thing Google was the pioneer in collecting data from its users. They harvest user’s content consumption behaviour to show targeted ads and other allied services and earn billions in revenue. Every possible data or memory an individual owns is on a Google database. Be it photos, files, browsing history and even passwords. The Android phones that we use have the operating system developed and maintained by Google. There is hardly any way to de-google your life. Google as a brand is synonymous to search. We don’t say search it we say google it (as a verb).

Google since its inception in 1998 has strategically acquired companies to build up its position as organizer of information. Its services include search engine, email, maps, software, hardware, artificial intelligence, cloud and storage services and many more. Many Google products were the services provided by companies acquired by Google. The best example being the acquisition of Android Inc in 2005 (a startup founded in 2003) helped Google to reach millions of users through mobile handsets. The Android operating system hosts all the services of Google helping it to build an ecosystem which is hard to escape.

Google was fined by the California jury to pay $314 million over claims that it illegally used Android users’ cellular data to collect information without their knowledge. During the viral saree trend there were speculations that Gemini (an AI model by Google) was giving output which was not explicitly shared by the user. The incognito tab which people believe is a privacy wall redirects the search history to Google on the basis of our account. Only what you search is not recorded in the search history. In 2021 Google changed its policy for Google photos. The upload of free, unlimited storage for high quality pictures was put on end. Post policy changes every photo backed up will count towards the 15 GB  free storage limit available to every Google account user.

We are paying Google to store our data on their servers which they use to offer their allied services and earn revenues.I wonder are we at Google’s mercy or the tech giant is at our mercy. When a company operates on such a big level there comes a moral responsibility of safeguarding the users data. Personal data isn’t personal anymore. Data is not just information it is identity and power.