Everyday, Google gains a larger portion of internet users who switch to Google from long time established providers. Why are so many making the switch? It’s simple – Google provides simple, intuitive, easy-to-use web apps that increase productivity, provide information in clear and concise ways, and the best part about all of this is that they provide access to this multitude of tools for free, and under a single Google Account – no reason to sign up at 20+ different sites & remember 20 different logins & passwords. Here’s a list of services that Google currently offers:

  • Google AdWords
  • Google Alerts
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Base
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Google Calendar
  • Google Checkout
  • Google Desktop
  • Google Finance
  • Froogle
  • Gmail
  • Google Groups
  • Google Maps
  • Google Notebook
  • Orkut
  • Picasa
  • Google Docs & Spreadsheets
  • Google Reader
  • Google Talk
  • Google Video
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Search History

Now, there are 22 different services listed there, and if I looked hard enough, I could probably come up with some more. Here’s the scary part – All of these services collect information from the end user… YOU!!! Now, I’m not saying that your information isn’t safe with Google, but consider this… they crawl, index and cache billions of web pages, they offer users Gmail accounts that provide 2GB+ of storage. They’ve obviously got tons of virtual space to store all of this information – that information also includes what you’re doing on the internet! They log and track everything else, it certainly wouldn’t be much more difficult to log and track individual user activity would it?

I’m not saying that we all need to panic and run away from Google, but has anyone actually read their Privacy Policy? I sure haven’t… it’s probably 500 pages long with more fine print than anyone could ever imagine. Stay tuned as I review each Google service and look into exactly what information is shared with them. There are 22 different ones on there, so please be patitent… I do have other stuff to do, but if there are ones that you would rather read about, please comment and let me know which ones I should get to first.

Related Posts