How much time do you have....

This ad makes you reflect on how much time is left to spend with your loved ones based on their ages and compares it to how much time you spend on TV and online in the end.

Google is god

It’s hard to say if, for the regular person, how technology came to impact their lives once a new invention comes out. It’s safe to say that during the 1700 to the 1950’s the big leaps in tech, like the airplane slowly crept in to peoples’ lives. People probably knew of the airplane then but for the technology to be “felt” by the regular consumer took several decades. Fast forward to the late 90s and 2000s with the development of the internet, social media and mobile devices – it takes less than a decade for a new technology to be used by the masses.

*credit to owner

Take the smart phone and social media as a present example. I need to link both since one probably helped spur the other. Facebook was started in a dorm in 2004 and the first iPhone was launched in 2007. In about a decade 2 billion out of the 7 billion of earth inhabitants have a smart phone (maybe more if you include the regular mobile phone). That is how the rapid growth of technology has impacted the world in increasing speeds.

Because of its omnipresence and rapid growth people seem to take for granted that these technologies are now all knowing. While Apple is maybe top of mind on the niceties of technologies, Google has the platform that probably most people revolve around. Google is probably better than the God you worship. When you pray to God, you have to wait for an answer and probably need to reflect if your prayers were answered or not. Ask Google – and you get an answer. Whatever question you want to ask, Google has an answer. Just say “Ok Google” and it’s awake ready for whatever question you may ask.

Google knows you! Who you are, what you do. It knows what your habits are. Where you work, how much you earn. The more you use it the more it gets to know you. You ask it for directions, it knows where you go how often you go what routes you take. It’s practically on all devices you use or will use.

If you are crept out of all of these, you should. But it won’t keep you from using it. It’s convenient, it makes life easier and it has all the answers! You need you phone, you need to get directions, you need to keep in touch, you rely on the technology to make your day to day work more efficiently.

Here’s a list of what Google probably gets from you and we see how they do it by platform or device.

Desktop via Google search, Google Chrome and Google Maps

Search history – essentially what you search for

Browser history – what websites you look at

Maps – what places you look into

A months worth of Google Maps data. They know where I went.

Having a mobile device running on Google’s Android platform will get to know you better. Most of the thing mentioned prior are all on the phone. But the phone goes with you. So it know where you are, when you planned your trip, what route you are taking and how you got there. It even knows how long you stayed. 

Google has a very good reason for this though. All these services they provide for free anyway. They get their revenues from advertising. They want to get to know us better in order to give us more relevant information and with the data they get from using these platforms they provide advertisers to create and implement better advertising.

When you sign in or login to use whatever of their products, you technically link the data specifically to you. Even if you don’t however, it is most likely linked as well. I’m quite sure the software they use can easily figure out whether a device is being used by just one person or used by multiple users. Just an example, if Google Analytics figure out the demographics and consumer profile of the visitors to a website – it can figure out a lot more things.

Should you be afraid? Technically, yes, but then again why should you? What would make Google be interested in your particular life? Commutatively they need your data as part of a bigger data set. But your data in particular it’s of no interest to them, unless you have a stalker within. Even with this sacrifice in privacy, it highly unlikely that people that people would ditch all this privacy anyway. 

The fact, that there are over 2 billion people in social media blasting their lives to whomever wants to see it – people want to show off. So, privacy?

So, you pray to God to seek help for your problems but Google can answer them real time and probably knows you as much as God does. So yes, Google may technologically be your god.