In this blog post, we will take a look at how Google collects our information and interests and can even influence our thoughts and emotions.
A long time ago, I went on a trip to Eastern Europe with a friend. Exhausted from the 13-hour flight, we turned on the Google Maps app to find a place to stay as soon as we arrived. I hesitated for a moment because I couldn’t remember the name of the hotel, but then I saw a strange phrase on the map. “Best Western Hotel December 3-4.” Google Maps knew more about the hotel I had booked, including the name and dates, than I did. Thanks to this, I was able to find my way to the hotel easily, but on the other hand, I felt uneasy. How did Google know this? It turned out that the site I had booked the hotel on was linked to Google Maps. I had unknowingly logged into that site with my Google account and booked the hotel, and that information had been passed on to Google.
I often encounter situations where Google seems to know me better than I know myself when I use an Android smartphone. When I go to the home screen after watching a video on YouTube, “Custom Channels” and “Custom Videos” appear. The content is also interesting and entices me to click on it. This is not all. The Chrome browser analyzes the keywords I search for and presents ‘personalized ads’ that may interest me, and the free Google Photos photo storage app uses only my photos to understand me and use them for ‘personalized ads’ and various marketing.
Google is getting smarter and smarter, and it is learning more and more about me. Google knows all about my preferences, my interests, and my lifestyle, so it might have the ambition to take over my thoughts someday.
Let me give you a slightly political example. As a job seeker, I have a lot of worries and concerns these days. Feeling hopeless, I searched for job-related information on Google, such as “job hunting difficulties,” “tips for writing a resume,” and “how to build up your resume,” and watched job interview-related lectures on YouTube. Around this time, I saw several articles about candidate A, who was running for a seat in the National Assembly, making pledges such as “I will significantly increase jobs for young people” and “I will regulate the hiring process of large companies so that people without qualifications can get jobs.” Will my favorability for Candidate A increase or decrease? Since favorability for a candidate is more dependent on the fact that it stimulates emotions rather than cold reason, there is a high probability that my favorability for Candidate A will increase.
A study has been published that shows that Google can manipulate people’s favorability for presidential candidates simply by the order in which articles are displayed on the portal. Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Behavioral Technology Laboratory, proved through an experiment that Google could influence the outcome of the US presidential election through the “Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME).” The researchers randomly divided the participants into three groups and provided them with brief information on three candidates and asked them which candidate they would choose. They then had them search the Internet for information on the three candidates. The researchers manipulated the data to produce 30 search results per person. The researchers placed positive content about the candidates at the top of the search rankings and neutral or negative content at the bottom. After 10 minutes of browsing the search results, when the group was asked again about their support for a candidate, the group that had seen search information favorable to a particular candidate increased their support for that candidate from 9.1% to 26.5%.
The results of this study clearly show how sensitive people’s thoughts are to the information they are exposed to. What if this information is cleverly mixed with facts related to my current interests or concerns? That information would be perfect for winning my favor, and it would be easy to gain my sympathy. Google’s recipes designed based on my information can change our thoughts and feelings.
Google has a systematic basis for knowing everything about us in the Android operating system. Android is the dominant operating system for smartphones, accounting for 82% of the global market. Of the 30 apps that are installed on Android phones and cannot be deleted, 11 are Google services, such as Chrome, YouTube, and Gmail, which are not essential to the operation of the smartphone but provide convenience. Of course, what these apps have in common is that they all offer “sign in with a Google account.” Google seems to provide the ultimate convenience to users through such account linking, but in return, it takes too much of our information.
Signing in with a Google account is not a service that we should use simply because it is convenient. In order to be on guard against Google, which is getting smarter and smarter about us, we have no choice but to become smarter. Avoid linking your Google account to sites that may provide sensitive information about you, and take a critical look at Google’s services that provide convenience to you. In an era where “Google” is written everywhere you go, you need to be more proactive in order to become the true master of your own thoughts.
