I'm overseas again... so posts may be slower and likely less...
Anyway... I was thinking...
It's real scary... Google.
Cos a lot of us. Not all, but a lot of us sign into our Google accounts and we just do our daily stuff online. And Google watches and tracks all these. Like if you book air tickets, they will scan through your email and "know" that you're flying soon. And if you search for the country after booking your tickets, the search results will also show when you're going to fly.
So Google has a lot of analytics and they really watch what people are doing, their daily habits and they feed consumers stuff that they want to eat. Like adverts and all that kinda stuff. Like if I start searching about Taiwan, then they'll start showing Taiwan adverts for hotels and all that...
Ok so I accept that cos I signed in and it's in my computer...
But then they also have access to many of our GPS systems cos a lot of us use Google maps. That's how they know whether a place is crowded or not at a particular time of the week. Cos based on their tracking, they know when there will be people and they also know when people leave the place, that's how they estimate how long people stay at a certain place.
And how bad the traffic is and where there's a jam and they can reroute people all around the place.
I think that's pretty scary...
And I don't know since when... They added a feature on Google maps. Cos I use it for navigation when I'm driving. And at some point, they added this feature when you can say "Google..." Do this, and Google will start searching or playing music...
Now... That SOUNDS cool, cos it's like Iron Man talking to JARVIS.
But think about it further. This means, when I am driving, yes, it would be convenient for me to say, Google play XYZ music and I don't need to touch my phone to play music.
But this also means that Google is always listening to me. They may not do any action on my phone, cos I don't say the trigger "Google" do XYZ...
But they are already listening and "waiting" for me to say Google do XYZ.
And they use this excuse to eavesdrop on my whole time in the car. And I'm pretty sure they are analysing the stuff in talking about. Cos Google isn't so good to just provide free stuff.
It's an excuse to keep the mic of the phone on to keep listening...
And I think it's really scary, cos Google is everywhere, and as it creeps into our lives, it already is... As they get more and more integrated in our lives, we will be living in a customized Google world. We'll be exposed to stuff that Google wants us to see. Cos they track our interests and feeds us the same things, so we always think the world is one way, it's like confirmation bias and Google is feeding that bias all the time.
Furthermore, if Google wants to influence us, it's going to be easy as well, cos they are just going to feed the stuff to us mindless consumers. And we wouldn't even know it was fed to us cos Google is just so integrated into our lives.
Google knows who we are when we upload pictures into Google photos or Google drive, they have facial recognition, so they will know who we take pictures with and our possible relationship with them, the more pictures we take with whoever, the closer our relationship is, etc etc.
Facebook is social networking, when I put my pictures up there, I expect Facebook to look through them. But I don't really upload pictures anyway.
But Google, what started out as a search site is pretty much getting data on consumers and feeding us more and more customized content and many of us like customised content, cos that's what we like to see and read, and we continue to integrate with Google cos it's convenient and we get sucked into this relationship with Google where they feed us stuff that us like to use and consume and they find out more and more about our lives and eventually, they sell this info and data, slaughtering us like the cattle that we are...
Now... There's no person at the side of Google who says... Ok ERSG is now in YYY country and likes to eat XYZ food. Rather, this is just data analytics and the AI just categorises all these and draws relationships between all these things. So I'm not particularly concerned someone is going to track me down and all that, cos to them, they don't care about individuals. That's not how data analytics works.
Do they know where I am, I'm sure they can find out if they wanted to. But I'm just an individual and they don't really care.
Their business is that they listen and store and analyze shit loads of data and draw relationships and they know a lot about people and their habits and the AI will automatically feed the consumer back stuff that they like to consume so they can get more data about people and continue the cycle.
So no, I don't think they care about me as an individual, but I do think that Google is a scary company, cos they are everywhere and they are always watching and listening.
Are you using Google chrome? Well... I'm sure they are watching you too...
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