We Are All Just Data

Recently for English, we had to write a quick paragraph using a bunch of vocabulary words we had learned while reading American literature. I chose to write about a potential conversation that I would love to have with Larry Page. Here it is:

"I sat down in the theater for what would become an arduous, yet interesting conversation with Larry Page, one of the founders of Google. I started off by asking him if the new social network Google had been working on was received with much approbation. He said it was doing great, with tens of millions of users and active engagement with everyone on the site, though Facebook’s new Timeline feature and Open Graph would require Google’s vigilance to come up  with new innovations in the social space. My next question led to a change in his disposition, as I asked him whether “free” products such as the ones from Facebook and Google were artifices to gather immense amounts of data to give marketers super-focused ad placement. He then said that the usurpations I was alleging were incredibly false, that I was an insidious person, and that he was going to leave."

To Facebook and Google, we are a lot of data, and some people do not appreciate being tracked for the purpose of profit. I however, am perfectly okay in exchanging my interests and search queries for two products that help me out everyday and for two companies I hold in very high regard. In addition, I think that most people who complain about being tracked on Facebook or Google do not realize how helpful the highly-targeted ads that they provide to business owners can be. Though I've never run a Facebook ad campaign or a Google Adwords campaign, seeing how ads through both platforms can be targeted to very specific groups of people or very specific search queries is incredible. As soon as I launch my first business, YumOrder, I plan on experimenting with both services to see how they can help my business in particular. We might provide a lot of data to these companies and some may argue that our privacy is violated beyond an acceptable level when we use them, but think of how this data helps businesses increase sales and drive the economy forward, whether it be from more jobs at Google or more jobs at your favorite local small business. Data can be very valuable to any business that harnesses its power, and I think the simplest way to not have your "privacy" violated is to not use Google or Facebook at all.

For a good alternative to Google if you do not want to be tracked, I suggest taking a look at DuckDuckGo.

You can follow me @kaufman_jack.