Does Google Know It All?

From birthday doodles to your favourite restaurants and best friends, Google seems to know a lot about your personal life.

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If you have a fairly active online presence, a Google account, and celebrated your birthday recently, there is a good chance you would have noticed a Google doodle with your name appended in the right corner to mark your birthday.

While the idea in itself seems harmless, it does make one wonder about the omnipotence of Google in our digital lives.

From what you do, to the videos you watch or upload to the searches you carry out and the apps you download, Google and its assorted apps have a better idea of your online self than any living being. A report from the UC Berkeley's school of information says that Google can track user behaviour on most internet domains.

Is that a good thing or is it creepy? Does it qualify as a violation of privacy? How does one protect privacy in this time and age? "To be honest, though I was pleased to find a personal doodle with my name on my birthday, it got me thinking about the amount of information that a website like Google has about me. From my chat conversations, it can glean the people I talk to the most, with the multitude of apps it hosts on the Android operating system. It has a fairly good idea about my phone contacts and location. I find it fairly disconcerting," says college student Pallavi Nair.

She explains, "We use apps for all major functions on a daily basis from booking tickets for a movie, to finding a good dinner place and using the Google maps application to get to these places. All these tools are extremely useful, though any data breach would be catastrophic. I think that everyone should take some key steps to ensure that all your information is not available at the click of a button on a Google server somewhere on the planet."

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research organisation says, "They say when an Internet service is free of cost – you are the product. We are using personal information to pay for all the services that Google provides. Unfortunately, in India, we do not have world class privacy or data protection laws, unlike in other jurisdictions where there is protection under the law and independent data protection authorities or privacy commissioners. I think it is important that the Indian government introduces the privacy bill that aims at providing a comprehensive basis in law to resist the power of Google and other internet giants. The bill has been in the making for almost four years now!"

Software engineer Mithun contends, "I feel that in many ways, it is convenient. You can plan activities and get reminders on the go and can find out everything from the traffic density on your route home and plan a trip where you can ensure you will never get lost."

"However, if for some reason the data gets stolen or compromised, it could lead to problems. The chances of hackers succeeding in a break in are always high."

"It is also strange that Google or any firm does not reveal how it uses the personal information and the user will not be aware of misuse of data."

Digital media professional and active social media user Tinu Cherian argues, "It is interesting and scary at the same time. The information that Google has can be used against me if the data is compromised, since with its reach, Google can keep tabs on everything I do online and offline as well. The data is on Google servers and can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands."