Googlization and Google’s Privacy (revise)

   When you have something that you want to know, what do you do? One of the best ways you can know an answer quickly is “googling.” It means that people look up something using Google. For us who live in the digital era, Google is a convenient tool to search for something. In The Googlization of Everything, Vaidhyanathan talks about "Googlization." According to the author, “googlization affects three large areas of human concern and conduct: ‘us’(through Google's effects our personal information, habits, opinions, and judgments); 'the world'(through the globalization of a strange kind of surveillance and what I'll call infrastructural imperialism) ; and ‘knowledge’” (through its effects on the use of the great bodies of knowledge accumulated in the books, onlice datebases, and the Web) " (2). Google is the most popular search engine in the world. At the same time, they provide a lot of media services, not only a search engine, for example, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger. Therefore, Google manages a lot of users’ personal information all over the world through running these services. This is why Google has a strong influences on our life ; it is more than a company. On the other hand, as Vaidhyanathan mentions in the article, Google has some problems with privacy. For example, they often change their privacy policy and they provide customers’ information to their subsidiary companies, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses (84-85). In short, our information can flow out somewhere without us noticing.    

 

   In Google privacy issues in forefrontagain, Sherman shows a problem with Google's management of customers' privacy. In the article, the author points out the privacy problem with Google and compares Apple’s privacy policy. According to him, Apple keeps their customers’ information. On the other hand, “if people buy an Android app, Google sends personal information to the developer without explicitly telling you.” A person who downloads an Android app has a risk of their personal information being leaked and abused their personal information without noticing.

   In short, we have to keep in mind that we shouldn’t trust and depend on Internet services too much, we have to manage our privacy by ourselves. Reading privacy policy well and paying attention to setting Google privacy are effective ways. In addition, Google is not the only company has a privacy problem and tries to use people’s personal information, but also other sites, like Facebook and LINE do as well. In the case of LINE, which is an instant messenger application run by NAVER and one of the most popular applications in Japan, the system stores users’ address books and registers them as “friends” automatically. That is why if a friend changes his/her phone number and another person who you don’t know use the phone number, that person can contact you. In short, it has a risk to leak your privacy without you noticing. However, the only way to protect privacy is acting ourselves. For people who live in the digital era, protecting and managing their privacy is very important and what we always have to do when we use the Internet. In order to keep up with the situation, people should learn about online privacy. At the same time, people have to be conscious that every act on the Internet will remain as a “digital footprint” forever.