A private war has been raging on the Internet that most users are completely unaware of - the battle over the rights of consumer privacy. And no surprise, Google has been one of the biggest offenders. (Did any of us forget the whole Google Buzz 8.5 million-dollar lawsuit settlement just last month?) It seems that the unrest has spilled over from the Internet users to the engineers who develop these programs.
Some Google engineers have decided to leave the company to start their own rival businesses or jump ship to major competitors. That means the end to free gourmet meals, outdoor volleyball courts, massages and other major perks offered at their Mountain View headquarters. But why? Mostly it stems from the concern over consumer privacy and the tactics used to collect huge amounts of personal data unbeknownst to the user. Essentially, our privacy is being seized by Google and other data hoarders so they can sell our information to advertisers. For example, my emails mainly consist of shipping confirmations because I am a shoe whore, but I gradually started noticing that the ads in my Gmail were all shoe-related. I come to realize that Google targets its ad to Gmail users based on what the contents of the user's emails are. Other practices include tracking our internet surfing to better target the ads and using our location to figure out which advertiser's ads will show. No point in advertising Dunkin Donuts if the user is out on the West Coast, right?
So these renegade engineers who left Google...why do we care what they do after Google? Well, these awesome guys are developing programs that challenge and detract from the Internet giant's core data-collection practices. Last week, one of the guys developed a browser extension for Google Chrome called Disconnect that blocks major internet companies, including Google, from installing cookies on a computer and tracking its users habits.
Another guy created Adblock, which stops sites from showing ads. It's a major slap in the face to his former bosses since most of Google's money comes from its Google ads that pop up on almost every internet web page.
And then there are the others. Those guys decide to leave and join forces with Google's major competitors like Facebook. The social network giant is seen as their biggest rival because more people are spending time on the site browsing their friends' photos, perfecting their profiles, joining fan groups and all that time-consuming activities. Good for Facebook who gets to collect all this data and resell to advertisers, (but bad for us) and bad for Google since they can't crawl most of the information posted on there.
While Google maintains that their attrition rate has been the same over the last several years, these defections have the potential to change how users may start using the web. In no ways am I denouncing Google, I am just going to be a little more wary of what I put out there on the world wide web. Privacy may not be a big issue to some, but to lose the very idea of a person's right to his own privacy is not something I'm willing to give up so easily.
[Some Google employees defect, then rebel]
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