Response to Google Chrome Ad

Response to Kayla's post (a response to Gaby's original post) http://csmt11.posterous.com/responding-to-gabys-1st-blog-httpcsmt11poster


I really loved the Google ad (“Dear Sophie”) that Kayla posted when it first came out—Google is obviously known for its creativity, and its advertisements don’t fail to tug at the audience’s heartstrings. The ad demonstrates the ease of using Google’s products and the span of their capabilities. A father is creating a digital scrapbook for his daughter to look back on and finds an image of their home through Google Maps, writes notes using Gmail, uploads photos with Picasa and videos with YouTube. The process looks seamless and effortless—so many memories can be captured by using Google’s services alone.

 

Though I love and appreciate Google, I think that David Beer would perhaps have something to say about the extent of Google’s reach. In his paper “Social network(ing) sites…revisiting the story so far: A response to danah boyd & Nicole Ellison,” Beer focuses on SNS relative to the producer’s intents and the capitalistic goals on which they are structured. Beer encourages the reader to consider how user data might be utilized other than for the users’ own purposes:

 

“So, when we ask about who are using SNS and for what purpose, we should not just think about those with profiles, we should also be thinking about capitalist interests, of third parties using the data, of the organizing power of algorithms, of the welfare issues of privacy made public, of the motives and agendas of those that construct these technologies in the common rhetoric of the day, and, finally, of the way that information is taken out of the system to inform about the users, or, in short, how SNS can be understood as archives of the everyday that represent vast and rich source of transactional data about a vast population of users.”

 

As the video shows, an Internet user can rely solely on Google services during their online experience; thus Google has a huge store of personal data on its millions of users, from name, age, social relationships, location, search terms, photos, videos, preferences, etc. With cloud computing likely to become a standard in the future, the company can own even more personal data. Google has already faced many suits in different countries on privacy and antitrust issues.

 

While companies such as Google have made communication and information access much easier, it is also important to consider the scope of information we entrust to SNS and the Internet, especially when under one umbrella. This raises questions of privacy and a company’s place in ownership of personal information. Most people automatically skip over the “privacy policy” when registering for a new SNS and don’t consider how public their online personas can be. As our everyday lives become increasingly intertwined with the digital realm, though, new standards have to be made accordingly.


Cindy H.