Should Google stay in or out of my history?
The astonishing complexity and incredibly advanced algorithms behind Google’s search capabilities were explored today by Saul Hansell in the New York Times. While most of the article focused on the many parameters used to determine which search results enter the coveted top ten, he also touched on Google’s push towards personalization:
Increasingly, Google is using signals that come from its history of what individual users have searched for in the past, in order to offer results that reflect each person’s interests. For example, a search for “dolphins†will return different results for a user who is a Miami football fan than for a user who is a marine biologist. This works only for users who sign into one of Google’s services, like Gmail.
(Google says it goes out of its way to prevent access to its growing store of individual user preferences and patterns. But the vast breadth and detail of such records is prompting lust among the nosey and fears among privacy advocates.)
The privacy concerns arise because of the nature of the information that Google is collecting: essentially, search history and demographics. Read every ESPN article on the Miami Dolphins? Google knows you’re a fan.
The thing is, Google has to collect and maintain all of the individual bits of information about you in order to provide you with personalized search results. For example, it isn’t enough to know you’re a Miami Dolphins fan if you’re searching for a furniture store. Google also has to know where you live.
If you then search for “beetle”, Google will add to its growing list of data about you whether you prefer cars or bugs. Each search adds a different clue to their quest to provide greater relevance.
Do you think this is appropriate? Do you really care if Google, or anyone for that matter, knows whether you prefer cars or bugs?
VortexDNA has the unique characteristic and firm policy of never tracking users’ histories—the VortexDNA profile is an aggregated genome representing the totality of your purpose and values. Because the technology tracks something totally different to the personal information tracked by Google, it’s possible that the combined techniques could result in even more relevant search results. Is this something that users want, though?
Do you prefer to keep your history private, or would you rather see a technology like MyWebDNA combine with history and demographics to produce the most relevant results?
What are your privacy concerns?
