The Ever Watchful Eye of Google

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I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is to be mindful of Google’s watchful eye online. It is literally everywhere, and it does not forget. Everything you do under Google’s watchful eye impacts your personal brand and reputation. That drunken Twitter late at night? Google remembers. That blog rant composed at a conference? Google stores it forever. Here are just a few of the ways Google is watching you.

Google searches, indexes, and stores copies of every public web page, public forum, public discussion board, public email list it can find.
Google Orion monitors not just what you search for, but how you behave when you search, how long it takes you to locate things, and what you do when you find something.
Google News stores all of the news it can find in newspapers, radio, and television.
Google Alerts constantly scans news, blogs, and other items for selected key words that you, your friends, and your enemies deem important.
Google Feedburner stores all of the RSS feeds and other news feeds it can find – and who subscribes to them.
Google Reader tracks and stores all of the blogs you subscribe to and what items you deem important enough to share.
Google Maps provides geographic data and in return tracks exactly what you’re looking for and where on the earth it is.
Google Blog Search stores and remembers what you blog about on your personal blog.
Google AdWords watches what ads it shows and what ads you click on, how often, and when.
Google 411 stores how you pronounce words and uses its speech recognition to analyze non-text data.
Google YouTube tracks what videos you watch, share, promote, and enjoy.
Google Talk stores and searches what you discuss in instant messaging.
Google Desktop indexes and stores information about everything on your computer.
Google Transit watches where you go and how you get there.
Google Trends displays how information is monitored by end users over time.
Google Docs takes your office documents and indexes them and their contents.
Google personalized search stores every single question you ask Google, what answers you found important, and trends in your inquiries.
Google Pagerank algorithm tracks who links to web pages of yours and who you link to, diagramming out important nodes.
Google Android will bring these capabilities and monitoring powers to your phone.
Google OpenSocial will bring these capabilities to social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Mindfulness is absolutely imperative in the age of Google. Write, discuss, and share like the person you want to become, even if you aren’t that person today, because Google will remember you based on what you publicly create online. For forum moderators, mailing list managers, and community developers like myself, it is our obligation to create, manage, and moderate forums to be perceived by the general public in alignment with who we want to be, even if we as a community aren’t there just yet.

Remember this quote from Mitch Joel: Your personal brand isn’t what you say it is. Your personal brand is what Google says it is.

One good blog post lifts the entire community up in reputation, if only a little in Google’s massive knowledgebase. One bad post drags us all down. Everything matters – big or small.

We are now, more than ever, interdependent on each other.

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Comments

13 responses to “The Ever Watchful Eye of Google”

March 14, 2008

Peter O’Connell

Christopher:

Your comments are spot on in accuracy but disappointing too. While we should always be mindful of shooting our mouths off personally or hitting send key too early at ANY time (‘thinking before we speak’) we still need to be able to have open debate and discussion.

If we become too beholden to or stand in fear of Google tracking our responses or comments, then the on-line community will collapse, dissolve and become meaningless.

I have no doubt there are horror stories that may have incited this post because of people saying something online only to have it come bite them in the ass in a job interview or even an interpersonal situation. And we are in a period of transition (all of us) as to how social media is going to be accepted, used and judged (and how our personal brands will also be accepted, used and judged); its unclear still how this will shake out.

But for the continued success of social media, we can certainly be thoughtful but we must not be censored or silenced by fear of reprisal. Otherwise, social media just becomes another electronic time waster.

A great post, thank you very much for opening the discussion.

Best always,
– Peter

Reply
March 14, 2008

Peter O’Connell

Christopher:

Your comments are spot on in accuracy but disappointing too. While we should always be mindful of shooting our mouths off personally or hitting send key too early at ANY time (‘thinking before we speak’) we still need to be able to have open debate and discussion.

If we become too beholden to or stand in fear of Google tracking our responses or comments, then the on-line community will collapse, dissolve and become meaningless.

I have no doubt there are horror stories that may have incited this post because of people saying something online only to have it come bite them in the ass in a job interview or even an interpersonal situation. And we are in a period of transition (all of us) as to how social media is going to be accepted, used and judged (and how our personal brands will also be accepted, used and judged); its unclear still how this will shake out.

But for the continued success of social media, we can certainly be thoughtful but we must not be censored or silenced by fear of reprisal. Otherwise, social media just becomes another electronic time waster.

A great post, thank you very much for opening the discussion.

Best always,
– Peter

Reply
March 14, 2008

John Wall

I’d add another often overlooked item to the list – although they may not be doing much with it, your ISP has access to most of the same information.

Reply
March 14, 2008

John Wall

I’d add another often overlooked item to the list – although they may not be doing much with it, your ISP has access to most of the same information.

Reply
March 15, 2008

Mitch Joel – Twist Image

I wish I had said that! That quote actually belongs to Chris Anderson – editor of Wired Magazine and Author of The Long Tail.

Reply
March 15, 2008

Mitch Joel

I wish I had said that! That quote actually belongs to Chris Anderson – editor of Wired Magazine and Author of The Long Tail.

Reply
March 17, 2008

Web Worker Daily » Archive Online Privacy – a Nice Dream? «

[…] course, there are some ways to avoid “The Ever Watchful Eye of Google.” You can relentlessly block cookies in your web browser. You can do all of your surfing […]

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March 20, 2008

mike mcallen

This is a great post Chris.
It reminded me of something my dad told me as we were driving into our driveway a long time ago. He said he was worried about me being such a smartass. He himself had been a smartass his whole life and he thought he probably would have gone farther in life and been more successful if he held his tongue more in business and around town

As I was a teenager I remember trying to ignore him and as I looked out the window of the new Lexus we were driving in and the large house in Hillsborough, California we lived in I wondered. “is he being a smartass now? he did pretty good for himself.”

Someone is always watching, be yourself and if you do something illegal or immoral then people should know you are an ass. Google just helps that along these days.

Thanks again for the great blog.

Reply
March 20, 2008

mikemcallen

This is a great post Chris.
It reminded me of something my dad told me as we were driving into our driveway a long time ago. He said he was worried about me being such a smartass. He himself had been a smartass his whole life and he thought he probably would have gone farther in life and been more successful if he held his tongue more in business and around town

As I was a teenager I remember trying to ignore him and as I looked out the window of the new Lexus we were driving in and the large house in Hillsborough, California we lived in I wondered. “is he being a smartass now? he did pretty good for himself.”

Someone is always watching, be yourself and if you do something illegal or immoral then people should know you are an ass. Google just helps that along these days.

Thanks again for the great blog.

Reply
April 10, 2008

News, Web 2.0: Online Privacy, Tracking, G_ _gle and the Eye of Sauron « EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC

[…] Blogger Christopher S. Penn write about the ubiquitous-ness of Google (Mar 14 2008) which I suggest that we all read as a cautionary tale, lest we forget that there is no ‘delete’ key: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2008/03/14/the-ever-watchful-eye-of-google/ […]

Reply
April 10, 2008

Creaky

Chris,
Thanks for this great blogpost about Google. I enjoyed reading it, and also wanted to let you know I have cited it on my blog on 4-10-08, at http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/news-web-20-online-privacy-tracking-g_-_gle-and-the-eye-of-sauron/

Creaky

Reply
April 10, 2008

Creaky

Chris,
Thanks for this great blogpost about Google. I enjoyed reading it, and also wanted to let you know I have cited it on my blog on 4-10-08, at http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/news-web-20-online-privacy-tracking-g_-_gle-and-the-eye-of-sauron/

Creaky

Reply
July 16, 2009

Searching Technologies, Cultural Evolution, Web 2.0: Slight Nostalgia for Olden Days and, Don’t Diss Librarians « EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC

[…] One of the first lessons a new blogger learns is how ridiculously easy it is to trip up online… when you make a mistake in a public and highly-distributed way, such an online event can make one very glad for the solitude of the workplace cubicle (while your face turns a deep, burning shade of red). But it’s a shared experience. By joining up into the collective “we”, it is possible to be anonymous yet harder to be invisible. In digital life, these terms are elastic, relational, relative. And Google never forgets. […]

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