As Google gets to know us better by analyzing our search history, interests, and lifestyle patterns, there are growing concerns that it could manipulate our thoughts and even our emotions through targeted ads.
Many years ago, I traveled to Eastern Europe with a friend. Exhausted from a long 13-hour flight, we turned on the Google Maps app to find a place to stay upon arrival. After a while, I was stumped for a hotel name, and then a strange phrase popped up on the map screen: “Best Western Hotel December 3-4.” Google Maps knew the name and dates of my hotel reservation better than I did. This made it easy for me to find my way to the hotel, but it also made me feel a little nervous. How did Google know this? Turns out, the site I booked the hotel on was linked to Google Maps. I had unknowingly logged into the site with my Google account and booked the hotel, and that information had been passed on to Google.
Another situation where Google seems to know you better than you know yourself is often encountered when using an Android smartphone. After watching a bunch of videos on YouTube, I go to Home and see “Personalized Channels” and “Personalized Videos” pop up. The content is interesting and enticing enough to make me click on it. It doesn’t stop there. The Chrome browser analyzes the keywords I search for and shows me “personalized ads” that might be of interest to me, and the free photo drive app called Google Photos uses my photos to learn about me and use them for “personalized ads” and other marketing.
Google is getting smarter and smarter about me. If Google knows my tastes, my interests, and my lifestyle, could it one day have ambitions to take over my thoughts?
Let me give you a slightly political example. I’m a college student, and I’ve been having a rough day. In my frustration, I googled “job hunting,” “resume tips,” “how to write a resume,” and “how to build a resume,” and watched interview videos on YouTube. Around this time, I read several articles about Candidate A, a candidate for the National Assembly, who promised to “significantly increase the number of jobs for young people” and “regulate the hiring process of large companies so that people can get a job without any specifications.” Will my favorability toward Candidate A increase or decrease? My favorability toward Candidate A is likely to increase, as favorability is a property that relies more on emotional facts than cold reason.
Research has shown that Google can manipulate people’s favorability toward presidential candidates simply by the order in which articles appear on its portal. Psychologist Robert Epstein of the U.S. Behavioral Technology Laboratory conducted an experiment called the “Search Engine Manipulation Effect” (SEME), which showed that Google could influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The researchers randomly divided participants into three groups, gave them brief information about the three candidates and asked them which one they would choose. They then asked them to search the internet for information about the three candidates. Each person received 30 search results, but the data was pre-manipulated by the researchers. The researchers prioritized positive information about the candidates at the top of the search rankings and neutral or negative information at the bottom. When people were asked again which candidate they supported after spending 10 minutes looking at the search results, support for that candidate increased from 9.1% to 26.5% in the group that saw favorable search information.
This finding underscores how sensitive our minds are to the information we are exposed to. What if this information was cleverly mixed with facts that are relevant to my current interests and concerns? It would be a perfect way to win my favor, and it wouldn’t be hard to win my empathy. The recipe that Google designs based on our information can change our thoughts and feelings.
The systemic basis for Google’s ability to learn about us is the Android operating system. The Android operating system is used by 82% of smartphones worldwide, which is unrivaled. Of the 30 or so apps that are forced onto Android phones and can’t be uninstalled, 11 of them are Google service apps – apps that don’t have much to do with running the phone but provide convenience, like Chrome, YouTube, and Gmail. What they all have in common, of course, is that they all offer “sign in with your Google account”. Google seems to be giving us the ultimate convenience by linking our accounts, but at the cost of taking too much of our information.
Sign in with Google isn’t something you’ll love simply because it’s convenient. The only way to keep Google from getting smarter and smarter about us is for us to get smarter. Avoid linking your Google account to sites where you might provide sensitive information about yourself, and be a little more critical of Google’s services that provide convenience. In an age where “Google” is written all over the internet, we need to be more proactive if we want to become true masters of our thoughts.
