Grinds My Gears: Google Privacy

My blog has really been a mostly positive one so I have decided to come out with a series, maybe weekly, of posts in which I rant about something. This something can be anything.
Here we go! (-Budweiser)

Do you know what really grinds my gears? The reaction to Google's new privacy policies. Overall the general public's reaction has been extremely negative. I've seen Facebook posts and Tweets being shared on how to stop Google from capturing your browsing information and the extreme stop using Google services. For those who don't know, Google has introduced one privacy policy for all of their products instead of having 60 of them (One for each product). This will allow Google to integrate the information captured in one service to all of their services. This also allows Google to integrate their products much better, which in my opinion is going to be great.

First of all, if you don't want personalized data/ads (Or fear your personal information is being sold), you do not have to use their services. Google is a mainly an advertising company, it makes 96% of its money from advertising. Google is not giving any personal data to any third party. While Google is tracking information on what you browse, they are using the info to tailor the Internet for you. Personally, I think is an advancement of the usefulness/effectiveness of the Internet. And it's not just Google using technology to individualize to customer. Target tracks the shopping habits of their customers and in one example, Target basically knew a woman was pregnant before her father knew. While I'm not saying that this is a good thing, it is a great marketing. And overall, a better experience for the consumers. And if you have nothing to hide like me, why even be worried about Google tracking you?

This is not to mention the Internet basically runs on advertisements. All the free services must be paid for somehow. I've mentioned this in previous posts, application and online services companies, like Twitter, have to make money or else they would fail. And most internet services rely on advertisements to help with the services. So with tracking, Google can help other companies to advertise more effectively and hopefully create a better experience for the end user too. 

While companies like Facebook do a poor job of publicizing policy changes, Google has done a good job of informing the users of what is happening and how you can change the settings. But the media had to put fear into the users with extreme statements of privacy endangerment (Like always!). Google has created a dashboard where users can see every Google product they are using and the settings for each service.

If Google tracks me and I never get advertisements for cosmetic products ever again, I'll be fully satisfied. But seriously, I am quite happy with this integration of their products. It will make the services even easier to use. I think people have to understand how and what information is being used. It is important to worry about privacy getting out of hand but I don't think Google has hit a point of getting worried (yet). And nothing is ever really free, right? Google products may be as close as you can get to free.