W6 Discussion: Case Study on Google: The Drive to Balance Privacy with Profit

Chapter 10: Google: The Drive to Balance Privacy with Profit: 10-5a Search Queries Book Title: Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases Printed By: Kennisha Holloman ([email protected]) © 2019 Cengage Learning, Cengage Learning

10-5a Search Queries

One of the major privacy criticisms levied against Google is that the company keeps track of

users’ search terms. Consider all of the things you have ever searched for using Google’s

search engine. Now consider how comfortable you feel knowing the company has recorded

and stored all those search terms … forever. This tracking cannot be turned off—users can

disable their Google web history to remove any external record of searches and prevent the

information from being used in certain ways, but Google will continue to record and store

search terms for internal purposes. To be fair, this practice is not limited to Google—many

other Internet firms do the same. However, because Google is the most popular search

engine in the world, it is more heavily scrutinized.

The big question users ask is whether their search terms can be traced back to them

personally. Google claims that although it stores users’ search terms, after 18 months the

data becomes “anonymized” and theoretically untraceable. However, critics debate this

claim because supposedly anonymized data from other search engines were later matched

to specific users. Google claims it treats this information with respect, using it to refine its

search engine. Yet under the Third Party Doctrine and the Patriot Act the U.S. government

could subpoena the data if it is deemed necessary for national security. Needless to say,

Google’s storage of users’ search terms is a controversial topic. In fact, several smaller

search engines such as DuckDuckGo use the fact that they do not track user activity as a

competitive differentiator from Google.

Chapter 10: Google: The Drive to Balance Privacy with Profit: 10-5a Search Queries Book Title: Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases Printed By: Kennisha Holloman ([email protected]) © 2019 Cengage Learning, Cengage Learning

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