Google has become omnipresent in our lives. Everything is connected to their services in one way or another and for the sake of convenience, everything is served to us on a silver plate. But what do we trade off by living like that?

Don’t be evil

Google has grown from one simple search engine to planetary corporation that has diversified their web business to the extreme. Their slogan “Don’t be evil” was something everyone wanted to hear and to believe in, especially when Microsoft was embodiment of evil at that time. They still are, don’t get me wrong, but that is another topic.

I remember the time when we were all so excited when Google introduced Gmail. At that time, their search engine was best one around and everyone wanted to try out their next great service – Gmail. It wasn’t easy to get invitation to try it out, but I managed somehow and now I am still using Gmail on some of my domains. Gmail offered everything for free, even services other providers charged for. There was no ads, we could use POP3/IMAP access… all was great and convenient. I got hooked.

Then they introduced free Google apps for business with 50 email accounts per domain, Google docs, Google drive, Google analytics, Google adwords, Google maps, they bought YouTube and many other prospective companies. Google provided everything I really needed to support my web design business.

My clients now had many free services that helped them grow their business. They even cut their regular expenses because there was no need for them to pay for email providers and Microsoft office suites. That is the time they got hooked on Google.

At that time no one thought that Google’s free can be a problem. Problem is that most of you still don’t see it.

So, what’s wrong?

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it
-- John Emerich

Google, like any other company, was created primarily to make profit and their main source of income is through selling of ads. At first, their simple ads could be found only in search results, but they weren’t good enough for expanding company like Google. They needed to be more focused, better targeted and that was impossible without much better demographic data.

Now all of their services gather that information - they track your every search query, videos you watched or liked, sites you have visited, your geographical location history... EVERYTHING! You don’t even need to have Google account, because they can track you even if you interact with someone who is connected to them. If someone has Google analytics installed on their site – they collect data about you. If you send mail to someone who is using Gmail – they can collect data about you as well. You wouldn’t believe how simple that is.

Now ads are everywhere!

Does it end here? Of course not!

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham

It was all innocent at the start, but today, it is absolutely scary and ruins the meaning of privacy and freedom. With mobile devices that constantly run Google services in background, with their unlimited access to microphone, camera, GPS… it becomes even scarier.

Face it, you have left so much data on the internet, they can and they are making a psychological profile on you. Based on sites you visit, videos you watch, things you search for, it is quite easy to do all of that.

Would you be comfortable if government got their hands on your data? Edward Snowden revealed that it already happened.

Are you comfortable with fact that Google representatives are meeting with U.S. White house staff every week on regular basis? What could possibly an outcome of those meetings? How about censorship?

Video: The Revolution Will Not Be YouTubed

In this video you can clearly see that Google is cutting profit from ads to these alternative news publishers. In effect, they lose funding for their investigative journalism and their videos are pulled from suggestions.

Google’s ministry of truth

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
-- 1984, George Orwell

Seems like Orwell was right about our future and Google will make sure that happens. With their new “Truth algorithm” sites in search results will be ranked on truthfulness and not based on their popularity. In one way, that can seem like a good thing, but think about the possibilities and tampering of those results. When you take into account their close ties with US regime and latest censorships, alarm about them is louder than ever.

We can clearly see how Google transitioned from great and promising company to evil big-brother:

Great idea and even better execution of that idea -> Greed through ad selling -> Big data for big brother -> Internet censorship -> Google’s ministry of truth

Abandon ship!

This is the only way to fight against it – cut all ties you have with Google. Internet is full of great startups and companies that will offer services that are on par with those from Google, or possibly even better. On my part, I will transition to independent services: DuckDuckGO instead of Google search, Piwik Analytics instead of Google analytics, Vimeo instead of YouTube, Yandex or Zoho mail instead of Gmail, Mega instead of Google drive, Firefox instead of Chrome.

I will also remove all links to other Google services, because I don’t want my visitors to be tracked by them as well. I suggest you do the same.

Share this article with your friends, let’s all take back our power on the Internet!

 

Author

Vladimir Jovanović
Web designer, Front-end developer and most importantly - awake
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