Wednesday, February 29, 2012

We are a commodity

My very good friend Pete says about Google’s change in its privacy policy, This really brings home the critical core of Google's business model. We're not the customers, we're the product.

How right he is. We are all lead to believe that Google, Facebook etc are altruistic organisations that simply exist to provide us with a free service. The truth is they are big businesses that exist to to make money. By sharing the information we willingly provide them with, these companies get rich and fat.

At one time, they would rely upon pushing adverts from interested parties to us as a means to gain revenue. Now they are going a step further by collecting information from us to disseminate to others in exchange for payment. When Google talk about the benefits of their changes in policy to users, they mean their paying clients – not us. We are no longer the customer with rights, we are (as Pete says) the product that they sell to others.

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