Two-Thirds of Consumers Don't Expect Google To Track Them the Way It Does (niemanlab.org)

A significant majority of consumers do not expect Google to track their activities across their lives, their locations, on other sites, and on other platforms. Jason Kint, writing for Nieman Lab: Our findings show that many of Google's data practices deviate from consumer expectations. The results of the study are consistent with our Facebook study: People don't want surveillance advertising. A majority of consumers indicated they don't expect to be tracked across Google's services, let alone be tracked across the web in order to make ads more targeted. Nearly two out of three consumers don't expect Google to track them across non-Google apps, offline activities from data brokers, or via their location history.

There was only one question where a small majority of respondents felt that Google was acting according to their expectations. That was about Google merging data from search queries with other data it collects on its own services. They also don't expect Google to connect the data back to the user's personal account, but only by a small majority. Google began doing both of these in 2016 after previously promising it wouldn't.

Comments

Expect vs. Care

[SuperKendall]

I'm sure few people expect what Google actually does, as it would require technical understanding to realize what is possible and what is probable...

But here's the truly important thing - how many people truly CARE what Google or Facebook is doing?

People say they don't want to be tracked across Google, but then they keep on using it. People say they don't want Facebook tracking, but they keep on using it as well. They are saying "I would like everything this does today but disable the tracking". That's nice and all but by continuing to use those services even when they know what is going on, they are indicating they really don't care that much at all and are willing to make the tradeoff of privacy for service.

Re:Expect vs. Care

[flippy]

Excellent question. I believe the answer is that almost NO ONE cares what the companies are doing. If they cared, they'd stop using the services.

Two thirds of consumers are stupid

[DogDude]

I have one question for people who think I'm crazy when I say I don't use Google/Android: Where do you think Google makes its money?

Re:Two thirds of consumers are stupid

[lexman098]

I think you're crazy and I can answer your question.

Google makes its money from anonymously connecting you with advertisers. They create a very detailed profile on you based on their tracking data. Then they sell advertisements, expecting the buyer to provide blanket information for the kind of person that they're targeting. Google probably then adds some of its own AI on top of the advertisers' expectations to create more ad clicks. Then you go to a random webpage which asks Google which ad to show you. The advertiser pays Google who gives a smaller amount to the website operator.

Note how Google never has to release any of your information to make money here. I don't think I remember a single article about Google even accidentally leaking private information.

I wouldn't mind ad tracking if it were good

[StevenMaurer]

Yeah, I get it. Googlers got to eat too. And I use enough of their services that having them keep track of every time I use their service to tailor ads to me is a fair enough tradeoff. I'm not buying poodle-porn and doggie sex toys anyway. I don't even know if that exists (though maybe I'm about to find out.)

But Jesus Christ (no, google, I'm not interested in finding a church), they really need to adjust their machine learning algorithms (please, no keyword matches for that either). I go buy a vacuum cleaner from Amazon, and for months afterwards I'm getting ads for the same model that I already bought!

I mean seriously. If you go google for wedding cake (no, please no marriage ads - that will look pretty strange next to the doggie sex toy ads), what happens? You get tons of ads, as if you have to get a bulk discount of wedding cake.