Google’s Strategy to Dominate the Internet and What It Means for Us

Google—what was once a website to find content online has now become an evil conglomerate trying to take over the world.

If you have heard already Google has acquired Fitbit, along with other companies like Waze and DoubleClick. In the future, they plan on purchasing many more different companies to enhance their products and get more personal information about you, the end user. The first reason may sound fun, but the second one definitely does not.

Google’s acquisition of these companies did help improve their services, like Google Maps, but at what cost? If Google offers many free services, where does the money come from? The answer is fairly simple: the selling of private user data and the purchases of things like Google Drive plans.

Let’s dive into the first stream of income. According to Arstechnica, the data Google has on you can sum up to over $700! Now imagine all the 2 billion+ active users using Google products. If you multiple all the active Android users in 2017, you’ll find out that the 2 billion users’ data was at least $1,400,000,000,000 (this estimate is based on the assumption that every user’s data was worth $700).

Doesn’t that give you the creeps? Moreover, with the many acquisitions, and more to come, more users will be using Google’s services and therefore, contribute to the petabytes of data Google has on its users. Is that not scary enough? What if I told you, that Google employees have access to all of your data?

Now imagine this. A world where Google owns everything, from your online cloud files, your personal ID, health records, passwords, emails, search histories to your bank account(s), and anybody working at Google can spy on you at any time? There would also be the risk of a hacker gaining access to everything on Google’s servers and exposing the data online.

Now what can you do to help stop this dystopian future? Well, you can try using the Tor Browser, and donating to services who believe in consumer privacy. The more people switch to privacy-focused softwares, the less power Google will have over us. Collectively, we can all make a difference.