In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby said that “Data is the new oil”. 17 years have passed since he made his statement and the trajectory of the world has proved that data is much more than just the ‘new oil’ and that we are currently living in an economy driven, controlled and dictated by data. The analogy that “data is the new oil” draws a parallel between data and oil in terms of how they both accumulate value overtime. Similar to oil, data is not valuable in its foetal stage nor is it inherently indispensable but it gains value once it is collected efficiently and linked with other relevant data. Once this data is processed and analysed, it becomes a powerful tool for making informed decisions. Companies from all walks of life have unapologetically drilled for, mined and stored an unimaginable body of data about their customers and business operations. Some, ethically, for research purposes and some, unethically, for exploitation. The latest offender of a misdeed as such is Google and their location tracking.
Google, you are on the wrong lane, care to recentre?
The contemporary world seems to be plagued by the felonies of tech giants and as of recently the list keeps getting longer. They have started to actively live our childhood essays of the banes of technology. This time around, the complaint that was lodged against Google was that it was collecting consumers’ data with the absence of their knowledge and consent. The statement of dissatisfaction made against Google’s code of conduct stemmed from the inconsistency between the manner in which Google promised to handle its user location data and how they actually handled it. And this is not a pilot attempt. In 2022, they had settled a lawsuit which was brought by 40 states in the U.S where that too indicted Google on grounds of deceptive location privacy practices. Even back then, they had to pay a settlement fee of $392 million.
While that was in 2022, in 2023, the California Department of Justice conducted a lengthy investigation and discovered that Google had been misleading users by secretly gathering, storing, and misusing their location data to create consumer profiles for advertising purposes sans the proper consent from users. California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, mentioned that as outlined in the proposed order, Google has agreed to take corrective actions to prevent these practices from taking place further and that these measures would be implemented not only in California but beyond its borders as well. Google will also pay $93 million to settle the accusations of their fault of lying and misleading consumers. This is considered to be a massive compensation fee that will leave a dent in their finances.
An article written for The Guardian mentions Rob Bonta’s biggest concern, which was that Google had been deceiving millions of people. He says:
“Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its users one thing – that it would no longer track their location once they opted out – but doing the opposite and continuing to track its users’ movements for its own commercial gain. That’s unacceptable, and we’re holding Google accountable”.
The attorney general also explains how Google hoodwinked users by pretending to give them the choice of disabling their location history and assuring them that their movements would not be tracked if they chose this option. Where in reality, the company continued to amass and retain users’ location data using covert methods. This included using a feature called “web activity”, which the attorney general pointed out is turned on by default for users.
Apart from the payout, as a part of the settlement, Google is required to dedicate themselves to more transparency about its location tracking and reveal to the users that data about their location could be used for targeted ads.
Google’s skeletons in the closet
Google, a brand name and a proper noun, has become synonymous with the common noun; ‘search engine’. The transition of it being ‘a’ search engine to ‘the’ search engine was so seamless that none of us are aware about when it happened or how it happened. Despite the advantages it has over other search engines, at the beginning of 2023, it was under the attack of a lawsuit by the Biden administration, which reasoned that Google’s ad tech business should be dismantled.
The tale does not end there. Google’s practices are under further microscopic gaze by lawmakers. A significant antitrust trial against Google began recently. The U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) has made extensive claims, accusing Google of purposefully suppressing competition in its dominant search engine business over many years. The allegations assert that they have spent large amounts of money to run an unlawful monopoly, which, according to the DOJ, has negatively impacted every person using computers and mobile devices in the U.S. However, rebutting this claim during Google’s opening statement, attorney John Schmidtlein illustrated how Apple’s active choice to name Google the default search engine in its Safari browser is a testament to how consumers choose Google and that they are not imposing it on anyone.
All in all, the smuggling of personal data of consumers is not something that happened overnight. But rather it has been happening in broad daylight for ages. People are up for grabs in the data market and they are usually sold out even before the gavel can reach the count of three. One such example of how people were done dirty is the 2016 controversy (which was revealed in 2018) of using consumer data in political campaigns by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. They had unlawfully gotten their hands on the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent or knowledge. The data that was stolen was then used to fabricate targeted political ads during the 2016 U.S presidential election. While the general public assumed that they were voting based on their assessments and analyses of the situation, for the most part they were psychologically manipulated and their decisions were orchestrated.
To everyone’s dismay, except for the tech companies, it has become extremely common for companies to collect and sell consumer data. However, that does not grant them the liberty to misuse consumers in the name of technology. Organisations need to be held guilty for sliding personal data of their consumers under the table to third parties, for breaking the trust placed in them and using them merely as money making machines.
(Sandunlekha Ekanayake)