Googlization is a phenomenon described by Siva Vaidhynathan that has impacted and changed how we know and use the internet. What started as a small search engine, Google is now a vital component in making the online world go round. Google is made up of several sub sites like YouTube, GMail, and Google+ that runs the world we live in. In class we discussed what googlization is and how it represents surveillance and privacy with regards to Google’s dominance online. Vaidhynathan argues that privacy interface is made up of five domains: person to peer, person to power, person to firm, person to state, and person to public. Person to peer relates to communication with family and friends. Person to power relates to privacy with teachers, employment authority figures. Person to firm involves privacy with other businesses and companies. Person to state concerns privacy with one’s government, which can be seen on the federal, state, and local levels in the U.S. And lastly, person to public involves privacy with the public domain. Google’s expansion from a search engine and advertisement company to a general media company has affected each of these privacy domains. Vaidhynathan argues that our understanding of knowledge of what’s on the web and our own privacy online is threatened with the type of surveillance policies seen through each of these domains. He argues, “If Google is the dominant way we navigate the Internet, and thus the primary lens through which we experience both the local and the global, then is has remarkable power to set agendas and alter perceptions. Its biases (valuing popularity over accuracy, established sites over new, and rough rankings over more fluid or multidimensional models of presentations) are built into its algorithms.” Google’s recent advertisement supports the idea that googlization is happening.
Dear Sophie commercial
If someone were willing to perform each task in the advertisement for his or her child, their son or daughter would be totally entrapped in Google’s regime.
While Google on the whole might have privacy issues, compared to other companies and websites I believe Google+ exceeds popular social networks in privacy. For example, Google+ surpasses Facebook in terms of its privacy settings. Google+’s interface establishes communication divisions between family, friends, co-workers, business associates, and the public. Facebook, which is obviously at this point the more popular social network, does not contain these distinctions. In addition, Twitter, which is popular for its widely public and open communication, does not even separate the five privacy domains what so ever. A An issue that many face now (that I will face in the future) is the privacy of social networks regarding relationships with employers. Many people are fired for a post they make or an offensive picture tagged by someone else. Google+ combats these issues with its separation of communication between parties with what it calls “circles.” People can now filter between friends and even one’s parents (I definitely have this issue).
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