Can We Trust Those Who Feed Us?

Buying Feedburner is HUGE (in an all caps kind of way). For those of you who don’t know who Feedburner is, they provide custom RSS feeds and management tools to web-based content publishers.

(I recently discovered that I take for granted understanding what RSS is and how to use it. There are still many that don’t use RSS. So, if you are unaware of the power of RSS, please see this video . If you aren’t using RSS, you should. It makes your web experience SO much more simplified, streaming videos and information directly into your aggregator. Thus, you can create your own web experience—your own virtual newspaper so to speak.)

With this purchase, Google now not only learns a ton more about people, but also buys itself another advertising platform. So, Google obtains more information and another stream of revenue. They just keep hitting homeruns. However, with this purchase, there is a bit of another Google “ ick factor .”

Now, I love Google. I even trust them. However, they are learning more and more about me. They have my e-mail . They have my video . They know where I live . And now they know everything that I like . (This is also why eBay’s purchase of StumbleUpon is so smart. Off the record, Google people will tell you that they view eBay as a serious competitor .)

It’s just all a bit weird to me. Privacy is disappearing. (It’s possibly already disappeared .) Good or bad, that’s the reality. Your experience online is becoming more customized and personalized. By setting up the web up any way that you like, you get fed what you want to consume. But these giants of the web know what you’re eating. And it’s heading towards the day when they’ll be feeding you ads about the things only you like and "want" to hear about . This is already happening to some degree, though somewhat exaggerated.

Ickiness, strangeness aside, I’m glad it’s Google and not others. Google is becoming the king of advertising, and more importantly, it is the king of the web. So, at least a progressive company has all of my information. (In my opinion, only a progressive company can make these strides and hit these homeruns, but that’s another post.)

So, is all this a good thing? You have the crowd saying, “Yeah, it is. If I’m going to constantly be bombarded with advertising, then it might is well be about things I’m interested in and want.” And then you have the other crowd saying, “Sure, but what about privacy? Isn’t a little scary that all these companies ‘know’ what I want?” It’s an interesting predicament.

In my opinion, with the customizable and personalized nature of the web, we must concern ourselves with privacy. What if this info gets into the wrong hands? Does that question even matter, as it's already all been gathered and is in so many hands? Who is looking out for us, the users? These, and many others, are questions for a larger debate, but certainly questions in deep need of consideration.