By: Jason Llorenz
March 1, 2012
Today is the first day of google’s new privacy policy — designed to mine our activity across all of google’s products — gmail, google+, Youtube, google search, etc. — to enable google to create more targeted advertising content, search results and other products, based on what you actually do, and where you do it, across all of google’s services. Google describes the policy in a blog. Privacy advocates have raised significant concerns about the new practice, and the European Union, which has significant personal data privacy protections codified in its founding documents, has signaled that the new policy may violate European law. The new policy is significant – and reflective of where the web is moving, to micro-targeted advertising and products that leverage free services, in exchange for bringing ad content you are more likely to want to see. It is a brave, new world.
One certainty is that in the online world, data is gold. So much of the business models driving the evolution of web content and tools depend upon our willingness to share, and companies’ ability to create business models from valuable user data. This is as true for google, as it is for facebook and so many other emerging offerings.
Latinos lead the use of the mobile web and social media products, and are even more likely to share personal data, like location, via social media. It is still to be determined how these new business practices will affect the issues of broadband adoption and digital literacy that are at the center of our advocacy.
See the Pew Internet and American Life Center Report on Privacy Management and Social Media Sites for more date on Latino use of the Internet and social media.
Much more to come.
Jason Llorenz, Esq.
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