Protect your privacy

Due to Google censorship and tracking, students should use alternatives

ORIANA LUKAS opinions with oriana

Google is the world’s largest search engine and the world’s largest stalker.

Google is the most used multi-technology company, with just over 274 million users in the U.S. It controls more than 70% of U.S. online web searches and offers more than 271 products, such as Google Docs, Google Maps and Gmail.

With this high number of users and numerous product services, Google is one of the top four most influential companies alongside Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft according to Statista. But this popularity isn’t without major flaws: Google is known for constantly tracking its users to benefit high-paying sponsors and censors many search results, though Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, denied this.

“Google will never sell any personal information to third parties, and you get to decide how your information is used,” Pichai said, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Though Google is adamant about this claim, it continuously gets away with doing this very action by supplementing the term of “selling” with real-time bidding, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which regulates the data sold to private companies, went into effect. This act enforces tech companies to allow Californians to opt out of the sale of their information. Additionally, for Google users to avoid having their data sold, they should use other search engines such as DuckDuckGo, a browser that refrains from any tracking methods.

Of course, to continue its massive revenue from tracking and selling users’ information, Google uses various loopholes to get around this law, like real-time bidding and customer match, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Real-time bidding is a strategy that allows advertisers to target groups of users based on their demographics and interests. The advertisers then use this information to bid on individual ads. Google controls almost every aspect of this process regardless of peoples’ consent. JMU research methods professor Keith Grant said this tracking can lead to users only receiving data from one side discussions.

“There’s a whole bunch of psychological biases that influence how we do thing,s and I think the biggest one here is confirmation biases,” Grant said. “People will wait on things that agree with their perspective. So when only using a search engine that we know to an extent modifies itself towards stuff the user wants to see, it makes sense why people can’t have discussion on topics we should be able to have an objective conversation on.”

Along with these disturbing tracking methods, Google is the largest censor. As of now, online censorship is completely unregulated. Because of it, Google has freedom to block any information it disapproves of. According to the U.S. News, Google has at least nine blacklists. Of these nine, the most detrimental blacklist for students is the Google News blacklist. Google has the power to ban any news source it disagrees with. In 2006, Google allegedly blocked conservative news sources that wrote critical stories about Islam. It’s also been accused of blocking columnists who write opinions it dislikes.

So, if these tactics are implemented by Google, why are people still using it? If it has so many controversies, why are people willing to succumb to it? The answer is fairly simple: It’s popular.

Ninety-one percent of 74 JMU students who voted on a survey posted on The Breeze’s Instagram said Google is their No. 1 search engine used for class. Of those students, 66% said they were aware of Google’s tracking tactics and 59% knew of its censorship. People are always going to follow the trend of products, even if they know the potential dangers.

These tracking and censorship tactics are detrimental to students’ overall learning. If students can only find certain pieces of information that Google agrees with, there’s potential it’s missing loads of crucial information. In college, students are supposed to be able to form their own opinions based on research. If all the data students are retrieving is biased, then what’s anyone learning? Grant said students should stay away from relying solely on Google for academic research.

“I try to send my students to the library,” Grant said. “It’s fine to dump things into Google and see what pops up, but if you’re trying to do high volume academic research, that’s not a good place to start because anyone can write a blog or pay money to bots to give them a bunch of ads.”

CONTACT Oriana Lukas at lukasok@dukes. jmu.edu. For more editorials regarding the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the opinion desk on Instagram and Twitter @Breeze_Opinion.