How does Google use your data?

Who has not ever used Google? This large American company is for many synonymous with the Internet, taking into account that it is the most used search engine in the world, according to Statista for the month of January 2020, 87.35% of searches on the web through a computer were made through Google . In addition, the website Strategy and Business reports that 56.1% of the inhabitants in the world have access to the Internet and in just one minute up to 4,497,420 searches are made only on Google, this indicates the great traffic that passes through the search engine these days.

Now, surely it has happened to everyone that after using Google to find out some information, such as a search about smart watches, they begin to receive ads in applications and in the search engine itself about offers and content of smart watches. This happens for a simple reason: Google uses practically all the content you consume on the web and applications according to them to “provide their services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect users against fraud. and abuse and personalize the content and advertisements that appear on Google or on our partners' websites and applications ”.

What information do they have exactly?

According to CNBC, Google takes into account information such as: name, gender, date of birth, as well as personal phone numbers, recent searches, interests of any kind (favorite sport, favorite food, etc.), location, work, information of the device you use, clicks, uses of the Google voice assistant and related applications such as Gmail, YouTube, among other information that it obtains mainly through the famous “Cookies” that almost every website tells you that it is going to use. These are basically small files with data that people's websites take to know their preferences and adapt their advertising, as well as save information on user behavior and then provide it to Google.

What do they do with it?

The data that Google obtains from people is already known, but in practical terms, what does the company do with it? Google uses almost all the information of each user for advertising purposes, that is, it is based on the interests and behavior of users on the web to offer "personalized" ads , in this way the people and brands that pay for Google advertising to promote their products or services, choose what type of users they want to reach, and Google – who knows this information – sends the ads to the people who meet the classification. For example, if a brand of fishing products designs its advertising for people with interests in fishing, specifically men who live in Colombia and are between 25 and 36 years old, it will only be these users who the information reaches, according to with Android Central.

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The same is true if the advertiser wants to target users who have recently researched related products, there are many other algorithms used by Google and brands to target ads to the right people at the best time.

Isn't this an abuse?

If someone considers that the collection of personal information by Google is an arbitrary act, they should first read Google's "privacy policies" where the company explicitly clarifies the data they collect, in addition to being the main way in which Google can generate income since the use of this search engine and its derived applications are free and in the end the money they obtain is from advertising paid by third parties, which is directed to those users with interests related to the brand that pays for these ads. In fact, Google's revenue from advertising alone for all of 2019 was $ 134.81 billion, which was 84% of Google's total revenue that same year, according to Statista.

CNBC emphasizes that Google does not sell this data to third parties or to governments, instead they are protected on their own servers and ensure that the passage of this information from users' devices (smartphones, computers, etc.) to their servers is also protected to avoid “Leaks” also express that each user can directly access the information that Google has collected and even delete it.

Yes, you can find out what data Google has about you

It is possible to know the information that Google has about you, you can delete it and even prohibit it from continuing to collect data, although this information is automatically deleted by Google every 18 months, for this you have to log in to the Google account and access the settings menu and choose "Manage your Google account ", a new menu will open where you have to enter "Privacy and personalization" in order to consult the data that Google has and control what activity it can collect and what not, in fact you can download all the data collected or known according to each Google application, as well as explore other functions on privacy and security.