Today we were treated to Google’s first Superbowl ad.
It showed the life story of a man, all through his Google searches. He traveled to Paris (“study abroad Paris”), met a woman at a restaurant (“cafes near the Louvre”), fell in love (“how to impress French girls”), seduced her (“chocolate shop near Paris France”), moved to France (flight tracking), got married (“churches in Paris”), and eventually had a child (“how to assemble a crib”).
What’s creepy about this? It’s proof that your Google searches can be enough to reconstruct your life history. All of it. And this was just the highlights. Imagine if our mystery searcher had searched for more personal information — how to deal with grief, the loss of a child, sexual confusion, a disease, a long-lost love, or more? Google knows all of it. Google knows how you feel, what you think, and what you do.
And even if Google itself doesn’t read your search history, it’s still out there and vulnerable to eavesdropping or hacking (remember Google’s allegations that someone in China hacked their servers and stole personal data?)
I think Google meant the ad to show that it is powerful.
Instead, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. It’s an everyday reminder that Google knows pretty much everything there is to know about you. And that this data is stored on servers around the world, where it could be mis-used by nearly anyone. (TechCrunch says that it’s proof that hell froze over.)
Remind me to clear my search history more often.


