Christopher Dawson has commented on Google’s recent changes to their privacy policy. Dawson writes, “I live, eat, breathe, work, and play Google and there aren’t many people more aware of Google’s business model and the amount of data it collects than I. So is it just sheer stupidity and naiveté that has me utterly embracing the Google ecosystem and relatively unconcerned about newly announced privacy policies that have caused so much consternation this week? Before you jump down to the talkbacks to tell me how stupid I really am, read on for another couple paragraphs.”

He continues, “I can live with Google knowing a lot about me. It knows, for example, that I’ve recently developed an obsession with the electric guitar… Taking this a step further, as Google’s new privacy policies and terms of use do, I should expect to start seeing guitar-related apps in my suggestions in the Google Market and the Chrome Marketplace. Guitarists on Google+ should start appearing in suggested people to add to my circles and Google Reader should offer to download Guitar Player Magazine feeds for me. And, more likely than not, I’ll start seeing more guitar-related ads as well. Google’s goal, of course, is to sell advertising. That’s about 97% of their revenue.”

Dawson adds, “Many of the same techies who cry foul over these new policies have also been pushing for the development of the semantic web to make it easier to find what we actually need in the trillions of web pages floating around the Internet. Guess what, folks? This is the semantic web. When our search engines know what we actually mean, when data on the web automagically becomes information we can use easily and quickly, we’ve arrived. And the semantic web can’t exist without ‘the web’ (whatever that is) knowing a lot about us. It takes data for a computer to understand our needs and process natural language efficiently. Some of those data will necessarily be fairly personal.”

Read more here. Do you agree with Dawson’s take on the semantic web and privacy? Comment below!

Image: Courtesy Google

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