Targeted Advertisments, Helpful or Creepy?

It's pretty easy to say that Google has become a cultural and technological crutch for all internet searches in the modern age. And it's not only their home-page search feature we utilize, it's gmail, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Maps, and even Blogger pages like this one that are incredible and invaluable free applications. That's not even mentioning Youtube which has 30+ million active users every day that spend an average of 40 minutes per viewing session (Aslam, S. omnicoreagency.com). We use Google and their products, Google knows we use Google, and advertisers know we use Google. With such an incredible amount of usage on a global scale, advertisers use Google more than any other internet source for digital adverstising to get the information about their products to consumers (statista.com 2018). Google has figured out how to maximize the effectiveness of their advertisers hard-earned dollars to put the right ads in front of the right consumers by taloring advertisments based on each user's personal internet search and site usages. This helps their advertisers make money and keep putting their ad dollars in Google's pockets. 

There's an old saying that, 'Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do something.' It may behoove Google's advertising clientel for Google to use their algorythims to spy on us in order to maximize their own profits, but should they? Do enough people care to take a stand or is just the price we pay for such a wide range of useful, and most importantly, free features and websites? Could you even really get away from Google if you tried? What if other search engines are using similar technology (hint: They are.)? Is it much ado about nothing in the end? Did I just answer my own question with a series of questions? I don't know. Did I?

Aslam, Salman "Youtube by the numbers: Stas, Demographics, and Fun Facts" omnicoreagency.com 5, Feb. 2018 https://www.omnicoreagency.com/youtube-statistics/

uncredited "Net digital ad revenues of Google as percentage of total digital advertising revenues worldwide from 2016 to 2019" statista.com 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/193530/market-share-of-net-us-online-ad-revenues-of-google-since-2009/