We've been warning for a longtime now Google is a huge octopus with more tentacles than the one in Washington. It continues to encroach on your privacy.
Google spread its tentacles further into the world of travel this week with the launch of Google Trips, a new smartphone app described by the internet giant as a “personalised tour guide in your pocket”.
Google, which is also working on a project to prevent ageing, claims Trips will not only help users manage their travel arrangements – from hotel bookings to flights – but also chaperone them around popular tourist attractions. Tour guides will no doubt be worried.
The app works offline – travellers can download everything to their phone before setting off – though it does require users to log in with a Google account, from which the app extracts relevant information about your trip from Google Mail, such as hotel confirmations and e-tickets.
Assuming it does work, Google Trips might seem like a handy travel companion. However, there are some issues travellers may want to consider before using it, chiefly privacy. In its policy, Google makes no bones about it: one of the reasons it mines information from you is to better target you with adverts. The more you give it, the better it gets at selling to you
It might not bother you at first, but data in the wrong hands--and as we have discovered with credit cards, that can happen, see Home Depot, Target, Citi and other large firms--but what and where is all that data used for and going? Your local friendly neighborhood terrorist? There is another issue here, however, just the sheer power of Google.
There also a political issue. Despite statements to the contrary, there no such thing as impartial in today's charged world. And Google, whatever your feelings are, has not been squeaky clean or nonpartisan. There is also Google's role in censorship, a fact not a supposition.
Doing business with firm that might be behind the scenes trying to do in your very core beliefs is an interesting dilemma.
telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/google-travel-app-wants-to-be-your-tour-guide-but-is-that-a-good-thing/
Assuming it does work, Google Trips might seem like a handy travel companion. However, there are some issues travellers may want to consider before using it, chiefly privacy. In its policy, Google makes no bones about it: one of the reasons it mines information from you is to better target you with adverts. The more you give it, the better it gets at selling to you
It might not bother you at first, but data in the wrong hands--and as we have discovered with credit cards, that can happen, see Home Depot, Target, Citi and other large firms--but what and where is all that data used for and going? Your local friendly neighborhood terrorist? There is another issue here, however, just the sheer power of Google.
There also a political issue. Despite statements to the contrary, there no such thing as impartial in today's charged world. And Google, whatever your feelings are, has not been squeaky clean or nonpartisan. There is also Google's role in censorship, a fact not a supposition.
Doing business with firm that might be behind the scenes trying to do in your very core beliefs is an interesting dilemma.
telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/google-travel-app-wants-to-be-your-tour-guide-but-is-that-a-good-thing/
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