According to this research Google now has an enormously dominant position in the tracking of which websites we visit every day. They have their Google Analytics tags on millions of websites, including 92 of the top 100. This is important, because it positions them to do extremely targetted advertising when their ad products are used. Consider this journey:
- I visit Google.com and search for “cheap flight”
- I get directed to cheapflights.co.uk, which uses Google Analytics
- Later I visit experiencewa.com (which uses Google Analytics) to look at some of the interesting things I could do in Washington State
- I return to Google and search for something new, say “groceries”
Because Google knows I’ve searched for cheap flights, I’ve visited cheapflights.co.uk, and I’ve visited a site about Washington State, it could infer that I’m planning a trip to Washington, and serve a really targeted ad alongside my groceries search results.
The more websites use Google Analytics, the more complete picture Google will have of where I go online, and the more targeted its advertising could be, assuming they take the opportunity.
But it gets better, because most of the time Google knows who is doing the surfing, at least it does if you use Gmail or a personalised Google home page. So not only does it know about activity on a particular computer, it knows about your activity across multiple computers.
The more people use Google Analytics (a free product, I guess we know why now) the more complete their picture, and the greater their advantage over their advertising competitors.
Anxiety about online tracking is generally overdone, and I’m not particularly concerned that Google knows so much about my surfing habits, but it makes all the concern about Phorm look quite disproportionate, at least it does to me.
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