The price of using Google Products and protecting yourself

Is Privacy, Ethics and Security Part of the Google Equations?

Google: Collecting data

    I am going to put myself in the shoes of the executives at Google and say I do not mind the fact that Google pulls data from millions every day. On the surface, I believe Google feels it is their job as a company to provide information and to do a thorough job of who is visiting their website or other platforms. Google prides itself as one of the leading technological companies in the world. They are constantly pushing the proverbial envelope and innovating new ways to use their free platforms. As a marketer, I want to know what my consumer base is looking for and make that product or service accessible to them. A large part of navigating the market landscape is researching how the consumer thinks and acts. This is part of what Google is doing when they are collecting data on their millions of users. If they are not collecting data, they most likely are not moving forward with new ideas that reshape the user experience.

    Should the user be concerned about Google and its data collecting habits? I think there are times when users may feel their privacy is violated. For example, when a user is typing in a search, Google AdWords is tracking that particular search. The user may be surprised to find the same product they searched show up as an advertisement in their continued search. I am not sure the user should be overly concerned, but when a user feels their privacy has been breached, that could raise a red flag for certain people.

    The government and the American Antitrust Institute have taken notice in past years. Several members within these agencies believe Google has abused their power as the dominant search engine tool. In 2011, Robert Birge, Kayak’s chief marketing officer said, “We believe there’s a very compelling case that Google is abusing its dominant position in search to stifle competition and to extend its control over how information and commerce flows over the Internet.” Greg Reback, an antitrust attorney added, “The allegation is that Google brings its own results up to the top of the search results, making them more visible and more valuable than competitors who actually would score higher on the normal relevance tests Google uses to rank search results (Gregory).” 

     I am not a lawyer, but one part of me says, if this was in fact true, Google should play fair with the results that rise to the top of their search engine. On the other hand, part of me says this is Google’s search engine and why wouldn’t they want to make their own products and services more visible. I think we forget Google is free to all users and this could fall under the category of ‘price of doing business.’ As I explained in my previous blog, there are many search tools out there and different aggregating systems that cost money. Overall, I think we as a society are fortunate to have a search service for free. It beats using an Encyclopedia! 
   
Google: Ethics, Privacy and Security

    After digging around the Internet for ethics, privacy and security issues associated with Google, I found many stories that are very critical of Google’s practices when it comes to these issues. When researching for anything on Google, it is hard not to think about how much actual ‘privacy’ a user really has at his or her disposal. I typically approach my searching methods with the premise that I am not alone in my use of Google or any other search engine. I would not consider myself as paranoid, but very self aware of my surroundings. A long time ago, if started thinking about the privacy issues when my searches started triggering similar advertisements to my search. 

     For example, if I am searching for a certain brand of shoes or boots, it is not uncommon for that same brand to appear on the right side of my screen as an advertisement. This should raise a red flag for any user. From that point on I always worked on the computer as if someone was watching my moves. In a sense, it is kind of sad to really think about ‘big brother’ always watching over your shoulder, but reality and history show, we leave a cyber footprint with every online action we make. 

    Many web users do not recognize the importance of privacy and security, a problem destined to become much worse before it gets better. On the surface, it seems rather innocuous, intended merely to give Google permission to transmit your data across various networks onto all sorts of mobile devices. However, Google demands extremely broad rights from users (Kringsman). In a sense, the question users have to ask themselves is: Are they willing to hand over their own property? I suspect and hope privacy issues have improved over the years with Google (and other search engines), but the weary side of me says, individuals should always be mindful of ‘who’ else is monitoring their web searching habits. If a user is second guessing their privacy/security and whether or not to publish or search a certain item, they should probably error on the side of caution and not publish.     


Security: Google Play

    While I am not personally a big user of Google Play, I am aware of the portal for apps and massive amounts of downloads. Last year a Columbia University student presented a paper about the security issues associated with Google Play. One of the points the presenters made was what gets put into Google Play? The students’ contention was that very little was known about what’s there at an aggregate level. To do this, they developed PlayDrone, a tool that uses various hacking techniques to circumvent Google security to successfully download Google Play apps and recover their sources (Evarts). This story was very telling because the two students discovered all kinds of new information about the insecure content in Google Play. Their findings revealed developers often store their secret keys in their apps software, similar to usernames/passwords information, which could be used by anyone to steal user data or resources from service providers (i.e. Facebook or Amazon).   


Practice Vigilance

    Stories such as the one above underscore the necessity for online vigilance – especially when using social media platforms. There have been many stories well documented throughout the years about people posting inappropriate subject matters and suffering the consequences for their actions through job loss or worse. It bears repeating, when in doubt about the contents of a particular post, it is a good decision to not hit send. This link is a short video of how to set up privacy settings for Blogger. It may run counter to some of the things I have discussed, but the Blogger Manager presented a few good options: http://bit.ly/1FfSTX3.

    If you are a person who is paranoid and do not want anything viewed, you may want to heed the advice of government whistleblower, Edward Snowden. Snowden advised viewers to get rid of Dropbox, and to avoid using high-profile online services such as Facebook and Google if they wanted to protect their privacy in the ever-more-informed Information Age (Mejia). That advice is fairly cut and dry through the lens of Mr. Snowden, but it can be difficult if you need to search and use the largest search engine. 
 

References

Gregory, N. (June 27, 2011), Is Google Playing Fair With Its Search Results? Retrieved from:
    http://n.pr/1FAnK46
Kringsman, M. (July 11, 2011), Google Plus: Is Privacy an Issue? Retrieved from:
    http://zd.net/1AjC8dJ
Evarts, H. (June 18, 2014), Crucial Security problem in Google Play: Thousands of Secret
    Keys found in android apps, Retrieved from; http://bit.ly/SVmJh0
Mejia, P. (October 12, 2014), Wary of Privacy Issues? Ditch Dropbox and Avoid Google, Says
    Edward Snowden, Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1s7ovsH
 








 

‘Clicky’ Has Effective Measuring Tools and is User-Friendly

Clicky Analytics

    Throughout my research I learned a there is no shortage of web analytics tools on the market. By now I am aware that Google Analytics is the most commonly used analytics tool, but there are several alternative options for website users to consider. While looking for an alternative to Google Analytics, I found there are many effective software programs, including Piwik, Open Web Analytics, MixPanel and more. I chose to focus my analytics efforts on Clicky.

    Clicky is free but only for one website and up to 3,000 daily page views. At first glance, Clicky appears to be very clean in terms of its appearance and functionality. Heatmap is a nice option as it allows users to view maps for individual visitor sessions, including segmentation. Users can view heatmap for visitors who complete a specific goal. This option would be very useful for a company running a campaign or a promotion.

    Clicky also provides a very clean look to its site, which makes the aesthetics very appealing. The layout of websites tracked that a user selects are easy to read and so are the tracking options – when visitors clicked, how many visited and easy-to-read graphs over a certain amount of days. The interface is uncluttered, intuitive and only displays material that is mostly likely to be viewed. Clicky does not try to overwhelm users with categories or statistics that may simply be featured as “window dressing.” The process to view specific analytics is very quick and easy – a few clicks and the data will be displayed. Below is an image of what visitors will see if they are searching for their analytics on Clicky.

Image retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1CsCle9

 Clicky prides itself on being easy to use, in fact they confidently claim to be the easiest analytics service you have ever used (Bennett).

Compare/Contrast: Google Analytics

    Google Analytics has nearly every tracking feature a user could possibly want to use. One of the drawbacks, however, is the information displayed can be somewhat difficult to navigate for users that are simply trying to see only a handful of analytics. Above, I showed the simplicity of the Clicky graphic. The following is an image from Google Analytics that can be convoluted to follow – especially for a beginner in the world of website analytics.








Image retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1CsCle9

 
Dashboards
The dashboards used by Clicky are not that different from their competitors but they do offer a few unique features.

    Each widget can be altered on the fly to show a different view of the data, which makes Clicky extremely easy to use, compared to navigating around other analytics programs – this includes Google Analytics. Users can expand the visitors’ data and view how many pages, how many downloads items, how many followed outbound links and viewed media or triggered separate events. There also is an automatic comparison with data for the previous period which gives an instant assessment of how the metrics have changed – if at all.

    There are additional features to the Clicky Admin Dashboard that user would likely enjoy: 1. Cashe feature, this improves loading speeds. As we know, if anyone has a site that is loading pages slowly, they run the risk of losing a valuable customer/viewer. 2. Access to level settings. 3. Option to display top 30 pages, referrers and searches (sortable by columns). 4. Option to display Clicky Analytics statistics on frontend, at the end of each article. 5. has multilingual support.

Pros and cons

    I have found there are pros and cons with each web metrics site besides Google Analytics and this includes Clicky. Below is a list of pros and cons associated with Clicky:

Pros:

•    Easy to interpret: Unlike Google Analytics, the website visitor information has been laid out in an easily understandable interface.
•    On-site Analytics: You get a live view of every visitor activity on your site, with an on-site analytics widget in the corner of your website. The widget is visible to only you and not the pubic – this seems to be a very nice feature!
•    Flash Free: The tool is 100 percent flash free and thus can be accessed via phones and tables.

Cons:

•    It may not be the first choice for bigger websites, as all of its in-numerous features are quite basic.
•    There is no step-by-step goal tracking of keyword traffic that your website receives, unlike in Google analytics. You get stats of incoming keywords only (Fernando).

Real-Time:

    One of the features about Clicky I enjoyed reading about was the real-time functionality. Google Analytics certainly has this feature as well, but Clicky does not simply give you a snapshot of what is happening now, but the analytics metrics are immediately updated. This essentially means the user always has a complete and updated picture of what is happening on the site and how the metrics are changing in real time. When I search through Google Analytics, I notice I have to search through the real-time section of tabs. It is my understanding that Clicky is always providing real-time updates on every page which makes the process very easy to learn and understand.



Additional features

    Having the ability to easily track individual users is a tool that is very attractive. Clicky can track add user names and email addresses to visitors so that you can track the people you know and marry that up with your customer database or your social media fans and followers (Hall). Again, this is not a feature that Google Analytics does not offer, but its layout and use if somewhat different. The overall experience seems to be more user friendly than Google Analytics.


References

Bennett, M. (January 16, 2012), 7 Alternatives to Google Analytics, Retrieved from:
    http://bit.ly/1EsfZcB
Ewer, T. (June 21, 2013), Why I Use Clicky Analytics Instead of Google, Retrieved from:
    http://bit.ly/1CsCle9
Fernando, D. (July 24, 2014), 10 Web Analytics Tools: Analytics Tools Other than Google
    Analytics, Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/19icFaq
Hall Hurley, S. (June 3, 2014), Analytics Update: Do you Need a Second Analytics Package?
    Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1CsUJ6K