As smart as humans are known to be, we don’t always make the right decisions. Now, you can argue that we learn from our bad calls, and it’s a fair argument too, but there is a big catch. You see, our decision-making is so off the mark at times that it ends up leaving an indelible mark on us or worse, on the world. Such a risky dynamic naturally calls for us to be a little more guarded. We, on our part, will achieve the stated goal once we bring dedicated regulatory bodies into the fold. The move paid off rather handsomely, as it made the world more protected than ever before. However, it was also pretty short-lived, and the biggest reason behind that was technology. With technology taking over the scene, the rule breakers suddenly had another chance at hiding their misdoings. In fact, this time they could do it in a much easier way, therefore spelling serious trouble for the authorities. Fortunately, though, we are now witnessing a whole new shift in dynamic, a shift that is solely focused on stopping the technological misuse. The same element has proved itself apparent in many recent cases, and Google’s latest decision should only bolster its presence moving forward.
Google has officially announced a range of privacy measures, which are all designed to help users in gaining more control over how their data is used by Google applications. The measures also focus a fair amount on letting the user control how their data is displayed in front of the world through the search engine medium. According to certain reports, the company’s privacy initiative starts with My Ad Center interface, a hub that will let users customize the types of ads they see by selecting from a range of topics they are interested in or opt to see fewer ads on a given topic. Apart from it, Google users can now request the removal of their personal information, including phone number, email and address details, from the search results.
Amidst all the measures, Google also launched a notable product in Protected Computing, which is a growing toolkit of technologies that protects user data irrespective of where and when it is processed. It will achieve that by minimizing user’s footprint of personally identifiable data.
“While we’re continuing to innovate new applications across our products, we’re equally focused on using Protected Computing to unlock the potential of data to benefit society more broadly — for example, by enabling even more robust aggregated and anonymized datasets so we can safely do everything from help cities reduce their carbon footprint, to accelerate new medical breakthroughs” said Jen Fitzpatrick, SVP, Core Systems & Experiences, Google