Does Mike use Google too much?

Applies to: Anyone interested in Mike’s thoughts on his use of Google…
Inspired by an Inner Circle member who asked a question about privacy, this post was in my head on my walk to work. It’s a totally off-topic post about my (Mike’s) thoughts on using Google too much… (oh and 1 thing which I will tell you about me that Google doesn’t know!)
I love Google as a company, but I wanted to take some time to understand just how much I use them.
Just to be very clear, I really do like Google and I am not recommending you stop using them 🙂

Here is a list of all the Google Services I use at home

• Google Email (Gmail) This is my only personal email address
• Google Chrome (is really the only browser I ever use, apart from when I test websites in all the others)
• Google Search (I have tried many others and it’s still the best)
• Google Maps
• Android Operating System on my phone (including Google Play Store for Apps)
• Google DNS (the thing that looks up where in the world a website is, so they almost know every website I visit)
• Google Drive (I use this instead of MS Office or LiberaOffice)
• Blogger (I run a website on their blogging platform)
• YouTube
• Google Authenticator (used for added security on some websites)
• Google Calendar
• Google Fit (tracks how many steps I take)
• Google Photos (backup of every photo I have ever taken)
• Google Chrome Cast (for watching TV on my TV)
• Google Hangouts (a chat messenger type app I use with some of my friends)
• Google News (rarely used, but sometimes is handy as it brings lots of sources together for 1 news item)
• Google Now Location services on my phone
• Google Data Saver (saves download data on some websites when on a mobile network)
• Google Contacts (Names, addresses, emails of everyone I know)
• GBoard (Keyboard on Android, they know what I type!)
• Google Self-Driving Car (OK This isn’t true, but I want one so bad!)
• Not linked to Google directly, but Spotify Music Service uses Google servers and data analysis tools to pick music for me

And at work, I use these (as well as many of the ones above)

• Google Analytics (this tells us about website visitors, which page they went to. It also kicks in when it is just embedded on a website you visit)
• Google Adwords (we sometimes run adverts for our products on Google)
• Google Webmaster Tools (it’s a way to monitor how Google looks at your websites)
• Google CDN (a place to load common files onto a website for faster loading, used for some fonts and scripts to make websites work/look better)

My day as Google sees me

You might want to skip right ahead to the “What am I getting at?” below this bit…
Let’s take a typical day as I get up and go to work and home again and here is all the things Google knows about me (Assuming it works out that my work account and my home account are the same person)…

I get up, check train times G-Now knows where I am so shows me how long till my train, if it’s on time and how long till I get to work. As well as travel details G-Now also shows me the weather for where I am now and at work and on a Monday also for my parent’s house (I often visit them on a Monday and it knows!).

On the train, it tracks me using G-Now location services and can show me where I have been in a day. The walk to work is tracked to G-Fit and shows how many steps and also knows if I took a detour by the Coop / Tesco (I don’t think it knows what I buy, but who knows!).

G-Maps pops up and asks me to rate a shop I have just been in.

I get to work, G-DNS knows every website I visit during the day, it knows how many documents I have written on G-Drive (never enough is how many). How long I have spent watching 100% educational and work-related videos on YouTube.

It knows how long I have spent on websites which have G-Analytics / G-CDN installed on them (many, many websites use this including The Inner Circle).

Afternoon: it knows I want to head home, so my phone starts giving me live updates on trains and travel info, I got a car home once so it also shows me travel time by car and if the traffic is moving slowly or not (using other people’s G-Now location details from their phones). I am interested in stocks and shares but not the ones it shows me so it did get something wrong, Alphabet is Google’s share price in the screenshot here (Alphabet is the company which owns Google, it’s complicated).

I get an email from Money Saving Expert to my Gmail account and then I start seeing adverts for switching banks / Credit Cards in Gmail… I got a holiday reminder and get holiday adverts etc…

Gmail reads my holiday email and auto adds my holiday to my G-calendar, I start to get alerts on my phone about places to visit there…

I play a game on my phone which connects to G-Play Services to log my progress, so now they know how often I play a game…

I chat to a friend on G-Hangouts and while G doesn’t know my conversation it does know we talked.

I go to bed, G-DNS knows when I go to bed as my internet activity drops to almost nothing.

And probably it knows some other things too…

What am I getting at?

I don’t know really? Maybe I’m thinking I am putting too much reliance on one company? Maybe I’m worried they know too much about me? Maybe I’m just thinking aloud…

I once tried a week without any Google product (apart from Gmail as it’s hard to change your email address) and it was very difficult. Some websites didn’t load as they had loaded content in from G-CDN or were hosted on Google Servers (companies/people can pay to host their website/email/anything on Google servers, like Spotify for example).

So maybe what we need is a list of alternatives to Google for those who want an alternative? For example, an alternative to G-Search might be Duck Duck Go… Sometimes you can’t help but use a Google service. For example visiting this website you are loading G-Analytics, G-CDN (for fonts and a couple of other files). And sometimes you have no idea if Google is moving your data through their network (they own a lot of cables around the world).

What am I not getting at?

I’m not saying stop using Google! I love Google and enjoy using their products. I think I just wanted to be clear in my head just how much I rely on them and make sure I’m happy with that… I’m not sure if I am?

Well, thank you so much for reading this far. Hopefully, it was an interesting meander through the thoughts going through my head as I was walking to work (being tracked by G-Location / G-Fit) this morning…
Mike 🙂
One Last Thought

They can’t read my thoughts (yet), and because I read books from charity shops they have no idea what books I read! (I’m currently reading a James Patterson book called Private Paris, now you know something that Google doesn’t know about me)

Here is a list of every company owned by Alphabet (Google)

The list is here how many do you use? I use loads of these not even mentioned in my list above!

List of Google Products