Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Google plans on selling endorsements


According to last week's announcement, besides the fact that Facebook is already doing it, Google will soon take the same route of selling users endorsements. In other words, people's private posts and other important stuff about themselves, or something they might have liked, will eventually become public, and it does not mean just airing their good or bad experiences at some hotel.

The timing is not particularly the most appropriate since these days there is a lot of talk on both sides of the Atlantic about information privacy concerns which are raising eyebrows at all levels, including high ranking government officials from some European countries.  

Although these are supposed to be "minor changes" to the company policy to take effect on
November 11, selling endorsements involves the presumption of having an opportunity to profit from people's personal or private details, and making part of the public domain things that were only intended for a particular "audience" like images, private comments, names, profile information, preferences or even ratings.

This situation prompts serious doubts regarding how far companies and organizations are being allowed to go in order to make a profit, and even more importantly at this point, some legitimate concerns are arising in terms of weather this state of affairs should be permitted in the XXI century.

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