Big search engines

Motivation

Financial gain

Past patterns

Big search engines have displaced other companies, upended several industries, and made a slew of enemies along the way. Some of these enemies are also industry giants. Other enemies are people and small companies raising concerns about search and search advertising. Big search engines have massive advertising networks. Why would it act in its user’s best interests and not in the advertisers paying for user data? Less information to use for ad targeting cuts into their profits.

Current

Big search engines use products and services for collecting and processing user data to make behavioural profiles to influence buying behaviour and tailor search results. Matching advertisements can be placed directly and sold on a programmatic market. The created (and sold) datasets can expose personal information and useful auxiliary information for various adversaries.