Text is not Dead

The simple, clean page with colorful letters looks harmless enough.  People, including me, use Google for every kind of search from the mundane to the incredibly important.  If I need to find information fast, I trust, yes trust, Google to be the most efficient way to get it.  However, even if I don’t need it within seconds with very little searching, I still use the familiar Google to search for recipes, that book for which I can only remember part of the title, movie reviews, videos I’ve heard about, and great restaurants- see, mundane.

When I search using Google, I am completing a trade. I give them multiple codes and pieces of information about me, my location, search history (which likely includes purchase history), and fragments of my email usage.  Is it a fair trade?  Even if I just want to find something using Google Maps, which is infinitely better than Mapquest, i give them all that information about me and my computer.  It’s a simple exchange, except for the fact that Google always gets as much information from me as it can, but sometimes all I get is the name of a song I heard only part of on the radio.

Also, is trade really fair when there’s one place to plug into to get the information?  Knowing this, are we devaluing our own privacy for the opportunity to gain information about something else?  And, if we devalue it, how can we expect to get a fair exchange for it?