Since NEXUS 7 appeared with the Jelly Bean update, there have been discussions about how Google passively tracks your online actions in order to serve you on time “smart cards” on Google Now.
From my experience, what I’ve seen were weather location and events cards that were deducted from things that I explicitly give to Google through web queries, Google latitude and Google Calendar.
But today things changed a little bit on a very twisted way. When I opened Google Now, I had a smart card with driving directions to a hotel. If you think that I have searched for that hotel, been there or have an event schedule there you are totally wrong.
The only thing I have EVER done regarding that hotel, was to see its Facebook page for about 2-3 minutes, 10 minutes ago. On my Chrome desktop!
What are the implications of this?
- EVERYTHING you do on a Google device/Service or app is real time monitored, processed and used in profiling you
- As a marketer, is important to cover all the field when planning your strategy. Missing to cover a certain web property will lead to loosing clients in the near feature.
- If you are paranoid (not even highly, just mildly), now would be the right time to cut all your online interactions and hide at the bottom of a cave
The technical infrastructure behind this level of data processing will (not even could) give Google a strong advantage over the competition (Read Apple & Microsoft) and will assure a strong financial future for the company