We all know that Google did a good job on collecting user data in order to improve user search experience, I am really appreciated their work. But from point of view of a company who has large user data, there is a big concern that Google can somehow collect these data. Is Google really instrusive to other companys’ user data?  Or we are just worried too much.

Is google intrusive to user data?

Recently, I was trying to convince one of my clients to implement Google Analytics code as an additional tracking solution to the existing third-party tracking application, as I was not familiar with that third-party application and I was really keen to use Google Analytics for analysing user search behavior accurately.

But their director of IT was very cautious about Google because he read something negative (I don’t know what it is) about Google in terms of data collecting and hence he felt Google is intrusive to precious user data of the company (few millions).

I did a bit of research on searching anything negative about Google data collecting via Bing.com but didn’t find what I was looking for. So I posted this question on Linkedin, here is the original copy:

I’ve got a client company, the director of IT was very cautious about implementing Google Analytics code because he thought Google was very intrusive and it may able to gather user data from company server without permission.

I know Google Analytics uses first-party cookie to track traffic, and it’s not that intrusive imo, but how can I find further evidence to prove it? I am not a super tech-savvy and I need to convince their director of IT… lol

Any idea or any document will be really appreciated.

After a while, I got few feedbacks regarding this question and I was happy that I was not only receiving answers, but also created a little buzz. (Even though “from company server without permission” was not very accurate I guess)

Here we had 3 groups of people, some said Google is indeed intrusive to user data, some other said Google is not, and rest of the people said it cannot be proved. Let’s see what they said (only took few examples)

1. People said Google is indeed intrusive

You cannot prove so because Google IS intrusive in the sense of collecting user data, which is part of the reason why most large advertisers prefer to use their own tool or third party applications.

Compare with Amazon marketplace and you will know how things could become.

That being said, there is simply way too much info Google has collected in way too many dimensions, which makes it really hard even for Google to dig it up. You always see the research published by Compete or other third party agencies on Adwords site, but not as many by Google itself. While Google may have the data pool, making use of clients data is not just a tech can-do, but much wider an econ issue.

(then some part of another email regarding this issue)

I actually had some detailed discussions with Google China engineers on this issue, and had this impression that they have no idea how to mine this data even though they know where it is stored.
Anyway, this is not enough to convince the client that they will be safe with Google. When I was working in agencies, I used to simply list the info for the clients to decide. It is the client’s choice based on beliefs rather than facts.

-  Ge Gao, SEM Analyst at Lifestreet

2. People said Google is not intrusive

To give you a simple answer:

Google does not have access to your server in any way. If you use Google Analytics, you place a link to a piece of script on the site. What happens when a visitor visits your client’s website is this:

1. Visitor enters site site loads from clients server.
2. Google script gets loaded from google’s server.
3. Google script send information to Google’s server.
4. Your client logs in to Google Analytics, and retrieves information sent to Google by visitor.

In the above process, the only party directly interacting with Google is the visitor to your client’s website, not your client’s server or your client.

- Mark Lindhout, Owner at Langdradig Internetoplossingen

I’m not engineer on Google Analytics and may not be the proper person to answer your question, but I’ll try my best to answer your question according to my own understanding – please seek the correct / accurate answer from our company’s PR guys or PMs on Analytics product.

For Google, there’s no way to collect info if the user doesn’t let it do so EXPLICITLY. E.g.: if you don’t embed Analytics code explicitly in your web page, it won’t be able to collect the page’s usage info. And if user doesn’t accept the TOS (term of service), gmail won’t push ads.

So, the term “without permission” might not be so accurate since the user explicitly put the Analytics code into their page. And, technically, how could Google do the statistic if the user even doesn’t let Google know what’s happening?

- Chao Wang, Software Engineering at Google

3. People said that there is no way to prove whether Google is intrusive or not.

It is exceedingly difficult to prove the absence of something. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

An analogy I often use is, “try to prove that there is no spider in this room“.

- Peter H. Gregory, CISA, CISSP, DRCE. Security / Risk Manager, Published Author, Public Speaker, Instructor, Mentor, and Strategist

[update: from SEOmoz Q&A]

I think that Linkedin message must not have made it to my inbox. I am sorry about that.

I know Google Analytics uses first-party cookie to track traffic, and it’s not that intrusive imo, but how can I find further evidence to prove it?

This is a difficult question. The only public information that Google displays about their data is in their privacy polices. A while ago I aggregated all of this information in a blog post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-evil-side-of-google-exploring-googles-user-data-collection. I assume they collect other data but I don’t have any proof.

Can Google gather user data by visiting company servers?

Sort of. When a user comes to a page with Google Analytics code, they send a request to Google servers to download the given Javascript file. When making this request, the user sends data like IP Address, Operating System, Browser and language preferences. Google does NOT receive information like the users real name or their username on the site.

I hope that helps and let me know if you have any further questions,

- Danny Dover, Search Engine Consultant, SEOmoz

I really like Peter’s theory, try to prove that there is no threat by Google. But to be honest, I don’t think that Google will take the risk to potentially damage their reputation. To me, Google is not intrusive at all and I will be glad if my data can be used for further improving my search experience. To the corporate companies, if the company is large enough, I think it would be worthwhile to have its own tracking system installed; if the company is reasonably small, then Google Analytics is the best solution you can get for free.

Do you think Google is intrusive or not? Please share your opinion or experience here, I would love to hear your thought.

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