Few businesses are as far-reaching and dominant as Google. The rapid growth Google has undergone in such a short amount of time is astonishing. Every student on campus is older than Google, but now it’s an almost constant part of our lives. 

Google is famous for its simple, white search page with the colorful Google type. But thinking of Google as a search engine is too “high school keyboarding teacher.” The stylized G is a massive part of everyday life for most people. Google handles our private communication, our navigation, our schedules, our file storage. It finds answers for anything and everything your imagination can think of — even if that idea is inappropriate. The word “Googling” itself is now a verb.

The scope of Google’s influence was very clear this week when Yahoo announced that the two companies would team up to provide advertisements on Yahoo services. Yahoo is a rival to Google in many ways, offering a competing search engine and email service in particular. Yet Yahoo decided to use one of its biggest foes for advertising. It is as if Coke used Pepsi plants to bottle their products.

The reason Yahoo would play with its main competitor is that Google is amazing at what it does — collect information about you and sell you the most personal advertisements you can get on the Web. Just refresh your Gmail a few times and watch how the advertisements read like a list of your inbox. Google may be too specific at it: A recent Harvard study found that when a person with a name typical of African-Americans was on a page, Google was more likely to show them ads that dealt with criminal records than for Caucasians. 

While that example is extreme, it shows the incredible amount of information Google takes in and processes about people all over the world using the Internet. This is one reason Google has a network of massive physical data centers across the world. And it’s why it offers great advertising — Google knows what you want or what will be relevant to what you’re reading about. Yahoo knows this, which is why it went to Google to help them out in raising some cash. 

Google is very powerful. Similarly to how Microsoft boomed in the ’90s, this is Google’s time. And because of this, it gets to offer a lot of incredible services: fast email, faster search engine, nearly perfect digital maps and directions, Google Drive to hold files in the cloud, calendar, translations, a Web browser, even fun games on the Google homepage. All of these things are products I use on a daily basis, and they improve my life tremendously. And all of these essentials can all be accessed simply with a name and password.

But it’s important to remember what these services effectively are: products. Just like you pay Comcast to connect you to the Internet, you pay Google to use their features. But you don’t pay cash; you pay statistics and data. It is not just a name and password. When you open Gmail, you tell Google who and what you talk about. 

When you use Google Maps to ask directions, you tell them where you’re going, when, what route and how often. When you search, you could be telling Google everything from your favorite foods to whether you are single to your mental stability. 

At first glance, this seems terrifying. I’m giving up my privacy to some giant, colorful typeface in the sky? But this is the world we live in, and it is not going to change. If Google doesn’t do it, other companies will, and they do. Using free services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google requires that you relinquish some data about yourself. 

It doesn’t have to be a bad situation if you remember one thing: Facebook, Google and others don’t use your money as currency — they use your information. Just like you would prefer to spend your money on the best physical product you can find, do the same with online products. Find the best provider of email or search or maps and directions and allow them to use your info in return, rather than blindly using one or the other — and in the process giving up your privacy. 

In my book, Google is the best. It offers a wide variety of things that have become integral to how I go about my day. Just a heads up, Google, I’m not going to my usual lunch spot today. But as long as you get me the best directions there, I’ll keep telling you when I go back.

Tim is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].