As online marketers, most of us cannot help but idolize Google and look up to its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They have made an enormous contribution to the online world and helped many of us tread this new medium as our careers in the last 10 years odd years of its existence. While WWW was always a destination for information seeking and knowledge hungry individuals, it would have been extremely difficult for all of us to hunt the relevant and much needed information that you could be looking out for, had Brin and Page never cracked this idea of online search, one day at their university dorm. They not only revolutionized the concept of search but devised a unique and efficient way to monetize their prized and successful idea. Today Google is worth upwards of $160Bn (year 2008) and still growing. We all are a part of their growth (contributed in some form or manner), know its history and some of us (including me) aspire to crack a Google-like killer idea and rule the world….someday!!
Since its inception, the corporation has now built multiple properties that leverage the core strength - search. However, somewhere in the collage of colorful Google, shades of gray have now started to appear. The most recent revelation has been very serious and has shaken me from top to bottom.
I make most of my purchases using my credit card, be it at offline retail or for online buys. I am a complete sucker for online sweepstakes. Needless to say, all my credit cards have done the rounds across all leading global websites, be it on amazon.com, ebay.com, airline ticketing sites...the list goes on. When I read a news article today on a website which said that over 19K credit card information detail of British web surfers have been found to be available on simple Google search. I froze and shut myself up for almost 5 minutes! Yes, online privacy (and fraud) is a huge concern in today's expanding web world, despite evolution of data encryption, but if private credit card data is available on simple Google search, then it will be a serious problem for the global e-commerce industry.
It's going to be extremely tricky for Google to alter their search algorithms to ensure that credit card and other payment detail are never picked up by their crawlers on any user search.
Those who transact primarily through the web medium, exercise caution!!! Keep your eyes and senses wide open…
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