Driving Ads, Not Cars
Driving ads, not cars
As I was commuting to School yesterday, I could not but contemplate this question. Why would Google invest in driverless cars? If you had asked an auto industry executive five years ago if Google was a competitor or partner, they would probably have replied with a blank stare. Today, Google has become a real force in the automotive sector, driving the Android Open Automotive Alliance, and making large investments in the development of driverless car systems. Why in the world would they do this? Because of privacy. Or even better, lack thereof.
The Open Automotive Alliance was launched in January 2014, with GM, Honda, Audi, and Hyundai to focus on driving adoption of Android in cars. Android is already rapidly becoming a dominant force in the mobile sector, going from nowhere back in 2009 to what looks like virtually complete dominance in just four years. With Android now prevalent in cars, Google will be able to track consumers across an entire day of activities, from waking up in the morning, reading their news on their mobile, updating their social presence, commuting to work, stopping by to get their morning latte, and so on, with a combination of work, social , commuting and family activities. All of them forgot to “opt out”, long, long ago…
Android is an information machine, and with its deployments, Google tracks everyone’s continuing position, search queries, interests, reservations, consumption, etc… the value is enormous. Just think of commuting time, which is an average of 30 minutes each way for the typical US worker. An hour a day for one hundred million US users is about three hundred hours per US consumer per year, which is about the same as we spend on Facebook. In other words, getting Android to work, and getting Google control over information and activities in the car could generate as much advertising value as the entire advertising opportunity offered by Facebook. Well worth spending the money on driverless cars. A few hundred million dollars in driverless sensor and software technology seem like a pittance against the value of not having to worry about running into the car in front of you, as you order your latte or plan your next vacation.
Although the convenience of using car time for shopping and social networking seems attractive, the idea of building on Android’s already enormous personal and confidential data seems truly scary. What is the limit? Will Google track the motion of our hands as we brush our teeth and sell the information to optimize toothbrush design? What activities, if any will remain truly private? What private moments will we ever have to contemplate on crazy ideas like driverless cars?