Hiding in Plain Sight? The “Right to Be Forgotten” and Search Engines in the Context of International Data Protection Frameworks

Krzysztof Kornel Garstka and David Erdos:

In the wake of the Google Spain (2014) and debate on the “right to be forgotten”, now included in the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it has become widely recognised that data protection law within the EU/EEA grants individuals a qualified right to have personal data relating to them deindexed from search engines. At the same time, however, this outcome has at times been conceptualised as a uniquely EU/EEA phenomena, perhaps even resulting from one idiosyncratic CJEU judgment. This paper questions such a conceptualisation. Through an analysis of five major extra-EU/EEA international data protection instruments, it argues that most of these could on a reasonable interpretation be read as supporting a Google Spain-like result. Further, and in light of the serious threats faced by individuals as a result of the public processing of data relating to them, it argues that the time is ripe for a broader process of international discussion and consensus-building on the “right to be forgotten”. Such an exercise should not be limited to generalised search engines (which undoubtedly raise some uniquely challenging interpretative conundrums within data protection), but should also encompass other actors including social networking sites, video-sharing platforms and rating websites.

Do Tech Companies Really Need All That User Data?

Walter Frick:

The online economy — from search to email to social media — is built in large part on the fact that consumers are willing to give away their data in exchange for products that are free and easy to use. The assumption behind this trade-off is that without giving up all that data, those products either couldn’t be so good or would have to come at a cost.
 
 But a new working paper, released this week by Lesley Chiou of Occidental College and Catherine Tucker of MIT, suggests that the trade-off may not always be necessary. By studying the effects of privacy regulations in the EU, they attempted to measure whether the anonymization and de-identification of search data hurts the quality of search results.
 
 Most search engines capture user data, including IP addresses and other data that can identify a user across multiple visits. This data then allows search companies to improve their algorithms and to personalize results for the user. At least, that’s the idea. To determine whether storage of users’ personal data improves search results, Chiou and Tucker looked at how search results from Bing and Yahoo differed before and after changes in the European Commission’s rules on data retention. In 2008 the Commission recommended that search engines reduce the period over which search engines kept user records. In response, Yahoo decided to strengthen its privacy policy by anonymizing user data after 90 days. In 2010 Microsoft changed its policy, and began deleting IP addresses associated with searches on Bing after six months and all data points intended to identify a user across visits after 18 months. In 2011 Yahoo changed its policy again, this time deciding to store personal data longer — for 18 months rather than 90 days — allowing the researchers yet another chance to measure how changes in data storage affected search results. (Google did not change its policies during this period, and so is not included in the study. Some of Tucker’s past research has been funded by Google.)

Understanding Uber: It’s Not About The App

London Reconnections:

Oddly, the email was sent by a company that TfL have taken no direct action against, and referred to an app that TfL have made no effort (and have no power) to ban.
 
 When two become one
 
 If that last statement sounds confusing, then this is understandable. It is because the consumer experience that is “Uber” is not actually the same as the companies that deliver it.
 
 And “companies” is, ultimately, correct. Although most users of the system don’t realise it, over the course of requesting, completing and paying for their journey an Uber user in London actually interacts with two different companies – one Dutch, one British.
 
 The first of those companies is Uber BV (UBV). Based in the Netherlands, this company is responsible for the actual Uber app. When a user wants to be picked up and picks a driver, they are interacting with UBV. It is UBV that request that driver be dispatched to the user’s location. It is also UBV who then collect any payment required.
 
 At no point, however, does the user actually get into a car owned, managed or operated by UBV. That duty falls to the second, UK-based company – Uber London Ltd. (ULL). It is ULL who are responsible for all Uber vehicles – and their drivers – in London. Like Addison Lee or any of the other thousands of smaller operators that can be found on high streets throughout the capital, ULL are a minicab firm. They just happen to be one that no passenger has ever called directly – they respond exclusively to requests from UBV.
 
 This setup may seem unwieldy, but it is deliberate. In part, it is what has allowed Uber to blur the boundary between being a ‘pre-booked’ service and ‘plying-for-hire’ (a difference we explored when we last looked at the London taxi trade back in 2015). It is also this setup that also allows Uber to pay what their critics say is less than their ‘fair share’ of tax – Uber pays no VAT and, last year, only paid £411,000 in Corporation Tax.
 
 The average Londoner can be forgiven for not knowing all of the above (commentators in the media, less so). In the context of the journey, it is the experience that matters, not the technology or corporate structure that delivers it. In the context of understanding the current licensing situation, however, knowing the difference between the companies that make up that that Uber experience is important. Because without that, it is very easy for both Uber’s supporters and opponents to misunderstand what this dispute is actually about.
 
 

Electric vehicle price is rising, but cost-per-mile is falling

Megan Guess:

Around the world, the average price of electric vehicles (EVs) rose in 2016, but that’s not necessarily cause for alarm according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). When the agency divided the list price of EVs with their range, it found a downward trend in how much bang an EV buyer is getting for their buck.
 
 The average price of EVs sold around the world was at its lowest in 2012, according to data from the annually compiled World Energy Investment 2017 report. In the following five years, that number has been growing steadily—a trend you’d expect to worry advocates who think electrifying a significant part of the auto industry is one of the most important ways to make a dent in CO2 emissions. While higher prices reflect “faster growth in more expensive models,” they don’t “take account of increases in driving range through battery improvements,” the IEA wrote.
 
 Dividing the list price of EVs on the market by their maximum stated driving range shows a different story. In 2012, EVs cost on average $400 per kilometer of range, whereas in 2016 that number was closer to $250 per kilometer of range. If EVs are getting more expensive, they’re also becoming more functional. “For now, reductions in battery costs are translating into longer ranges rather than lower vehicle prices,” the EIA wrote. “The average price per kilometer of driving range declined by six percent in 2016.”

We Are Subsidizing Rich Suburbanites to Clog Cities With Their Cars

Peter Coy

A new report from TransitCenter, a foundation that says it “works to improve urban mobility,” calculates that the parking benefit is worth up to $1,000 a year for commuters who are in high tax brackets and work in big cities. Collectively, it calculates, the break costs $7.3 billion a year in lost tax revenue.
 
 True, there’s also a tax benefit for mass-transit commuters that costs the government about $1.3 billion a year. TransitCenter says that while it’s good as far as it goes, “it is overshadowed by the parking tax benefit’s much larger adverse impact.”
 
 If you work in a place where there’s lots of free parking in lots or on the street you don’t benefit from the tax break. That’s because in such places the employee parking lot isn’t an economically valuable fringe benefit; you could have parked for free even if it didn’t exist. The break is only valuable for people who work in crowded areas. So two-thirds of American workers are in effect transferring money to the other one-third.

The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

Alan Berger

The suburbanization of America marches on. That movement includes millennials, who, as it turns out, are not a monolithic generation of suburb-hating city dwellers.
 
 Most of that generation represents a powerful global trend. They may like the city, but they love the suburbs even more.
 
 They are continuing to migrate to suburbs. According to the latest Census Bureau statistics, 25- to 29-year-olds are about a quarter more likely to move from the city to the suburbs as vice versa; older millennials are more than twice as likely.
 
 Their future — and that of the planet — lies on the urban peripheries. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma made clear that, especially in suburbs, the United States desperately needs better drainage systems to handle the enormous amounts of rainfall expected from climate change.
 
 They also made clear that new, sustainable suburbs can offer an advantage by expanding landscapes that can absorb water.
 
 Housing affordability is a major driver of the appeal of suburbia, which has historically been, and still is, more affordable, especially for first-time home buyers.
 
 Yet millennial suburbanites want a new kind of landscape. They want breathing room but disdain the energy wastefulness, visual monotony and social conformity of postwar manufactured neighborhoods. If new suburbs can hit the sweet spot that accommodates the priorities of that generation, millennial habitats will redefine everyday life for all suburbanites, which is 70 percent of Americans.
 
 How can technology, revolutionary design and planning transform suburban living?

Portland probe finds Uber used software to evade 16 government officials

Heather Somerville::

A sweeping investigation by the city of Portland, Oregon, found that Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] used a software tool to intentionally evade 16 government officials whose job it was to regulate the ride-services company, city officials said on Thursday.

When Uber began operating in Portland in December 2014, it did not have any permits, so it used a software tool it had created called Greyball to block regulators from booking rides. Uber stopped using the software after it received approval to operate its service in Portland in April 2015.

The city imposed no fines or other penalties but transportation officials have recommended that the city ramp up enforcement efforts.

“We have ensured that no attempts to evade regulators or deny service to riders” will be allowed in the future, Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman said in a statement.

Portland launched its investigation after the New York Times reported in March that Uber used Greyball to evade government officials in areas where its service had not yet been approved, such as Portland, Boston, Paris and Las Vegas, and in countries such as Australia, China, Italy and South Korea.

Electric Vehicles Have an Energy Problem—Hydrogen May Be the Answer

Michael Lewis::

To grasp the magnitude of the problem facing electric vehicles, we should consider what it would take to power a world full of them. Let’s start with your local corner store fueling station.

The gas station that you visit routinely has underground fuel tanks with enormous gasoline fuel capacity, typically 10,000 to 20,000 gallons. This equates to an electrical energy capacity of 500 megawatt-hours. By comparison, Tesla’s Mira Loma 80 megawatt-hour battery energy station in California, the largest such installation in the United States, sits on 1.5 acres. To match the energy storage capacity of gasoline fueling stations with batteries would require a 10-acre battery farm. In other words, gasoline allows us to put a lot of energy in a small space.

The hope for electric vehicles is that we don’t have to store all the electricity at your local fueling station. We can simply pull the required power from the grid. But can we? Yes and no.

Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser

Marty Swant:

The biggest advertising organizations say Apple will “sabotage” the current economic model of the internet with plans to integrate cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari.
 
 Six trade groups—the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A’s and two others—say they’re “deeply concerned” with Apple’s plans to release a version of the internet browser that overrides and replaces user cookie preferences with a set of Apple-controlled standards. The feature, which is called “Intelligent Tracking Prevention,” limits how advertisers and websites can track users across the internet by putting in place a 24-hour limit on ad retargeting.
 
 In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups describe the new standards as “opaque and arbitrary,” warning that the changes could affect the “infrastructure of the modern internet,” which largely relies on consistent standards across websites. The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more “generic and less timely and useful.”
 
 “Apple’s unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Adweek this morning. “Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful. Put simply, machine-driven cookie choices do not represent user choice; they represent browser-manufacturer choice.”

Conservatives, liberals unite against Silicon Valley

 
 Nancy Scola:

Simpson’s group has long criticized the country’s biggest tech companies, saying they abuse consumers on everything from privacy to pricing. But across Washington, liberals and conservatives are beginning to find common ground in the view that the industry’s power over American life has grown too vast and unchecked — and the new dynamic is upending traditional ideological alignments.
 
 Tech’s new critics include Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has begun sounding the alarm that Google has grown into “the most powerful company in the history of the world.”
 
 Carlson recently aired an interview with Matt Stoller, a member of an antitrust team that lost its jobs at the left-leaning think tank New America after praising a $2.7 billion fine that the European Commission levied against Google this summer for stifling competition. The New York Times reported that Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, a New America funder, had complained about the statement posted by Stoller’s team — a turn of events that Carlson described as a sign of Google’s “terrifying” power.
 
 Stoller, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), later praised Carlson as “one of the few on TV willing to talk about it.”

How People Approach Facts and Information

John Horrigan:

The Eager and Willing – 22% of U.S. adults
 
 At one end of the information-engagement spectrum is a group we call the Eager and Willing. Compared with all the other groups on this spectrum, they exhibit the highest levels of interest in news and trust in key information sources, as well as strong interest in learning when it comes to their own digital skills and literacy. They are not necessarily confident of their digital abilities, but they are anxious to learn. One striking thing about this group is its demographic profile: More than half the members of this group are minorities: 31% are Hispanic; 21% are black and 38% are white, while the remainder are in other racial and ethnic groups.
 
 The Confident – 16% of adults
 
 Alongside the Eager and Willing are the Confident, who are made up of the one-in-six Americans and combine a strong interest in information, high levels of trust in information sources, and self-assurance that they can navigate the information landscape on their own. Few feel they need to update their digital skills and they are very self-reliant as they handle information flows. This group is disproportionately white, quite well educated and fairly comfortable economically. And one-third of the Confident (31%) are between the ages of 18 and 29, the highest share in this age range of any group.
 
 The Cautious and Curious – 13% of adults

Who is Winning the Food Delivery War?

Priceonomics:

Representing 34.5% of all brick and mortar food transactions we analyzed, Costco is the most popular physical grocery chain. Kroger (20%), Whole Foods (16%), Trader Joe’s (13.7%), and Safeway (13.1%) all have relatively similar shares, and Publix (not pictured) represented less than 0.1%. (Note: We should qualify that the brick and mortar stores here reflect the geographic locations of our loan applicants).
 
 In each of the other spaces, one company seems to commandeer the vast majority of sales.
 
 With grocery delivery, Instacart (53.9%) is heads and shoulders above the competition (Amazon Fresh, at 7.8%, is still far behind, but sure to grow in the coming years); restaurant delivery is dominated by the Grubhub/Seamless powerhouse; and Blue Apron has a stronghold on the meal kit space, with 77.2% of all purchases.
 
 Lastly, we looked at how men and women shop. According to this analysis, men go to brick-and-mortar grocery stores marginally more often than women and women use delivery and meal kit services more than men, The data underscores other reports showing that increasingly grocery stores are appealing to male shoppers.

How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? The Relative Dreaminess of the American Dream…

storymap

Nationally, there is a wide range in the accessibility of home ownership. It’s a seemingly-simple mix of a local population’s income and the price of homes there. But there are loads of factors contributing to each of those variables. So places with lots of employment opportunity will naturally attract lots of employees. But where to fit them? Conversely, areas without booming economic growth may have residents with lower incomes but the homes are also commensurately affordable (and then some). I found myself in the exceptionally limited scenario of being among the working class in an elite playground.

A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America

Josh Lauer

The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing.

In Creditworthy, the first comprehensive history of this crucial American institution, Josh Lauer explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person’s trustworthiness. Ultimately, Lauer argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports—and, later, credit ratings and credit scores—credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic “facts.” It is fundamentally concerned with—and determines—our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.

Uber Faces FBI Probe Over Program Targeting Rival Lyft

Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Greg Bensinger:

Federal law-enforcement authorities in New York are investigating whether Uber Technologies Inc. used software to interfere illegally with its competitors, according to people familiar with the investigation, adding to legal pressures facing the embattled ride-hailing company and its new chief executive.
 
 The investigation, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, is focused on a defunct Uber program, known internally as “Hell,” that could track drivers working for rival service Lyft Inc., the people said.
 
 “We are cooperating with the SDNY investigation,” said an Uber spokesman, referring to New York’s Southern District. He declined to offer additional details.
 
 Uber has never publicly discussed the details of the program.

Pizza Over Privacy? A Paradox of the Digital Age

May Wong:

People say they want to protect their personal information, but new research shows privacy tends to take a backseat to convenience and can easily get tossed out the window for a reward as simple as free pizza.
 
 The study — co-authored by Susan Athey, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research — provides real-life evidence of a digital privacy paradox: a disconnect between stated privacy preferences and actual privacy choices. And it serves policymakers with some food for thought about how to regulate data sharing without creating more hassles for consumers.
 
 “Generally, people don’t seem to be willing to take expensive actions or even very small actions to preserve their privacy,” Athey says. “Even though, if you ask them, they express frustration, unhappiness, or dislike of losing their privacy, they tend not to make choices that correspond to those preferences.”

Technology is finally getting political. And that’s a good thing

Greg Williams:

A few months ago, we noticed a notable trend in our web-traffic data: stories with a political aspect were extremely popular with readers. Perhaps this isn’t surprising; today’s news cycle ­- from the chaos of Brexit to the shambles in the White House, the tragedy of Grenfell to an iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg breaking away from the Antarctic ice shelf – is relentlessly political and possesses an existential urgency.
 
 At one point, it seemed that liberal democracy was cruising towards comfortable middle age. The world order had been established and we were edging in the direction of greater freedoms and equality, some of it driven by increased access to technology. Sometimes progress was dramatic but, more often, it was simply the direction of travel, pulled inexorably in one direction by the tide of history.
 
 Today, whether we are addressing issues of security or the environment, employment law or corporate takeovers of global organisations with vast amounts of data, the WIRED perspective of the world – one that is centred on how technology and science are shaping every aspect of society – is the norm, not an outlier.

German Regulators Craft Guidelines Addressing the Ethical Issues Raised by Driverless Cars

Lexology:

As driverless cars prepare to enter the roadway, regulators are closely considering the implications of how software is programmed. When faced with an imminent risk of collision or injury, how will the software decide which course of action to take? How will the software weigh the impact on different people, animals, and property? Dashboard Insights has been raising these questions since 2014, and now, the parameters are beginning to take shape in other countries.
 
 In June, the ethics commission of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure released guidelines (German language guidelines) for self-driving vehicles (English language summary). At the time, German Federal Minister Dobrint touted the “pioneering” work as the “first guidelines in the world for automated driving” addressing these ethical issues.

Automating e-Commerce from Click to Pick to Door

Carl Frey:

 This report, the third in the Technology at Work series, focuses on the automation driven by e-Commerce for physical goods. We look at the technology needed to automate order fulfillment, inventory management, and delivery when consumers shop online and examine the implications in a wide range of areas for industry, retailers, supply chains, real-estate, and transportation, looking too at the impact on labor and employment.
 
 Growth in e-Commerce is the main driver of warehouse automation, a driver which itself will increase with broadband and mobile device penetration. In Japan, 32% of all goods bought on the Internet were bought on smartphones in 2016, up from 27% a year earlier. Millennials, those most likely to shop online, will soon enter their peak spending years. Global e-Commerce sales have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 20% over the last decade, and online retail sales have gone from ~2% of total to ~8%%.
 
 While technology is not yet either capable or cost effective in all cases, this is likely to change. Our estimates show that that 80% of jobs in transportation, warehousing, and logistics are susceptible to automation as a consequence of the trends we observe in technology. Retail is one industry in which employment is likely to vanish, but unlike manufacturing jobs which are highly concentrated, the downfall of retail employment will affect every city and region. U.S. companies employ 2 million people just to do stock and order fulfillment work and over 90% of warehouse picking is currently done by hand. Migrating to automated picking gives productivity gains of 2x–3x that as compared to pick-to-conveyor operations and 5x–6x as compared to manual pick-to-pallet fulfillment centers.

The Romance of the American Road Trip

Paul Theroux:

One morning in Westport, Conn., in the summer of 1920, about three months after her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald became slightly cranky over breakfast. She said that she hated Yankee bacon and eggs. Alabama-born and -raised, she craved Southern biscuits, “and I wish I could have some peaches anyhow.”

This made Scott smile. Jumpy, not to say reckless and self-destructive, he shared with Zelda that most familiar of…

On the future of cars

Econtalk:

Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about two important trends for the future of personal travel–the increasing number of electric cars and a world of autonomous vehicles. Evans talks about how these two trends are likely to continue and the implications for the economy, urban design, and how we live.

A serf on Google’s farm

Josh Marshall:

An unintended effect of Google’s heavy-handed attempt to silence Barry Lynn and his Open Markets program at New America has been to shine a really bright light both on Google’s monopoly power and the unrestrained and unlovely ways they use it. Happily, Lynn’s group has landed on its feet, seemingly with plenty of new funding or maybe even more than it had. I got a press release from them this evening. This seems to be their new site. I’ve already seen other stories of Google bullying come out of the woodwork. Here’s one.
 
 I think it’s great that all this stuff is coming out. But what is more interesting to me than the instances of bullying are the more workaday and seemingly benign mechanisms of Google’s power. If you have extreme power, when things get dicey, you will tend to abuse that power. It’s not surprising. It’s human nature. What’s interesting and important is the nature of the power itself and what undergirds it. Don’t get me wrong. The abuses are very important. But extreme concentrations of power will almost always be abused. The temptations are too great. But what is the nature of the power itself?
 
 Many people who know more than I do can describe different aspects of this story. But how Google affects and dominates the publishing industry is something I know very, very well because I’ve lived with it for more than a decade. To say I’ve “lived with it” makes it sound like a chronic disease or some huge burden. That would be a very incomplete, misleading picture. Google has directly or indirectly driven millions of dollars of revenue to TPM over more than a decade. Not only that, it’s provided services that are core parts of how we run TPM. So Google isn’t some kind of thralldom we’ve lived under. It’s ubiquitous. In many ways, it makes what we do possible.
 
 What I’ve known for some time – but which became even more clear to me in my talk with Barry Lynn on Monday – is that few publishers really want to talk about the depths or mechanics of Google’s role in news publishing. Some of this is secrecy about proprietary information; most of it is that Google could destroy or profoundly damage most publications if it wanted to. So why rock the boat?
 
 I’m not worried about that for a few reasons: 1: We’ve refocused TPM toward much greater reliance on subscriptions. So we’re less vulnerable. 2: Most people who know these mechanics don’t write. I do. 3: We’re small and I don’t think Google cares enough to do anything to TPM. (If your subscription to Prime suddenly doubles in cost, you’ll know I was wrong about this.) What I hope I can capture is that Google is in many ways a great thing for publishers. At least it’s not a purely negative picture. If you’re a Star Trek fan you’ll understand the analogy. It’s a bit like being assimilated by the Borg. You get cool new powers. But having been assimilated, if your implants were ever removed, you’d certainly die. That basically captures our relationship to Google.
 
 It all starts with “DFP”, a flavor of Doubleclick called DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), one of the early “ad-serving companies” that Google purchased years ago. DFP actually started as GAM – Google Ad Manager. We were chosen to be one of the beta-users. This was I think back in 2006 or 2007. What’s DFP? DFP is the application (or software, or system – you could define it in different ways) that serves ads on TPM. I don’t know the exact market penetration. But it’s the hugely dominant player in ad serving across the web. So on TPM, Google software manages the serving of ads. Our ads all drive on Google’s roads.
 
 Then there’s AdExchange. That’s the part of Google that buys ad inventory. A huge amount of our ads come through ad networks. AdExchange is far and away the largest of those for us – often accounting for around 15% of total revenues every month – sometimes higher. So our largest single source of ad revenue is usually Google. To be clear that’s not Google advertising itself but advertisers purchasing our ad space through Google. But every other ad we ever run runs over Google’s ad serving system too. So Google software/service (DFP) runs the ad ecosystem on TPM. And the main buyer within that ecosystem is another Google service (Adexchange).
 
 Then there’s Google Analytics. That’s the benchmark audience and traffic data service. How many unique visitors do we have? How many page views do we serve each month? What’s the geographical distribution of our audience? That is all collected through Google Analytics. Now, that’s not our only source of audience data. We have several services we use for that in addition to our own internal systems. But we do use it for the big aggregate numbers and longterm record keeping. In many ways it’s the canonical data people on the outside look at to see how big our audience is. Do we have to share that data? No. Unless we want potential advertisers to see we have an audience.
 
 Next there’s search. Heard of that? There’s general search and then there’s Google News, a separate bucket of search. Search tends not to be that important for us in part because we’ve never prioritized it and in part because as a site focused on iterative news coverage what we produce tends to be highly ephemeral – at least in search terms. We don’t publish a lot of evergreen stories. Still, search is important. For other publishers it’s the whole game.
 
 One additional Google implant is Gmail, which we use to provision our corporate email. The backbone of the @talkingpointsmemo.com email addresses is gmail. Lots of companies now do this.
 
 So let’s go down the list: 1) The system for running ads, 2) the top purchaser of ads, 3) the most pervasive audience data service, 4) all search, 5) our email.
 
 But wait, there’s more! Google also owns Chrome, the most used browser for visiting TPM. Chrome is responsible for 41% of our page views. Safari comes in second at 36%. But the Safari number is heavily driven by people using iOS devices. On desktop Chrome is overwhelmingly dominant.