Dean Howell
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.” – Orwell, 1984
Google’s new program “Screenwise” aims to watch your browsing habitats in an unlimited and unmitigated fashion for a paltry sum of $25. If you’re game, you can sign up for the program here.
From the new project’s homepage:
What’s in it for you? Up to $25 in gift cards. Our panel management partner, Knowledge Networks, will give you a $5 Amazon.com Gift Card code instantly when you sign up and download the Google Screenwise browser extension.1 Then you’ll get additional $5 Amazon.com Gift Card codes every three months for staying with it.2 It’s our way of saying “Thank you.”
So, you won’t be getting rich quick. If anything, Google will learn for certain that 1-5 of your every clicks is at Facebook. What right does this really give Google? Can they watch you during a private browsing session? In all likely hood, they will be able to track your Amazon gift-card purchases which will make for an excellent info-graphic for Amazon! The new initiative calls volunteers “panelists”. From the limited description on the homepage, I cannot see the relation to the definition of the term P
This program is bizarre and the reward doesn’t seem like a good lure to me… Maybe they should give away some more Chrome-books. It would certainly hope that a $400 piece of hardware wouldn’t do it either, but hey, Google kinda already is the obvious choice for ‘big brother’.
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