by Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola:
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- In early April 2020, Mercola.com purposely blocked Google from indexing our articles and breaking news blog posts
- I encourage you to search every site’s privacy policy page to see if they use Google Analytics or Google Ad programs, and if they do, encourage them to stop
- Nearly every non-major website is using Google’s “free” analytics program, as well as their advertising platforms. Alas, those services are not actually free. Ultimately, YOU pay for them with your personal data, as that is the product Google sells. Collectively, all of these sites are stealing an enormous amount of your private information
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
- Google’s powers pose several threats to society. First of all, it’s a surveillance agency with significant yet hidden surveillance powers. It’s also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what people can and cannot see
- Google also has the power to manipulate public opinion through search rankings and other means, and the shifts in thinking produced are both rapid and enormous
In early April 2020, Mercola.com became one of the first websites to purposely block Google from indexing our articles and breaking news blog posts. Most of you are well aware that I’ve had concerns about the surveillance capitalists, spearheaded by Google, for a number of years.
September 2017, I discussed Google’s partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and how their depression assessment quiz was in fact a drug promotion scam sponsored by the drug manufacturer Eli Lilly. No matter how you answered the questions, you were a candidate for antidepressants.
Since then, Google and other tech companies have only gotten deeper and wider access to people’s personal medical information, and Google’s selling of this data to third parties can have real-world consequences. Higher insurance premiums or denial of employment are but two obvious examples.
Google Blocked From Interacting With Mercola.com
Most of you know that in the summer of 2019, Google removed us from coming up in any keyword search unless our name was also typed into the query. While we still received substantial traffic from people who looked very hard to find Mercola articles through Google, we finally decided to block Google from crawling or indexing any of my articles or breaking news blogs. We also stopped using the Google Analytics program in 2018.
So, everything related to Google has been removed from this site, and I hope other sites will follow suit. I encourage you to search every site’s privacy policy page to see if they use Google Analytics or Google Ad programs, and if they do, encourage them to stop.
We can be successful without the surveillance monopolies, and businesses and individuals need to unite to do everything we can to stop their dangerous privacy theft and data mining.
How You Pay for Companies’ Use of ‘Free’ Analytics
A majority of websites are using Google’s “free” analytics program, as well as their advertising platforms. Alas, those services are not actually free. Ultimately, YOU pay for them with your personal data, as that is the product Google turns around and sells to third parties. Collectively, all of these sites are stealing an enormous amount of your private information.
Google and its data-siphoning tentacles reach deep into your everyday life, collecting data on every move you make and conversation you have, whether online or in the real world.
Even if you disable location tracking on your phone, Google has ways to determine your whereabouts by tracking the addresses of nearby cellular towers that your phone connects to instead. This is one of the reasons I strongly encourage you to ditch all Android phones and use an iPhone that has better privacy policies.
I discussed this in my 2018 article, “Google — One of the Largest Monopolies in the World.” That article also includes a list of examples of the type of data collected by Google, whether you’re aware of it or not.
