Google’s Not-So Mini Move
Google and Spotify’s decision to give away free Google Home Minis represents the encroaching era of clandestine data capture
In an effort to stimulate their paid user-base, Spotify announced on Oct 22nd that all current and new Spotify Premium users would receive a Google Home Mini. The internet’s tech blogs jumped on board, explaining to users how they can quickly access their “too good to be true” deal through a few simple clicks. Across the board the announcement is being lauded as a free benefit to Spotify customers, rooted simply in rewarding those so generous to subsidize the company with a subscription. The ubiquitous praise and clear lack of skepticism in this event is alarming, and is testament to just how nefarious the capture of data surplus has become and will continue to proliferate.
To easily claim your Google Home Mini, Spotify asks you to do one thing: connect your Spotify account to Google. This prerequisite, that they transparently lay out, demonstrates the sheer lack of both understanding and care that the public has for their data protection. The request by Spotify reminds us of every app that asks users to “Connect to Facebook” or “Use Your Google Account to Login”, which are cultural mileposts in the habits of data capitulation that people have become comfortable with. The submission of user data to Google is, literally, the first step of the process to receive the Google Home Mini. The brilliance of the move here is the skin of a fairly benign instance of quid pro quo concealing an actually dangerous one. It’s akin to when someone tells a half-truth to a friend when confronted about a mistake they made, which only serves to conceal a full truth that is way worse.
Spelled out explicitly in the agreement to reserve your free Google Home Mini, Spotify relays that:
“When you interact with the Spotify service through the Google Assistant, your queries may be sent to Spotify for use in accordance with its privacy policy.”
This clause shows the more benign consequence of the agreement in which the user agrees to allow Spotify to use Google’s voice capture data or “queries”. This is notably not limited to the use of Spotify on the Google Home Mini, leaving the door open for Spotify to capture data on all personal activities facilitated through the Google product. Need we be reminded, this includes all activities funneled through the personal assistant like internet searches, calendar activities, and making calls. But the other side of this data-bridge is perhaps even more concerning, which is the granting of access to Google’s massive data collection operations.
To a lesser degree, Google’s granted what we can assume is a wide variety of listener data from Spotify that can be used to track behavior and implemented into their monolith of advertisements and algorithms. This is certainly worthy for concern, as behavioral profiles that are captured through data unique to the use of Spotify is now open to Google to operationalize. Yet the worst part of this deal for the consumer is the acceptance of one of Google’s preeminent data collection platforms into the homes of millions of users that were likely untouched by its current collection apparatuses. The fishnet grows with each Google Home Mini device that is activated by a user who would not have otherwise purchased the device. Google adds an additional node to its systems of acquiring data surplus, regardless of the person’s past use of Google or ownership of its products. In this sense the user’s keen disinterest in the abstracted mechanisms of data collection over the web is starkly contrasted with the new tangible gizmo in the living room that can tell you the weather, and will also establish a personalized digital identity of the user. Just like Amazon’s flagship data collection product ‘Alexa’, Google has now left your computer and is ready to listen to you in your home. The consequences of this are not a change in one’s lifestyle, but how things seem exactly the same.