The Google Profile Function: A Threat To Traditional Consumer Data Models

With little fanfare, the company that pledged to “Do No Evil,” has launched what could possibly be the largest and most successful consumer data mining project ever. Google, the organizers of the entire world’s information, is quietly building its profile feature allowing you to add to the narrative of the online you.

If every person who has ever “Googled” themselves were to sign-up, Google Profile would be the largest consumer database on earth. The main page for Google Profile sign-up asks the user “What do people see when they find you online?” and then inspires them to “control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile...” This simple marketing message is brilliant. The mere thought of controlling some part of the online you is enough to create a massive consumer database. This Google consumer database will be far superior given the source of the data itself will assure accuracy and relevancy. Google as the source has the potential to dramatically alter the consumer information landscape by evolving into an organic database. Beyond relevancy, Google’s data seems to go much deeper in understanding consumers and provides many more answers for the questions most marketers are asking.

The traditional model of consumer data starts with generally a few sources of raw data that result from your credit score, the phone bill, financial services, your mail box and other assorted consumer events. A few major aggregators of this data dominate direct marketing, research/analytics and risk management engagements and make lots of money doing it. For Google, redefining the consumer data landscape is too big of an opportunity to ignore. For those few companies who dominate the consumer data market place the prospect of Google generated consumer data that offers a better alternative for direct marketing and consumer analytics enterprises should be a terrifying proposition.