Google’s New Program Pays You To Search The Web… If You Give Up Your Privacy

In a somewhat surprising move for Google, coming after the introduction of its controversial new privacy policy, a new Google program called Screenwise is paying users who surf the web using the Google Chrome browser as long as they agree to give up their personal browsing data.

Spotted by SearchEngineLand, Google’s signup page for the program claims to offer up to $25 in Amazon gift codes to participants. You’ll get a $5 Amazon gift code just to sign up and install a necessary browser extension, and an additional $5 code for every three months you stick around in the program. It’s completely opt-in, but opting in will mean you “share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them”.

The only requirements is the 13 years of age you must be to get a Google account and the Chrome browser.

Google is setting a cap of $25 in Amazon codes per participant, but said it could extend the program beyond that initial 12-month period for those who stay. A Google spokesperson further explained the program to 9to5Google:

“Like many other web and media companies, we do panel research to help better serve our users by learning more about people’s media use, on the web and elsewhere. This panel is one such small project that started near the beginning of the year. Of course, this is completely optional to join. People can choose to participate if it’s of interest (or if the gift appeals) and everyone who does participate has complete transparency and control over what Internet use is being included in the panel. People can stay on the panel as long as they’d like, or leave at any time.”

Apparently the screenwise panel isn’t the only aspect of the data collecting program. Ars Technica reported Google is paying some people $100 and $20 per month to install a “Screenwise Data Collector”– a small black box that will “measure Internet use” and, according to Ars, implement more extensive monitoring than the browser extension.

So what exactly is Google tracking? Ars broke it down:

According to legal agreements displayed during signup, Google will share the aggregated data with third parties, including “academic institutions, advertisers, publishers, and programming networks.” The agreement notes that the data collected will be personally identifiable, with some exceptions: https addresses and private browsing windows of people using the router will not be tracked. The browser extension, however, will track private or incognito browsing, though the data will not be personally identifiable. For all other collected data, Google will “attempt” to remove that identifiable info before sharing it—no guarantees, though. 

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