Technology

How Google Tracks You – And What You Can Do About It

Published

6 years ago

January 17, 2017

Jeff Desjardins

How Google Tracks You - And What You Can Do About It

How Google Tracks You – And What You Can Do About It

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

It’s because you are – and for a rough proxy of this, use the browser extension Ghostery to see how many tracking scripts are watching you on a typical media site. (It doesn’t work for everything, but a large media site like Vice.com has 50+ trackers, with 40 of them focused on advertising).

Capturing this user data helps sites sell their inventory to advertisers, but a select few companies operate in this capacity at a whole different level. Google and Facebook are the best of examples of this, as nearly $0.60 of every dollar spent on digital advertising goes to them. They both have the sophistication and ubiquity to capture incredible amounts of information about you.

Google is Everywhere

Today’s infographic, which comes to us from Mylio, focuses in on Google in particular.

The search giant is massive in size, and there is a good chance you tap into Googleverse in some way:

Global market penetration for Android is 61-81%.
Google has a 78.8% market share for online search.
The company generates $67.4 billion in annual ad revenue.
Google processes two trillion searches annually.
30-50 million websites use Google Analytics to for tracking.
There are 700,000 apps available in the Google Play store.
82% of videos watched online come from YouTube.
In total, Google has at least 79 products and services.

According to Google’s documentation, it uses these services to pull out information on the “things you do”, “things you create”, and the things that make you unique.

See What Google Collects

All in all, Google tracks your activity history, location history, audio history, and device history. It also builds a profile for you for serving ads – age, gender, location, income, and other demographic data.

You can view and actually download this history by using a tool called Google Takeout.

Many people understand that their data helps support advertising revenues on websites they enjoy. Others are rightly concerned about their privacy, and how their information is used. Regardless of which category you fit in, becoming informed about how privacy on the internet works will help you craft an experience that best fits your preferences.

Related Topics:google privacy tracking digital ads

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AI

Visualizing the Top U.S. States for AI Jobs

Nearly 800,000 AI jobs were posted in the U.S. throughout 2022. View this graphic to see a breakdown by state.

Published

3 days ago

May 26, 2023

Marcus Lu

Visualizing the Top U.S. States for AI Jobs

Much ink has been spilled over fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate jobs in the economy. While some of those fears may be well-founded, red-hot interest in AI innovation is creating new jobs as well.

This graphic visualizes data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, which shows how many AI-related jobs were posted in each state throughout 2022.

In total there were 795,624 AI jobs posted throughout the year, of which 469,925 (59%) were in the top 10. The full tally is included in the table below.

Rank	State	Number of job postings	% of total
1	California	142,154	17.9%
2	Texas	66,624	8.4%
3	New York	43,899	5.5%
4	Massachusetts	34,603	4.3%
5	Virginia	34,221	4.3%
6	Florida	33,585	4.2%
7	Illinois	31,569	4.0%
8	Washington	31,284	3.9%
9	Georgia	26,620	3.3%
10	Michigan	25,366	3.2%
11	North Carolina	23,854	3.0%
12	New Jersey	23,447	2.9%
13	Colorado	20,421	2.6%
14	Pennsylvania	20,397	2.6%
15	Arizona	19,514	2.5%
16	Ohio	19,208	2.4%
17	Maryland	16,769	2.1%
18	Minnesota	11,808	1.5%
19	Tennessee	11,173	1.4%
20	Missouri	10,990	1.4%
21	Oregon	10,811	1.4%
22	Washington, D.C.	9,606	1.2%
23	Indiana	9,247	1.2%
24	Connecticut	8,960	1.1%
25	Wisconsin	8,879	1.1%
26	Alabama	7,866	1.0%
27	Kansas	7,683	1.0%
28	Arkansas	7,247	0.9%
29	Utah	6,885	0.9%
30	Nevada	6,813	0.9%
31	Idaho	6,109	0.8%
32	Oklahoma	5,719	0.7%
33	Iowa	5,670	0.7%
34	South Carolina	4,928	0.6%
35	Louisiana	4,806	0.6%
36	Kentucky	4,536	0.6%
37	Nebraska	4,032	0.5%
38	Delaware	3,503	0.4%
39	New Mexico	3,357	0.4%
40	Rhode Island	2,965	0.4%
41	New Hampshire	2,719	0.3%
42	Hawaii	2,550	0.3%
43	Mississippi	2,548	0.3%
44	Maine	2,227	0.3%
45	South Dakota	2,195	0.3%
46	Vermont	1,571	0.2%
47	North Dakota	1,227	0.2%
48	Alaska	970	0.1%
49	West Virginia	887	0.1%
50	Montana	833	0.1%
51	Wyoming	769	0.1%

The following chart adds some context to these numbers. It shows how the percentage of AI job postings in some of the top states has changed since 2010.

We can see that California quickly became the primary destination for AI jobs in the early 2010s, presumably as Silicon Valley companies began developing the technology.

California’s share has since declined, with a significant number of jobs seemingly moving to Texas. In fact, many tech companies are relocating to Texas to avoid California’s relatively higher taxes and cost of living.

The 10 Most In-Demand Specialized Skills

Lightcast also captured the top 10 specialized skills that were required for AI-related jobs. These are listed in the table below.

Skill	Frequency (number of postings)	Frequency (% of postings)
Python	296,662	37%
Computer Science	260,333	33%
SQL	185,807	23%
Data Analysis	159,801	20%
Data Science	157,855	20%
Amazon Web Services	155,615	19%
Agile Methodology	152,965	19%
Automation	138,791	17%
Java	133,856	17%
Software Engineering	133,286	17%