Jahanzaib Hassan
Google is known to be in the spotlight for its success mostly, but this wasn’t the case last night. Yesterday, some prominent media outlets including Daily Mail, RT, and an Australian news site reported that Google would share search history of the users with potential employers under a new project “Google hire.”
What is Google Hire?
If you aren’t aware of Google Hire, here’s what it is. Google Hire is a new project from Google which is designed to connect employers with employees. It is somewhat similar to Linkedin in a sense that it lets employers post a job and then manage the applicants. According to Axiom, Google is planning to go head to head with Greenhouse and Lever with this new project.
The Accusation
We all are aware of the Click bait strategy that some websites use, but there’s a fine line between creating a click bait and creating a false accusation, and it looks like some publishers do not bother much about it.
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On Monday, several media outlets reported that along with the job application, prospective employers would be able to see the search history of the applicants as well as their Youtube account. This news spread like fire and people started to show their anger towards the whole thing.
Google’s reply
Apparently, the whole news was false, and Google officials dismissed all the accusations. A Google spokesperson told Gizmodo, “Only information that a candidate voluntarily provides would be passed to a prospective employer as part of their online application. Private information will not be shared.”
They further added that “Google does not share private information such as search or viewing history. Only the information that applicants input into Google Hire will be shared—for example, first name, last name, email address, resume, cover letter, etc.”
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Considering the fact that the US legislation recently decided to repeal privacy laws protecting customer information, we understand why the inaccurate news went viral. However, try not to consider everything that you read on the Internet to be true.
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