Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe!

Google is increasingly showing its intention to "invade" the gaming market with a range of impressive products, most recently Stadia - a completely new gaming platform that allows gaming through its cloud service. Google believes that their build on the Stadia platform will play a huge role in shaping the future of the gaming industry. It is understandable that Stadia will fundamentally change the method of playing video games as well as playing live video (livestream) today, from individualized forms to centralized areas as well as servers through connection. Internet. This thought is completely up-to-date, and the most beneficiary is the user because with a platform like Stadia, they will just need to go to Chrome browser and a high-speed, stable Internet. It is possible to smooth out most of the current great titles, and can also stream all the content you want on almost any device with internet connection such as TV, smartphone, tablet, or laptop . Yes, the superiority of this gaming platform is undeniable, but wait! Don't forget that Google comes from a search engine, and is also one of the world's largest data research and analysis companies. This Mountain View company gathers data about everything from education, community, to artificial intelligence. They even study how you use websites like YouTube and Gmail, or how to surf the web, what can Google do with the kind of data they get from users? via your new Stadia game streaming platform? We will find out later.

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 1

1. Mountain View's Google Stadia and its ambition to dominate the game industry

If Stadia works as described, as mentioned, this platform is fully capable of changing the way the game industry works in general, and at the same time it will earn Google a kind of data. Whether new users that this company has never touched on before are personal data related to gamers. More specifically, the basic information is like a game that users buy, they spend many minutes playing the game every day and often play at what time frame . In that way, data about the type of device that people The game used to connect to Stadia can also provide valuable insights that help Google earn 'money' from an area that has never (and probably will never) run out of hot in the information age. As it is today, it is: Advertising.

Information like the way you play the game, it just sounds useless. Who cares about how that amateur 'gamer' plays a game! However, the brains that "look all the way out" are sitting in Mountain View and don't think so. For them, this is one of the most valuable data sources. According to Professor Jon Festinger, working at the Canadian Digital Media Center, with his influence in the Internet world, Google can easily gather information and then analyze and evaluate the facility. likes or political trends, as well as your views from the kinds of data that many people consider to be nothing like internet search history, web access habits, or even the type of game you often do Your play and decision in the game can completely reveal a surprisingly realistic picture of who you are, and that's what Google aims to.

'Are you a shy person? Are you bold in making decisions? Do you dare to take risks? What kind of risks do you dare to face? What do you see and see nothing? How to handle situations? It is an example of the information that a good psychologist will be able to track when holding data about how we play a seemingly simple game, so that we can understand it very well. us, 'said Professor Jon Festinger.

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 2

1. Reveal personal data of more than 1.3 million people from a vulnerability in web application

Bethesda and Ubisoft, two major game publishers working with Google on the Stadia platform, were unable to respond immediately to experts' questions about the games they released on the new platform. Is Google used for data collection purposes, is it because this question is too unexpected and out of their 'estimate'? However, the reality is that even without the participation of game publishers, video games have long been used to study how a normal person thinks and makes decisions. determined. For example, in the past, many research projects have been conducted to check the 'flexibility' of teamwork as well as the cooperative relationships in the game by collecting data and analyzing ways. guilds in World of Warcraft operate. In addition, another study related to voice chat was also conducted to understand how men and women are treated differently in the game environment.

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 3

1. Detects 540 million Facebook user data publicly stored on Amazon servers

Rachel Kowert, Ph.D., research director at Take This, an active nonprofit organization to enhance support for mental health issues in the gaming community, explained this situation as follows: ' In the environment of many online games, researchers will study the 'gaps' in how people interact with each other in the game. From there, how can the level of intimacy in the game be analyzed? Or more complicated is how many social interactions between gamers when they play role-playing games against first-person shooter games? '

This type of research was previously done only with very limited data groups, often provided by the players themselves, ie 'passive' data. Specifically, players are required to recall the behavior they performed in the game, or how much time they spent in the game. But with the emergence of platforms like Stadia, the data of this type will be collected proactively, as well as ensuring much better objectivity. Google will be able to collect player data by age, region, gender, as well as the type of game they play. These are 'top' information of the type of data they've collected via email, search history, location history and more.

In fact, game development companies have also begun to develop their own player data research projects over the last few years, but they often only keep these analyzes in their internal environments. the set. But Google is different, the 'internal' of this company has a much wider meaning. While a company like Blizzard, the developer of the legendary World of Warcraft game, often conducts research on players' behavior just to see what players need, what they want, and through it. improve the game or make a new money-making plan, but Google is different, they are holding a large ecosystem, from smartphone software to automation and home security.

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 4

1. Discovered a series of Nokia 7 Plus in Europe sending user data to a server in China

'I think the only advantage that Google will own is that player data on its platform by age, region, gender, and genre, combined with the data they have collected through email, search history, location history and many other services', Dr. Rachel Kowert shared.

Since 2012, Google's privacy policy, which has allowed the company to incorporate collected data about an individual from a service with all the data it has collected from other services. in the same ecosystem. As we all know, Stadia has been intended to be marketed as a Google service (and even the platform owns a location in Google Store), so it is reasonable to assume data Data collected about you through Stadia can connect with everything else Google has held, helping this company create a complete and authentic "portrait" of yourself.

When making a comment on how Google will conduct research on users or develop gaming products, not with player data collection, a Google representative simply says that the company will have more. something to share with observers about Stadia's specific details at the time this platform is about to be officially put into operation. Can this be a wise 'dodge' or 'diversionary' from the Mountain View giant?

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 5

1. If using an Android phone, be careful: You may be being tracked without knowing

However, whatever we know, Google can use seemingly insignificant data to build really powerful products. Back in 2007, the company launched a phone search service called GOOG-411, itself a subset of VOIP services and voicemail, Google Voice. GOOG-411 users can call a toll-free number to search for businesses, places around where they live or in a certain area. When smartphones are not as popular as at the time, GOOG-411 is a very useful and highly appreciated service.

And of course Google also benefited a lot from this 'adventure'. In an interview at the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit, Marissa Mayer, who later became Google's vice president of product search and user experience, explained that users This general invisible service has provided Google with 'essential information' to build up a powerful and useful voice-to-text conversion tool.

'If you want us to build a really powerful voice-conversion model, we will need to use a lot of "phonemes," which is a syllable as spoken by a voice. Specific to specific intonation, in short, "real people". And GOOG-411 made a great contribution to helping Google collect this kind of data, 'said Marissa Mayer.

Of course, the information shared by the Google representative above is only public after GOOG-411 has been widely used after several months. Besides, perhaps because of the convenience of this tool, whether or not it violates Google's privacy and privacy policies will gradually drift into the past.

1. Facebook is officially under criminal investigation for allegedly illegally selling data

After all, this has given Google a small advantage in the voice command software market, which is still growing strongly at the moment. Indeed, in 2010 - a short time before GOOG-411 stopped working - the company introduced the Voice Actions command tool for its Android phones. Finally, this feature has been integrated into Google Now, and in 2016, the tool changed its name to Google Assistant - a famous virtual assistant platform, used on more than 1 billion day technology devices. now, as well as holding great potential for future development.

Google continues to use this strategy even at the present time. 'Google Goggles' is a neat learning machine, an image-recognition mobile application developed by Google. It is used for searches based on images taken with handheld devices. But Google's internal engineers only consider it a 'research project'. Today, that study underpins Google Lens, a search engine through smartphone images integrated in Google's Google Photos application, powered by artificial intelligence for efficiency. extremely high. In addition, the case of Niantic, an internal start-up company of Google, created a game called Ingress that attracted more than 5 million times to send individual positions voluntarily from himself. play - huge amount of data and very valuable for any service provider, not just Google. This location data warehouse was then further used to form the basis of the hugely popular Pokémon Go game several years ago.

It is not possible to say for sure what kind of product, feature or understanding Google can get from analyzing the player data collected on Stadia. Just like in 2007, anyone who knew the handy GOOG-411 project would eventually become the stepping stone to the popularity of the intelligent virtual assistant Google Assistant today. We all know that player data is useful and valuable, but no, or rather, not knowing what purpose Google will use it for.

Google Stadia - The name of the spy in the cover of the gaming service, maybe! Picture 6

1. There were 12,449 serious data breaches recorded in 2018, an increase of 424% compared to 2017

However, one thing is certain: with your experience, Google is wise to know how to take advantage of seemingly harmless data from a product, and use it to refine or even launch a platform. another completely new platform can bring in money. Until now, there are still many things we do not know about Stadia, the simplest way is how this platform will really work, whether it can 'redefine' the game market as its ambition. Google will soon 'get to the final resting place' as many of the search giant's names are, after all, don't forget to read about the privacy policy before deciding to use Stadia. Any other service platform in general, will not be redundant!

How do you think about this issue? Leave comments in the comment section below!