Google Will Use User Reviews & Photos For Ads

Google’s new Terms of Use provide for the company to utilize – and sell – user information from all Google products in order “to offer endorsements” of products. It means that Google can scrape comments and ratings from users and sell them to companies as endorsements for their products, for explicit use in digital advertising. The policy will feature users’ names, comments, and photos beside things they’ve liked, followed, reviewed, or otherwise favorably interacted with. Last time this issue surfaced, users balked at the practice, and Instagram and Facebook were sued for trying to do it. Will Google face the same level of scrutiny? Only time will tell.