For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.
But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Mastercard Inc. brokered a business partnership during about four years of negotiations, according to four people with knowledge of the deal, three of whom worked on it directly. The alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant’s strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon.com Inc. and others.
Remember, Google has made it their business to attempt to learn everything… EVERYTHING…. about you. The company’s aim is to eradicate the whole idea of user privacy, one blow at a time. They’ll do whatever it takes to get their hands on our data, whether convincing us to give it to them, buying it, or secretly capturing it without our knowledge.