Centillion
Disclaimer: This is an imaginary story which is not intended to criticize “G____e”
Centillion was a famous company of 1970s which provided service of searching of information. If any person wanted to search for any information all he needed to do was write it in a sheet of paper and put in a box which was kept in the post office. The employees (known as crawlers) would take the sheets to the company’s nearest office and bring back the answer sheet which contained advertisement of company which provided a service closest to that of the query.
Centillion collected their revenues through these kinds of advertisements printed behind that result sheets. Centillion’s employees became the highest paid in the world. This went on smoothly for 6 years with Centillion receiving a high response. Many advertisers flooded Centillion’s offices and started giving their advertisements because of Centillion’s penetration in the society. Centillion grew very fast. Its revenue outperformed all other competitors’ revenues. Centillion almost became a monopoly in its business. People started using “Centillion it” to search for any ‘it’(information). So, Centillion decided to expand its operations and services.
First thing it did was to setup an Research Lab. Centillion’s every move was closely watched by the educated people of the society. At the start of 1979 there came a rumour about Centillion providing free postal service. The so called educated society exclaimed with joy “Oh My God (OMG) Free Postal Service!!!!!” Eventually it became true in that following month. Centillion opened postal offices (named “CPost”) all over the country. Initially Centillion’s employees (Crawlers) were given free ID card and were allowed to send free letters. Centillion mandated referrel of its employees as a hold to control the sudden surge. This free postal service became huge hit. It out shadowed all other postal services that existed in that period.
Unlike other players, CPost put text advertisements on the cover so as not to bother customers with too many images. Actually the advertisers were also happy because of the low cost incurred for text advertisements. CPost users once again exclaimed with joy: “What a simplicity!”. Then after two years Centillion started giving free ID cards to everyone. People were happy to the pinnacle. They didn’t mind the text advertisements came on the cover of the letter.
As years passed, Centillion proved the customers “simply the best” operation. Every where people buzzed the word “Centillion”. But one fine day CPost users felt that the advertisements they got on the cover of the letter were more relevant to the content in the letter (which is inside the cover). Initially no body minded it, but slowly CPost users raised voice against this issue. But they couldn’t do anything because CPost was the only mode of communication that they could use. Then they convinced themselves that this is not intentional and the correlation of the ads with the letter’s content is coincidental. The belief continued till the dawn of internet era. Then came the supreme players who were much worse than Centillion: stealing the privacy of customers extended using email. The saga still continues today…..
Will there be any surity for customer’s privacy in this digital world?
