The Pellucid Perspective - June 2019 - 7

you do them now and/or wait for the government to fix things.
They did that when they made Microsoft unbundle Internet Explorer; but that simply opened the door for Google. Any attempt
to regulate Google and Facebook will be difficult and/or simply
give rise to another big data alternative using "edge" application
platforms.
In the meantime, Google controls over 80% of the search traffic on mobile devices and over 70% of overall search. 83.5% of the
GenZ kids use gmail and over 77% of Millenials do, too. Facebook still controls over 70% of all social media traffic. We were
also surprised to see that 63% of email users only use one email
address. And when you add another 24% that only have 2 email
addresses; this concentration actually makes the profiling that
Google and Facebook are selling more accurate. (statista.com)
In the movie "We Were Soldiers", Sergeant Major Basil
Plumley (Sam Elliot) gives young war correspondent Joe Galloway a blood-stained M-16. Galloway protested and said "but
sir, I'm a non-combatant" and Plumley responded saying "there
ain't no such thing today, boy." His next sentence was "gentlemen,
prepare to defend yourselves". Galloway survived, helped write
the story and was given a military honor for gallantry.
Unfortunately, customer disintermediation is at the heart of
many current marketing efforts. Uber has dramatically impacted
the value of taxi medallions and Amazon has invaded countless
markets and offers their AWS platform to enable more compa-

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nies to divert customers from one shopping source to another.
My interest in a shirt at Brooks Brothers got me offers from 6
other shirtmakers. Most of you know that certain 3rd Party golf
service providers actively engage in practices aimed at "re-directing" customers from one course to another.
The other inconvenient truth is that golf courses that have
refrained from the temptation of bartered 3rd Party services or
stopped using them are now subject to similar disintermediation
efforts aided and abetted by Google, Facebook and a variety of
other services. This is further compounded by customers who
don't care that Uber doesn't make any money and had a disappointing IPO - they got a cheaper ride. They don't care that
Google is making a fortune selling their personal information
- they got directions when they needed them and found a new
restaurant Google advertised on their way to another.
In the end, you can't afford to be a non-combatant. As much
as we may dislike the use of heretofore personal information for
what basically amounts to marketing anarchy, the harsh reality is
what it is - and you will have to defend yourself.
We did a test of one of the companies we found that offers
"profiling" related services in late 2017. They took a 20,000+ email
database and matched over 50% using their process. Besides indicating a need to "clean up" a database assembled over several
years, their results gave them Age, Gender and geographic dispersion for over 10,000 of their customers. This company and

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The Pellucid Perspective - June 2019

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