Resteraunt
If I were the U.S. Government (or a lot of other governments for that matter) I can’t think of one company I’d rather have fall into financial downturn and be deemed “too big” to fail more than Google. Sure due to their infrastructure would cost billions in tax payer dollars to maintain but man, wouldn’t the data retrieved be worth it if you really wanted to spy on someone? There is no person alive and probably will never be that knows or has stored more information about me than Goooooooooogle >
I was tallying up the list of Google Services utilized by me and it’s scary:
Android, Blogger, Book Search, Browser Sync, Calendar, Checkout, Chrome, Code, Contacts, Docs, Froogle, Goggles, Groups, Images, Latitude, Listen, Mail, Maps, News, Notebook, Picasa, Profile, Reader, Talk, Voice, Web Search, Wave, YouTube… and I’ll probably start using Buzz once it works correctly. Can’t wait to make a Buzz about some annoying girl at the bar only to have her see it on Google maps when she checks her phone.
Google knows my bank account number and two of the credit cards I use. They know where I live and thanks to latitude they have a good idea of where I spend a majority of my time. They know where I work and what I do, they know who leaves me voice mails and what they’re saying to me. I don’t get calls through Google Voice so at least that’s one aspect of my life they’re not completely in the know on.
But those are obvious things, what about the little things Google knows? They probably know I can’t spell restaurant. The amount of times I’ve incorrectly typed it in there just to find the real spelling is staggering (205 times to be exact, thanks Google Search History). I spell the word so bad not even a built in spell check from any program knows what I’m talking about, but Google does. Yes! Thank you, I did mean “Restaurant” <3. Likely they’re aware I’m an egomaniac by the amount of times I’ve searched my own name both in web search and images followed by the obscene amount of times I’ve actually clicked the link for pages about me. I wonder if they know I get pissed because I’m not the first result for “Ben Eubank“. Thanks to Google’s new Navigation they also know I’m a chronic speeder on the road and should probably start marketing me Radar detectors in my search results.
Oh wait, hypothetical product #1230912 Google Profiler. This is where a government agency enters in all the information they have related to a crime and Google spits back a list of suspects based on everything it knows on them and why they’re relevant. Let’s say I’m a really dumb criminal. I have an Android phone with Google Latitude installed. I break into a random person’s house and brutally murder their whole family. Later I decide to search Google for “Good ways to dispose of dead tissue and bones.” Two days later when the bodies are discovered Detective Lennie Briscoe types in the address of the crime and a few other details and finds out Ben Eubank was prowlin’ that area and wants to learn how to dispose of people.
Actually that’s a really sweet idea maybe they’ll invent it some day. Unlike most people I am not paranoid about the government, or some other mega-entity, knowing just about everything there is to know about me; I’m also not a criminal. Not that only criminals like a private life, I’m sure millions of law abiding citizens do too, but Google understands me and makes my web experience much more pleasurable. There’s no way it could do this without me telling it all my secrets.
