Two articles in the recent news have got me thinking.
Whatever I post on my blog, somehow gets listed on Google Search. And its not only me. Sooner than later all bloggers who write do get listed. A lot of blogs contain personal and specific information, and can be used to harmful effect.
A CNET article , talks about the fact that all kinds of personal information about people is available on the net. It says that even your searches are cataloged by google along with the IP address of the machine you did the search from. What if the FBI impounded your computer on the basis of what you search? Imagine the type of data that is being maintained on people who do simple google searches and how it could be used/abused in the future.
And with the Gmail system many people use, Google wants us to archive all messages too. Ever wonder why there isn’t a simple delete pushbutton on the Gmail screen?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t reveal much about himself on his home page.
But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that…
The heading of a NYTimes article “Google’s Chief Is Googled, to the Company’s Displeasure” says it all.
The fact that Google would have CNET’s people blacklisted for writing about publicly available information on their CEO is really worrisome.
According to the NYTimes article,
Google says its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
But it seems that it does not take kindly when its own tools are turned around to be used on itself.
Google on the one hand is cutting-edge in all the technological advances they are making and the products they provide. Google Earth is one of the most recent products to get out of the beta world. This is one of the most spectacular products I have used recently. Try zooming into your home addresses in the US. You can probably see the car’s parked in your driveways.
Technology, in most cases is intended for the betterment of mankind. Sadly that has not always been true in the past. Google today has become the search engine of the world. Will it be used for the good of that world, or will it go out of hand ??
As an aside, here is a parody on google
Can’t understand why Eric shd get annoyed with it. Looks like google might slowly be turning into another demon like M’soft. I hope not.
btw, you might want to take a look at several googleMaps apps abt which I wrote sometime back, and ofcourse you don’t have to spend whole lotta money to travel all these places, coz gas is so cheap 🙂
Suhail:
Nice links. There are tonnes of google apps out there, and the list just grows every single day.
Some other ones are here, here and here
Damn It!! There is a whole blog devoted to GoogleMapsMania