Remember a few weeks back when I wrote about the price of “the new Internet”? Here is a rather creative hypothesis about Google’s plan for all of that information. Perhaps it’s a bit sensational. But at the same time, there’s a lot of truth to it. And it’s a little scary. How many creepy movies does this remind you of?
2 Comments
I agree insofar as Google isn’t worried about our privacy. But the video does smack of sensationalism. There are far too many “what ifs” and “What’s next” statements thrown around. It’s fairly common knowledge that Google isn’t in this business to simply make our lives easier, they’re in it for the money, and they’ve been very successful at it too. But so has Microsoft. I personally don’t buy into the idea that Google is in cahoots with the CIA to index everyone on the planet, that’s just conspiracy theory.
Still, as you said, there is always some truth to conspiracy theory, and there definitely some truth to what’s in the video.
I briefly mentioned it in the other post I wrote on Google… but I do a lot of research and reading on all the search companies for my job. And I continue to look at Google with increasingly raised eyebrows. For example, patents filed by Google in August have recently been discovered that talk about a new system they’ve invented to id the authors of content. Supposedly, the system can scan a page of text and fingerprint who wrote it. They’re apparently going to use it to eventually start ranking authors as well as pages. If your rank or “trust” as a writer is high, your content will rank higher.
If that system really works… I’d like to know 1) why they developed it and 2) what else they plan to use it for.
But what are we to do about it? As creepy as some of the theories around Google can get, it’s hard to argue that some of their products aren’t worth using. Between personal and professional testing, I’ve at least tried 90% of their stuff. And I like a lot of it. So for now, I’m biting the bullet and going with it. Not a whole lot can be done. They already have enough information on me to write a short novel. Why start hiding now. Haha.