Google Storage — They’ll Know Everything
A report from the Wall Street Journal reports that Google could be releasing a hosted storage system in the coming months. This has been rumored for a long-long time now and has been dubbed GDrive.
This will be great, now Google will know the following about me:
- What I’m looking for on the internet (Google)
- What email I’m sending and receiving (GMail)
- Who I’m talking to via IM (GTalk) and telephone (Grand Central)
- Who visits my websites (Google Analytics)
- How much my websites make (Google AdSense)
- What I like to read (Google Reader)
- Where I like to go (Google Maps/Local)
- My documents and spreadsheets (Google Office)
- What type of files I have (Google Storage or GDrive)
Am I O.K. with Google knowing so much about me? I’m never easy about having anyone or anything know too much about me. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m against anything the government does to ‘database’ information about me or anyone else for that matter.
I simply don’t trust anyone with too much information. But this isn’t big brother, nobody is forcing me to give Google so much information about myself. I’m giving up this information voluntarily so that I can use a generally superior product, usually free of charge.
Up until this point Google has not given me a reason to NOT trust them. And I don’t suppose they’ll give me a good reason anytime soon since their underlying business depends on their users trusting them with vital information about themselves. So if Google ever decides to get evil with my information, I will simply stop using their services — as will most other users — so there isn’t really any ‘incentives’ for Google to do anything devious with my information.
Google’s really on a quest to know and understand all of the world’s information. And since Futurama is coming back today, I will compare Google to the brains as seen in the episode from season 3 of the great show titled The Day the Earth Stood Stupid where brains come to earth in a quest to garner all of the known knowledge in the universe. That folks, is Google.
Note: In that episodes the brains want to get all the information and then destroy the Universe. Don’t read too far into it, I don’t think Google wants to destroy the Universe, let alone the Internet.
