Monday 22 February 2010

Planning world domination with Google

Like pretty much everybody else on the planet, I use Google. In fact I'll be posting this very article on Google's Blogger and I'll no doubt soon see how many people have visited it by logging on to my Google Analytics account. Google truly is a wonderful company and I always enjoy beta testing their latest bits of kit and marvelling at the genius behind it.

However, a few weeks ago while I was travelling up to the scum hole that is London on my way to a concert, I was playing around with Google Latitude when a scary thought struck me: Google knew exactly where I was at that moment. That got me thinking. Google know what things I browse for on the web, they know who I email thanks to Gmail, they know who my friends are thanks to Friend Connect, they know what videos I watch thanks to Youtube, they know my credit card details thanks to Checkout, they know the contents of some of my work thanks to Notebook and Docs. Things like Google Reader, Google Groups, Blogger, Picassa and iGoogle mean that they can also get a fair read on my general lifestyle. Streetmap even gives them the chance to look into my house.

Not that I’m a paranoid person or anything but when Google do eventually take over the world, I want to be the first to own up and say I will happily take on the role of evil henchman – I think I'd be good at that job!

The even scarier thought is that Google was founded by two students! Not that I want to try and get one over on them but Datapartners is run by a rock star and a racing driver – that’s much more charismatic!