Welcome your Google Overlords

I'm a big fan of Google. Which is probably for the best, since Google is everywhere.

I think xkcd illustrated this phenomena brilliantly a little while back:









Of course, if you're interested in the specifics, you should check out Allen Stern's recent article on CenterNetworks. My favorite quotes?

"If you use Chrome, they know everything they didn't already know about your browsing."
"If you use Gmail, they know everything. Yep, everything."
"If you use Calendar, they know where you have been, are, and plan to be."

Does he have a point? Sure. After all, the first sentence on Google's Corporate Information page is: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Yes, Google as an entity knows a whole lot about the online population at large. They probably have access to some unsettling information about you. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself how much anyone else cares what you've saved in your Google Docs.

Without getting too English major-y on you, I think the xkcd strip gets at that point that Google doesn't really see things on the individual level. For the time being anyway.

Here's an example from my Gmail inbox yesterday that illustrates this point:

My hysterical friend Claire sent me an email with a link to this article about how the Jane Austen museum has had to formally ban people from distributing human ashes in the author's garden. When I opened this email, the following ad popped up at the top of my inbox:

Based on this ad, we can assume that Google does not know the following things about me:

• I do not have a pet.
• Cremation creeps me out.
• I'm not big on jewelry.
• I find basic grammar mistakes a big turn-off.

They might, however, know that I was recently obsessed with Six Feet Under.

Of course, now that I've written about this on Blogger, they know it all.

Anyway, I think we should all just relax and welcome our Google Overlords. I'm sure they'll be nice.