Googling Boyfriend and Finding America's Most Wanted

I found this story on Digg this morning about a woman who Googled her boyfriend and discovered he was on the list for America's Most Wanted.

Law enforcement has turned to the Internet and to search engines from time to time in an effort to find information on fugitives, suspected criminals, spammers and every day citizens. It's a treasure trove at your finger tips and can yield useful information.

But now we can all be a little bit more aware of online selves, and perform those vanity searches from time to time. Corporations have started doing it to monitor online reputation, and with information gathered about you every time you log on, it isn't a bad idea to do it yourself every once in awhile. It's right up there with monitoring your credit score. Better to be proactive then to wait until something happens and fight the uphill battle of proving that you are, in fact, you.

Video Conferencing for Googlers First, the Rest of the World Later?

With Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia and then Adobe Breeze) and WebEx (recently acquired by Cisco), it is really of little surprise that Google is putting its muscle into the online conferencing and collaboration arena.

They have announced the acquisition of Marratech, "which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection."

The interesting world here is "Googlers." That implies that only Google employees, commonly referred to as Googlers, will be using videoconferencing features from Marratech. That strikes me as a little out of the ordinary for a company bent on making the world's information accessible and free, not to mention its drive towards knocking Microsoft off of its Office pedestal. You can even argue that this particular post strengthens the case that the Google Blog isn't a blog as we've come to know, but rather a public corporate bulletin board.

Still, you have to wonder if Google is going to use its employees as test subjects to see how well this videoconferencing software works before opening it up to the public. You can bet that businesses everywhere will want to use this service, and that Google will offer it for free like its Docs & Spreadsheets and its forthcoming presentation capability that takes square aim, again, at Microsoft.

The day is fast approaching when the desktop Operating System as we know it will be obsolete. It won't come as a surprise is Google replaces Microsoft as the "Big Brother" everyone loves to hate. The next "evil corporation."

That identity, however, could very well depend on how Google dances around rising concerns of consumer/user privacy and data collection. Ever notice how there are always posts on hacks and bugs and other issues with Microsoft products, people demonstrating how to breach security and infiltrate the latest Microsoft OS? Yet there doesn't seem to be much on how to hack Google and get ahold of its treasure trove of data. Is it that no one has tried, or is it that many have tried and failed? Or has it happened but Google being Google, the information control freak, has managed to prevent an information leak?

All that data in one place has to make you ask yourself: what happens when all my data stored by Google is compromised?

Remember, there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. So an information breach at Google, or any other company that stores vast amounts of data, is not completely out of the question.

DoubleClick Acquistion All About Revenue

Surprise. Surprise. Google has acquired yet another Internet company: DoubleClick.

Ignoring the clear punctuation error at the end of the answer, this question and answer from Google's Q&A sums it up:

Q. How should this acquisition be viewed given Google's recent attention to alternate revenue streams? Is Google once again concentrating on its core advertising business?
A. The sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web has always been the fundamental model for our business. This partnership is an obvious opportunity to expand our ads business and have a positive impact on our search users in the process?

Translation: a way for Google to make more money! There are no immediate plans to change the business model of DoubleClick, meaning there are no immediate plans to get rid of DoubleClick's profitability and turn it into another free product offering from Google.

Naturally, both Yahoo! and Microsoft are crying foul, and requesting the Federal Trade Commission look closely at this acquisition for possible anti-trust violations. And there is that ever-pressing issue of privacy.

Google and DoubleClick might very well corner the market, as it were, on user information. Of course, it is all under the guise of providing the best and most relevant ads to Web content publishers and advertisers. The Web has allowed advertisers to track audiences like no other medium, getting the goods on people that TV, radio and print could only dream about acquiring.

We all know Google flat out refuses to share information with the United States government, and fights the US government on everything. But Google also has been known to bend to the whim of foreign nations, and there is no guarantee that this growing treasure trove of information will remain secure.

Big Brother, it seems, is now a worldwide phenomenon. And has very deep pockets of information as well as money.

Where on the Web Is Matt Lauer, and the Benefits of TV Shows on the Web

I found this article in the New York Times today about Matt Lauer and his travels. NBC has developed an interactive Flash website devoted to following Matt around on the world on his travels.

The whole website is sponsored by Hyundai, and is pretty cool. There is even a game with is reminiscent of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?"

I must admit that I have turned more and more to the Web to watch TV shows. I am not home much during the week when TV shows I watch, like "Grey's Anatomy," "CSI," and "The Office" are on. I used to tape them and spend my Saturday afternoon catching up, but taping become a cumbersome task I stopped doing and fell behind. There was benefit in NetFlix, but by the time I catch up on one season, I'm behind two!

Then I saw a rerun of "Grey's" on a Friday night when I was one, and there was a blurb saying that you can watch the show online. I've been doing that ever since, and found that other networks also had shows on the Web. So now I don't have to worry about setting the VCR, I don't have to wait the length of a season to catch up on a season and I don't miss out on my favorite shows.

I simply turn to the Web, and all is well. And sometimes, I watch shows out of curiosity that I would normally skip to watch something else on TV.

Technology can be a beautiful thing.

To Infinity, and Beyond

BBspot is, indeed, a tech humor website. I came across this article, "Google Response to Yahoo by Increasing Gmail Storage to Infinity Plus One," on Digg. And though it is amusing, it doesn't seem that far from reality. It sounds outrageous enough, actually, to be Google, that to hear of it in the future wouldn't be so shocking.

Don't know if it's quite on the level of humor as posts from T.V. Raman, the Research Scientist at Google who is blind. He seems to have a very good grasp of visuals for someone not able to see, and takes very good pictures too, better than some pictures of people I know who can see.

Don't get the wrong idea. Nothing against the man, no offense meant. He is very insightful, but his posts often make me think he has help, more help than he lets on. He does good work. No one can argue that.

Ah. Check that out. John Hanke's post was fixed. It had just showed his name, which was odd since all the other Google posts show the author's name and his or her position at Google. You could pretty much guess that he worked with Google Maps, but was he just an engineer, a software developer, or did he hold a higher position within Google Maps? Turns out the man is the Director of Google Maps/Local/Earth.

That's a curious title. Director of Google Maps/Local/Earth. Is there a Director of Google Maps/Local/Neptune? Or Google Maps/Local/Venus? Or any of the other planets? Stars? Galaxies? Hmm...could there be somewhere in the cosmos that is still untouched by Google?

Lorem Ipsum Employment Law

A friend with time and money on his hands, spends his time trolling the Internet for random stuff. He found this while trolling and it struck me as funny.

It's the website of an employment law firm, and something must've gone somewhere since their page related to has placement holder text on it. Ha! A law firm, an employment law firm, has placement text on its live website. That's funny. And how embarrassing for the law firm, and the web design company, assuming they even know about it.

Sort of makes you wonder what else is a "place holder" on that website, doesn't it? And who exactly wasn't paying attention? The law firm? Or whatever company designed the website? I'd think twice about hiring either one!

Or maybe they've noticed by now and fixed it.

Anyway, it was a good chuckle. Thanks JJ!

Google the Internet Equivalent of Wal-Mart?

Yes, so, we're all excited about Google's new "privacy" initiatives. Even Google, who is "pleased to report [the] change in [its] privacy policy." The more I read about Google, the more it strikes me as a company made of contradictions.

So imagine my surprise when I saw "Google Is Reviving Hopes for Ex-Furniture Makers" in the New York Times this morning. A rather liberal use of the phrase "reviving hopes" once you read the article, and it made me think: is Google the Internet Equivalent of Wal-Mart? The promise of new jobs overshadows the enormous tax breaks and other incentives such companies are given just to move into an area. And then the article mentions commissioners going door-to-door to 35 homeowners, asking them to sell their land so Google can have it.

So let's see, Google is taking advantage of the following in Lenoir, N.C.,

1) Underused electric power grid
2) Cheap land (sold to it by residents of Lenoir)
3) A robust water supply

Hmm....perhaps Google has been closely watching Wal-Marts efforts to expand, and the roadblocks Wal-Mart has run into in recent years.

Well, if any gigantic public company is good at pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, it is Google. People are so fascinated by the right hand, they forget about the left. No wonder Google blazes trails everywhere.

We shall see how this Lenoir server farm deal plays out, and what plays from the Wal-Mart expansion play book Google will use to its advantage. Too bad it couldn't find acres of open land, like Disney found in Florida so many years ago to build its own country: Disney World.