Internet For Everyone? You Mean Every American

On its Public Policy blog, Google talks about joining the "The Internet for Everyone," campaign, which, just from the title, I took to mean the whole world. Since the announcement was coming from Google, it didn't strike me as that outlandish. What better company to strive for bringing Internet access to everyone? We live in the age of globalization, so naturally we think outside our own borders, or so we like to believe.

Then I read the first paragraph, which says:

Today Google joined a national initiative of public interest, civic and industry groups to help launch the Internet for Everyone campaign, whose goal is to make ubiquitous and open broadband access for every American a priority in the next administration.

Notice how the title says "Internet for Everyone" but that "everyone" is narrowed down to "every American." So the rest of the world is going to be left out? Perhaps there was a three word limit in naming the campaign, so "Internet for Everyone" was more logical, and gave a sense of something greater than "Internet for Americans" or "Internet for America" or "Internet for All Americans" if there was no three word limit.

Maybe, one day when "every American" has Internet access, the campaign will expand beyond US borders and fully embrace its title, actually bringing Internet access to everyone.

Google Tentacles Grad Hold of Healthcare

Ars Technica formally announced it's acquisition by Conde Nast, which seems to tilt it more in favor of Ars Technica staying as is, only with deeper pockets. A hint of hiring, too, perhaps...

But the big news today is the public (beta) launch of Google Health, which, you can imagine, has added more fuel to the privacy fire. There are posts from the usual suspects, the Official Google Blog, Tech Crunch, Ars Technica, NYT, Tribune via AP...list goes on. Google Health was being tested by the Cleveland Clinic, and not surprisingly, there was a waiting list for the limited number of open slots for the test. The thinking seems to be that Google has built a strong brand, a trusted brand, so people will flock to the service without giving it a second thought. Those who do stop and think for a second ask: what about HIPPA?

Most people have heard of HIPPA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; it's impossible to see a doctor without signing something about it, but few understand exactly what it does. In a nutshell, it protects your health care information by setting standards for electronic transmission or exchange of data, it protects your health insurance coverage if you find yourself out of work or change jobs and has various other rules, such as privacy, transaction and code sets, etc. You can read a simplified version from Wikipedia, or the whole statute. There is also a section on the HHS Office of Civil Rights website.

HIPPA, you'll notice, is mysteriously, or perhaps purposefully, missing from Google Health. Actually, you can't even access Google Health without a Google Account, which makes sense after you've read the first point of their Privacy Policy:

You control who can access your personal health information. By default, you are the only user who can view and edit your information. If you choose to, you can share your information with others.

So unless you have my login information, you can't access my health information, or any other Google service normally accessed through a Google Account. Makes me feel slightly more secure, but then there is point two:

Google will not sell, rent, or share your information (identified or de-identified) without your explicit consent, except in the limited situations described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when Google believes it is required to do so by law.

That makes me nervous. Having studied Google's Privacy Policy as part of my grad school education, I'm leary about Google products that store rather personal information. Yes, I use Blogger, I use Gmail, I use Google Docs, but not for anything I consider to be sensitive information. I don't, for example, keep track of my expenses through Google Docs. I don't do more than share and collaborate on documents that have little or no value if my account were to be compromised.

So its privacy policy is a little too open-ended for me. I like how it explicitly states that it will notify users of acquisitions, mergers and the like that may involve the transfer of personal information, but it says nothing about notifying users if the government, or some legal entity requests user information. I also find the wording of the "consent" phrase interesting:

We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

It says "we have your consent" and then says opt-in is required. Not that opt-in is required and therefore, once you have opted-in, you have granted consent. Just the first phrase implies that once you create a Google Account, you have given them consent. How's that for being blunt.

Anyway, back to Google Health. The Privacy Policy for Google Health lists out the ways in which you, the user, control your information. You can delete information, and grant access, which basically means you open the flood gates. Surprise surprise. It expands on this, stating that if a website makes a copy of your information and stores it, then your information is now subject to that website's privacy policy, including HIPPA if the site owners must abide by HIPAA. Sounds as if you might be safer going with those that must abide by HIPPA. And, naturally, Google has its disclaimer about third-parties and not being liable..blah blah blah. I'd be curious to see how well that holds up if a site is infiltrated, and that infiltration leads to the hacking of Google Health. Imagine the treasure trove of information available. Yikes! Only need to think about the banking system to see how one might position oneself into such a situation.

It does seem as if Google Health is positioning itself as nothing more than a platform, but I'd wager this is only the start. It's too early to see what will really happen with Google Health. The privacy issues are expected, but people seem rather willing to trust Google, to a point. And there is something attractive about being able to access your health information from a central location.

And it may stay that way, for awhile, until a breach occurs or something happens that requires legal action but, alas, there is no legal recourse. Some creative lawyering may be needed.

The more I think about it, the more Google seems like the online equivalent of the Walt Disney Corporation: a country unto itself.

ZoHo Just Gets Better

I was browsing TechCrunch this morning, and came across this post about ZoHo now letting you login with your Google or Yahoo ID. That's awesome!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, ZoHo is a better suite of online apps than Google Docs. ZoHo is more feature rich, and it continues to demonstrate that it can use others APIs and applications more efficiently than companies than create them. ZoHo beat Google at its own game by using Google Gears to bring offline capability to its products before Google Docs. Now it is using other Google APIs and Yahoo APIs to make the process of logging in easier, and my guess is this only the start.

Perhaps ZoHo has improved its email feature now, too. The nice thing about Google Docs was that I could email my paper in Word to any email address. With ZoHo, I could only email it to myself, which then meant I had to forward that email to a professor; an extra step that made using Google Docs more worthwhile.

OK. Must go try logging in to ZoHo with using my Google account.

Why a Search Engine Company Needs to Fix LexisNexis

Most of us, at this point, especially people my age and younger, take searching on the Internet for granted. We've grown up with the technology, we have little issue with freely posting information (damning or not) for the world to see and generally assumed that if we type in keywords into a box, we'll get the results we want.

If you go to law school, you'll be given access to the well-known legal research tool called Lexis-Nexis, which will remain your archaic friend for as long as you pursue a legal career. And within your first few minutes of training, you'll discover that Lexis-Nexis is a horrible search tool by today's technology standards. You have to memorize a list of archaic commands, commands that used to be second nature when you had to use the library computer to figure out where on particular book was located in the millions of stacks. But, you have to string the commands together just right in order to get the result you want, which takes practice and lots of trial and error. And that is assuming you have started your search in the correct category.

Needless to say, finding anything in Lexis-Nexis is a time-consuming, tedious task. But as it is the definitive research tool used by the legal profession, using it is a necessity. And since technology permeates so much of the world today, and as the legal staffs of technology companies continue to expand, I am surprised that none of them, not even search engine companies, have done anything to improve the search capabilities of Lexis-Nexis.

If you think about it, Lexis-Nexis is a treasure trove of information. Any case from anytime, anywhere, is in Lexis-Nexis. Legal definitions. Statues. Ordinances. Any legal document at all, can be found in Lexis-Nexis. Now isn't that a database worth creating useful search algorithms? Think of the hours (as in $$) that would be saved by legal departments and law students everywhere if Lexis-Nexis had the search smarts of Google, Yahoo or even MSN behind it, not to mention how much more 21st Century Lexis-Nexis would be.

Everyone is on the hunt to organize information, which usually involves trying to talk various groups of people into sharing information so it can be compiled and indexed in one spot. Why not start in an area that already has the information complied and indexed, and improve the indexing process? What good is a wealth of information in one place if you can't easily find anything?

Google Book Sharing Not the First

There's this post on the Google Blog about enhancements to its book search, namely the ability to create a "virtual bookshelf." That's all fine and dandy, and it being Google, undoubtedly the searchability is good.

But this isn't the first "virtual bookshelf" that you can share with others, and I doubt it will be the last. There is another website called Sheflari that lets you find, collect and share books in a "virtual bookshelf," and exchange comments, reviews and suggestions with other users. You can embed your Shelfari into your website, blog or online profile as well.

I've been using Shelfari to being a digital catalog of all the books I have read. It's turned out to be a bit of an undertaking as I have lists strewn about of the 100s of books I have read, and a journal of sorts I received as a gift to chronicle the books I have read, favorite passages, books I want to read, etc. There is something more gratifying about updating my Shelfari page and then seeing who else has read the same book, what they have to say about it and making a connection.

Google's addition to its Book Search has the same potential, and is yet another example of Google knowing anything and everything about you. Maybe you don't mind, but I have second thoughts about putting all my eggs, as it were, in one basket. That, and there isn't the information overload with Shelfari as there is with Google Books.

Time, Money and Resources

Google and the American Blind and Wallpaper Factory have settled the trademark infringement lawsuit. And then there is the article about news wires like the AP agreeing to license news feeds to Google.

All of this fits well with an article in The Economist: Who is Afraid of Google?

The answer seems to be no one. Google has demonstrated, on more than one occasion, it has enough time, money and resources to fight any and every lawsuit hurled at it. Google also has the time, money and resources to impose its will on governmental agencies, and play an increasingly larger role in the shaping of public policy to fit its own agenda, only under the guise of improving information flow for the masses.

There is its post on patent reform, its lengthy posts on the telecom spectrum, all of which sounds very much like running commentary on governmental policies that pertain to technology, except that the commentary is coming from a source that millions of people blindly trust.

This issue came up on the "L" ride home from class last night, and at a dinner party I attended over the weekend. My generation and younger have no qualms about freely posting information about ourselves to the Internet, or freely sharing information via searches with engines like Google. And, if you think about it, if you use any of Google's free services, Google has even more information about you. I have yet to read somewhere that says something along the lines of Google employees not being able to read your documents or your email or access Google Checkout account information.

Makes you wonder exactly what kind of security, if any, they use to monitor employees access to customer information, as it were. For all I know, a Google employee has been joyfully reading my email, and checking every so often to read the next chapter of my novel.

What it boils down to is that people in my generation and younger have decided to make a trade off: less control over personal information for convenient accessibility anywhere. Using something like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, or ZoHo (which actually has a much better interface, more options and is more user-friendly) gives me the convince of being able to work from any computer with a browser and an Internet connection, but in return, I have to provide what amounts to personal information to which ever online document client I choose.

With all the news in recent weeks about databases being hacked, such as Monster and Loyola University-Chicago, I wonder if a few of these aren't warm-ups, testing hacks to get at the wealth of information stored in search engines. Some might say no place is safe, and that it is only a matter of time.

Which makes you wonder, would search engines notify you of the possibility of compromised information, or are we really better off using Google Docs & Spreadsheets just to keep notes or reminders, and not to keep anything useful or important? Afterall, with Microsoft Word documents, you're major security concern is just your laptop, which is more often than not completely in your possession.

Brief Update

So it's been awhile since I've posted anything. Things have been rather crazy all the way round since my acceptance to the M.S. program in Information Technology Law at John Marshall. I forgot how much preparation goes into school, not mention the fact that it is graduate school so there is even more paperwork and stuff to do. And work has really picked up with large projects and roll outs happening.

Plenty has been going on, from the release of the long anticipated iPhone to the broadband issues (posted everywhere on the Official Google Blog and then the Google Public Policy Blog. Talk about duplicate content!) and the frenzy of media acquisitions. The Internet, for now, seems to be the only place where more than one voice is heard. Certainly not in newspapers or magazines since, well, they are all owned by Murdoch and 4 other people. Limited perspective anyone?

A guy I know said that Google should start acquiring large media giants so, at the very least, information is all in one spot, even if it ends up being the same information. He thinks Google will shift to being more of acquisition company and less of a technology company. As gigantic corporations continually demonstrate, why do the work yourself when you can buy people to do it for you? Or so he says.

Just as Google's slogan "Don't be Evil" is taken cum grano salis, so must its blah blah blah about search being its top priority. Isn't the company about innovation, which requires change and adaptation? To organize the world's information, won't it need to change and adapt?

Oops. Right. We're talking about Google. The world is supposed to change and adapt to it. My bad.

Google Public Policy Blog...with Comments!

I was reading The Caucus blog on the New York Times website this morning, and apparently YouTube's "redesign" has replaced user's picks with editor's choices, no doubt because of the flood of copyright infringement notices it receives every day. Editors have a much more discerning eye (we hope) for potential copyright infringement or potential lawsuits, so it only stands to reason that the glory of user-generated content would be muffled a bit by people paid to keep popular but illegal videos off the front page, as it were, and stash it somewhere in the back of the paper so people really have to dig for it. Given the short attention span of today, if it's not on page 2, it's of little interest.

Not surprising, really, as YouTube and Google have said they are working on filtering out copyrighted material. What better way to catch more of it than to remove the choice of the people?

Anyway, what caught my attention on the Google Blog while looking for some comment about YouTube's "redesign" was the Google Public Policy Blog. With articles in the news recently about immigration, and Google being a tech company it relies heavily on foreign workers, it doesn't surprise me Google has created such a blog. What surprises me is how long it took! Though, apparently, it was an internal blog and only recently went public.

The difference between the public policy blog and other Google blogs, however, is that the public policy blog allows comments. Comments! Interesting, don't you think? You can comment on Google's public policy. Not a hint of irony in that at all.

The blog touches on a range of issues you expect: immigration, censorship as a barrier to trade, the always popular debate on net neutrality and it's, how should I put this, unwillingness to support one candidate or party in this upcoming election. The Googleplex, as the blog makes readers know, has hosted both Mayor Bloomberg and potential Democratic candidate John Edwards. Sort of makes you think that Google will support a candidate, just before the election, who will make Google's policies law. Google's policies law, as in, for the USA.

Google and politics could turn out to be rather interesting. If you think about, big corporations always choose sides, and they always choose the side that best suits them. Little wonder that with a Republican president and, up until the this year, a Republican Congress, the broken up Bell companies are forming into one again. Mergers are occurring all over the place, giving big business back to the few.

Some see it as necessary against the onslaught of competition from abroad. Safety in numbers, as it were. Larger corporations have a better shot of staying competitive against overseas corporations than smaller ones, so it only makes sense to build up again. I believe the term for that is cycle.

At any rate, the Google Public Policy Blog ought to be very interesting, espousing the wisdom of Google and it tries to makes its public policy law. If it succeeds, I doubt those laws will stop at the US borders. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if international standards become more than a whisper, and other countries take Google's public policy at face value and adopt it as their own.

Hopefully people will stop and think, weigh the options, see if Google's policies will in fact be helpful rather than hurtful, but, well, that just might be asking too much now, don't you think? Why think for yourself when Google does the thinking for you?

Then again, with the comments enabled on the public policy blog, it gives the impression that people are still allowed to have independent thought. You don't agree with what has been posted, then, by all means, leave a comment. Google will take your comment into consideration and then figure out a way to spin the idea so that it sounds exactly like that you wanted to hear in the first place!

Maybe. Maybe not. Course, you can also think of Google's enabling of comments on its public policy blog as caving into its users who have clamored to comment on Google blogs but have been forced to do so in blogs like this one.

Google Oogling...at You

I found this cartoon first on the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune and thought it was quite fitting. Went well with an editorial today from Steve Johnson called "Street View: The Creepy Side of Google." He says:

The transition for Google is now nearly complete.

The lovable Internet start-up with the "do-no-evil" motto and the cute, seasonably changeable logo has transformed into something more ominous.

Google is now keeper of our private search data, whether we want it to or not; chronicler of our hard drives, if we let it; exploiter of our newspapers; digitizer of every book it can get its hands on; and, now, photographer of our ordinary, on-street activities, from sunbathing to visiting a strip club.

It's this last, the recent arrival of the Street View feature as an enhancement of Google Maps and Google Earth, that has proved to be the tipping point, or, more accurately, demonstrated that a tipping point had already occurred.

Yes, Google's Street View seems to have made people rather uneasy. Since its launch, it has been covered extensively in the news and around the blogosphere. Seems we didn't have a problem with Google keeping our search history (and we already know it won't be turned over to the government. Google will fight such a request first, providing time to cover our tracks, so to speak), searching our hard drives for information we know is there we just can't remember where we put it, and why bother hopping from one news website to another when there is Google News that presents it all at once?

But being able to see ourselves on the street, through our apartment or office window, is unexpected. The novelty is quickly wearing off. But Mr. Johnson does make a valid point: "surveillance cameras blinking from above intersections and camera phones in many pockets" is making privacy non-existent. The next thing to expect is for law enforcement to use Street View in conjunction with its surveillance cameras, perhaps to strengthen a case going to court. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, now is it?

There will be little any of us will be able to do that won't be captured and posted on the Internet for the world to see, whether we like it or not. But just think, if Kevin Bankston, a privacy lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, can be caught smoking, it makes you wonder who else you might be able to spot, whether it be Googlers, the founding members of Google or anyone else you've wondered about...oh wait....right....that information has probably been filtered out already. Silly me. I forgot. Google only wants to invade everyone else's privacy under the guise of "helpfulness in navigation," not their own. My bad.

Mr. Johnson closes by asking:

Whether Google ends up doing that will serve as a pretty good test for which Google it wants to be. Rich, but still, to the best of its abilities, a good neighbor? Or the kind of rich it's verging on already, the rich that forgets how it got all that money in the first place?

It stands to reason, considering most large corporations forget, that Google will continue down the path of the rich that forgets how it got all the money in the first place. But it's so good at keeping us all occupied with that right hand of righteousness, we'll feed the machine without giving it a second thought.

Really, what business today can survive without Google? Just like few that sell retail items can survive without the business it receives from Wal-Mart.

Somewhere, someone is paying close attention to signs of fractures in Google, just as someone, somewhere, was paying attention to fractures in Wal-Mart. After all, nothing lasts forever.

The Google Story: Google's Secrect Open to the Public

Google has many blogs run by its many fractured departments, and one of them is the Google Research Blog. Not kept updated nearly as often as the Google Blog, but it presented me with this rather interesting post on videos.

One of them is about "The Google Story", a book written by David Vise and Mark Malseed and published in August of 2006. I read in December of 2006. He was invited to Google to speak about the book and his reasons for writing it.

What struck me as funny, however, was at the beginning with Eric Schmidt is introducing him and saying the book is a "best seller." I couldn't help but laugh, and I'm willing to bet Mr. Schmidt said it with a good deal of sarcasm. The book is practically invisible on any bookshelf, which is a shame. It appears, however, more than John Battelle's equally interesting book "The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture".

"The Google Story" is most likely going to be the only definitive inside look at Google. Mr. Vise is correct when he states the "Google knows more about you than you know about Google" and though his efforts to bridge that gap should be applauded, it still falls short when you measure the information in the book against the amount of information that Google collects on just a daily basis. He, like the rest of us (myself included to some extent), has been enamored of Google, and his book exudes praise that no doubt anger privacy advocates. It is not until you put his book together with Mr. Battelle's that you begin to see the bigger picture, all the pieces coming more into focus. Search is on track to fulfill the predictions made by Mr. Battelle, and Google is leading the way as Mr. Vise discusses.

It strikes me as odd that a company that receives so much publicity, both good and bad, has a book out on it that has not climbed as high up the Amazon ladder as one might expect, or even appear on the bookshelf in any prominent fashion. Sort of makes you wonder if Google has had a hand in this, not publicizing the book and not necessarily making it invisible either. I have argued more than once that Google wants to make all the world's information free to the public, except its own.

"The Google Story" seems to fly in the face of that argument, in a sense, as a great of information about the company is presented that you don't find anywhere else. The book is perhaps one of Google's best kept secrets that is open to the public.

So why haven't you read it yet?

Street Level -- Online Courtesy of Google Earth

Amazing what happens when you don't interact with the Internet for an entire day. I checked the news this morning, and low and behold, Google has created more controversy with its new StreetView feature in Google Maps.

The New York Times ran an article about a woman who saw her cat sitting in the windowsill of her apartment. The Lede chimes in with a host of things you can see using the new service.

The mention of seeing license plates got me thinking. If you can see the street view of anything, or almost anything, then what can you gleam from the Googleplex itself? License plates of the vehicles parked nearest the street? License plates of cars parked in front of the building? What companies make deliveries? Construction? Maybe, even, a glimpse of Googlers doing any of the things the company toutes so much on its website? Perhaps one of founders in the flesh?

And, no doubt, the papparazzi will take note of this new feature, and use it to help them spot celebrities, or catch people in the act of something that may or may not be what it seems.

Really. How ironic would it be to catch a senior member of Google in a questionable act using its own technology? And if not, then one has to question if Google is keeping itself off limits, removing or controlling information of itself in all areas of the Web.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google is all about making the world's information free, as long as the world's information does not include Google. And when the world is so enamored of a company, it can do no wrong.

I keep waiting for Congress to enact the "Google Laws" that will govern the Internet.

Google's Personalized Search: Are We Really in Control?

The esteemed Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel, posted this little nugget on the Google blog which, obviously, sparked my interest in his opinion piece for the Financial Times. Ignoring a few grammatical errors and quite a few spacing issues (we hope that have more to do with FT than Mr. Fleischer), the article does a fairly good job of quietly dosing the fire of privacy concerns that have arisen since Google's bid to acquire DoubleClick (for another ridiculous amount of money)and its change in its data retention policy.

Mr. Fleischer states that "the responsible way to handle this privacy issue is to ask users if they want to opt in to the service." He goes on to explain that when you open a Google account, you are giving your consent to Google Personalized Search, or "opting in" to the service. And just like email marketing campaigns, you can still "opt out." The point, however, is that the user is in control, which for some sounds a little odd coming from a company like Google. Control, by its nature, is a facade. No one is really "in control," some just manipulate better than others so the illusion of control seems all the more real.

I always think of that scene from "Jurassic Park," where Hammond and Ellie are sitting at a long table, trying to eat up the melting ice cream, and Hammond talks about the next time, "when we have control," to which Ellie points out "but we never have control." Giving the pace of technology, you have to pause for a moment and ask, do we really have control over our search history?

Google certainly wants to make that facade look real. After all, you can turn off the "Search History" function. You don't even need to "pause" it, just use the "Remove all" or "Delete all" function and once it erases your search history, it automatically pauses the service so no more search data can be found. But is it really gone? Has it really been erased?

If you're spent anytime in the online world, you know things aren't ever really "erased." Things still exist, somewhere. And some day, a curious, enterprising individual for reasons unknown, may want to find that information that you believed had been erased. Deleted. You remember deleting your search history, pausing the function and sleeping easier. After all, Google puts your in control of your search history, right?

On a final note, a little bit of humor found on Digg: "Google in 20 years".

"I" in Front of Everything

OK. I'm not entirely sure of this phenomenon, though it seems to be catching on a little faster than tacking on "-ability" to the end of every word.

The letter "i," lower case, has become a staple in front of words that used to stand on their own just fine. There is the portal and search engine iWon that gives away cash prizes, giving some weight to the "iWon" name. The search engine has remained in relative obscurity, few taking notice of the "i" in front of "Won."

Then Apple came along with its "i" products, most notably the iPod and iTunes. Even if you just Google the letter "i," Apple's iTunes page is the first result. And let's not all forget the iPhone, the latest offering in the Apple "i" product line. Too bad there won't be "iTV." We have to settle for "Apple TV", but hey, can't win them all.

Apple, however, no longer corners the market on useful products that start with "i." Google has joined the mix with "iGoogle," the new name of the Personalized Home Page. Of all the companies overflowing with originality, I guess I expected a little more from Google. I figured Google to be a trend setter, not a follower.

On the surface of things, "iGoogle" does seem to follow a trend established and used rather effectively by Apple. The rest of the world rides the coat tails of Google, after all, so shouldn't Google be able to ride someone else's for once? But to leave it at that would do an injustice to language, the word Google and the letter "i," lower case.

Where Apple slapped an "i" in front of "Tunes," "Pod" and "Phone" for reasons that make sense to someone at Apple, Google's use of the letter "i," lower case, creates a sentence: "iGoogle," meaning "I Google."

Call it a declaration. "iGoogle" signifies that you, a user, declare Google to be your search engine of choice. And, generally, you search. Google, besides being an obnoxiously large corporation, is also a verb. Apple, however, is a fruit. You consume Apple. It's passive. Google, well, that requires thinking and typing and more thinking and typing until you find what you want.

Words are Google's business, falling under the more accepted term of "search," and what better declaration to make than "iGoogle."

The Position Angle

Surprise! As reported by the Chicago Tribune, and other media outlets, Google is fighting Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement law suit against YouTube.

Google, not surprisingly, is arguing "safe harbor" under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, claiming "Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression." In other words, Google is positioning itself as the defender of freedom of information and freedom of the Internet while casting Viacom as the destroyer of those freedoms.

You have to hand it to Google's legal team for always positioning the company on the angle of freedom of the Internet, of information, etc. And since Internet law, is, well, murky at best, Google is on the verge of writing Internet law that we will all have to live with, whether we like it or not. You could almost say we've been brainwashed by Google, and lured into a false sense of security that will be sealed by "Google Laws" so we're trapped.

Contrast Google's growing legal track record of the "freedom position angle" against Microsoft, another gigantic technology company quite familiar with the court system, in more than one country. Doesn't seem to matter what angle Microsoft tries to present, it always comes out sounding like a control freak, and further cements its reputation as the "evil empire," or the corporation everyone loves to hate.

It would be absolutely fascinating to compare the legal teams of both corporations and see what is about Google's team that everyone seems to love, and how they are consistently able to cast the other party as the evil-doer, even when there is a gray area that casts a very dark shadow over the colorful Google logo. And what is it about the Microsoft legal team that seems to perpetuate the "evil empire" persona?

Google Domination One Piece of Land at a Time

I saw a snippet on Digg earlier today and then took a break for a moment read and the full post at Search Engine Land. Google buying up chunks of land in out-of-the-way places in order to continue building its vast network of server farms is nothing new. What seems to be new, however, is the mention of these purchases, or even rumors of these purchases, in the media.

There is another story about Council Bluffs, IA, providing tax breaks to Google in order to entice it to build a server farm there.

Does this acquiring of land sound familiar to any other big corporation who also receives ridiculous tax breaks in order to build and provide jobs? Hmm...and how there is always a debate if the corporation really does provide jobs and an influx of dollars at the expense of local business?

Is Google becoming the next Wal-Mart?

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.

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?

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.

SPAM on the Brain

It's been reported in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, on the Google Blog and, of course, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website: The S.E.C. is taking steps to curb those rather annoying stock SPAM email messages we all get. It's called "Operation Spamalot," and I'm waiting to see if there are going to be issues of copyright for the name "Spamalot" since it is also the name of Monty Python's musical.

With all the hoopla around spam and scams, it still baffles me that people take such email messages seriously, and the amount of money such spammers make off these deals. Seems like there is more money to be made in spam than in legit email marketing, but either way, you're selling something and the offer is only as good as the salesperson.

Google's toting of Gmail's superior spamming catching is interesting as well. I use the "Report Spam" feature early and often, yet I still see the same spam messages appear in my Inbox. Stuff on Home Loans, College Loans, going to college for free, being a guest on the Oprah Whinfrey Show, Medial Hair Restoration, the list goes on.

Not that much appears in my other email accounts with .Mac, and spam in Yahoo! comes from people spamming Yahoo! Groups.

Google does catch more spam than it did, evidence by the 400+ emails that are always in the SPAM folder ever day.

Just goes to show that there are smarter people still out there, able to manipulate code and fool email clients to get their message across. And to the tune of a nice profit, in some instances.

So what would happen if we all became spammers?