- What if your free email provider indexed every email you sent or received for keywords?
- What if they provided a free search engine that remembered every search?
- What if they also owned a great video sharing site and remembered every video you watched?
- What if they offered free blogging sites, remembered every visit, and indexed every post and comment?
- What if the same company offered free maps and directions with satellite or even street-level views and remembered every location you viewed?
- What if they made the maps really easy by linking them to the GPS device in your phone?
- What if you could use their on-line productivity software to create all your documents and financial records.
- What if they let you store backup copies of all your computer files on their servers for safe keeping and kept a copy of your encryption key?
- What if they cross-referenced all these different data points and shared them with others?
George Orwell? 1984? The real thing could be so much worse.
I have thought similar things about google. I am considering an android phone in the future by I would like to be able to use and store my own email, not them!
Having all those services tied together is fantastically convenient. Google is still my favorite search engine, and I read a dozen blogspot blogs at least weekly.
But the potential for misuse is equally fantastic.