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August 24, 2005
Google backlash
Google backlash: Matt Marshall at MercuryNews.com linked to various articles today, coming on the heels of the semi-embargo'd GTalk story. Me, I'm struck by the contrast in conversation online between the "Patriot Act" and other security measures, and the uncritical acceptance of giving more personal data to search companies. I'd like to get a prediction on the record: My gut feeling is that within three years we'll regard aggregation of personal data with the same feelings we assign to security issues today. We all do trust some central authorities: we rarely worry about our internet service providers monitoring us, and most of us use credit cards and other relationship technology from financial vendors, but I'm not particularly keen on tying my searches to my name and address, nor giving these same services my email, and my chat, and my photos, and the rest of the social services they're offering. Today's popular outrage may be centered on government libraries remembering which books you borrowed from them, but my intuition is that resistance to personal data aggregation will eventually become a key issue for centralized social service providers like Google.
Posted by John Dowdell at August 24, 2005 03:56 PM
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Comments
jd.
you are spot on my friend. i agree. its like these things are gettin kinda over-personalized... anonymity is somewhat a part of what made the net, the net.
Posted by: Tony Weeg at August 24, 2005 04:17 PM
I totally agree with both of you (JD & Tony Weeg).
Posted by: Chris Charlton at August 24, 2005 04:40 PM
This personal-info-as-property idea is currently being explored by the guys at AttentionTrust (dot org). My understanding is that they are looking at attention as a scarce commodity for purposes of marketability and protection, much like CC#'s are considered today.
Posted by: Michal Migurski at August 24, 2005 06:15 PM