Privacy Concerns and Google

Quite interesting, the recent concerns over how Google mines data and how it might use it when combined with its recent acquisition, DoubleClick. Plus, now you have street-level, 360-degree, detailed snapshot views of actual happenings on streets that Google has covered.

Somewhat creepy, a little scary, but mostly harmless. For now.
How Google addresses privacy concerns raised by both small privacy groups and organizations like ACLU, EPIC etc is to be seen, but it's quite likely that G, whose main edict is 'Don't be evil' may be forced more and more to live up to its grand statements. Only, you don't want it going the way of 'We don't do finance'...

What is the Security concern here? Plenty, plenty, plenty. Imagine this fantastic goldmine of data that tells you all you want to know about someone's secrets and the makeup of their psyche - right from search terms to visited sites to how long they surfed those sites to your most private communication (email). Imagine this fantastic data in the hands of a hacker. There. You know what I'm saying.

So, G, which employs the most brilliant minds it can afford to buy on the strength of its balance sheet as well as brand name, needs to REALLY tighten up its environment. You do NOT want embarrassments like when someone stole G's own blog and it had to do some red-faced explaining. We don't have to teach G about security and how to protect its data, but we do have a RIGHT to expect that what G knows, only G knows and nobody else. Plus, you also hope (wish, pray, beseech, request, beg, fight) that G also has a bad memory (think data retention policies).

Anyway, the coming few months are going to be very intense as the search, advertising, and portal markets heat up with existing giants waking up and new, disruptive technologies start chipping away at the heels of the Big Ones.

Be safe!