Even if I’m aware of the advantages we get from using them, I don’t know much about technologies, computers and Internet. It was then quite complicated for me to answer the question Enrique Dans asked us: “what are the 3 most important things of Google for you”… But after a while I came up with the followings:
- Search Engine
Everybody I know uses Google as his or her Search Engine. If you don’t know something… “just google it”… I can think of many products that have become verbs like this… A detail that shows the importance Google has taken in our life.
This statement actually scares me big time. In all dictatorships, one of the big priorities is to take control of the media, because once you control the information, you control the country…
As Internet is now the main source of information for a big part of the population and as Google is the main Search Engine in the world… It is not completely crazy from me to get scared by this situation. We’re mainly informed by one provider. We type some key words and Google “decides” which web pages, articles, etc… it wants to send us. For different interests Google could perfectly orient us to different information in order to avoid us seeing a different part of the cake… Again, exactly like many dictators hide a part of the situation…
- Google Earth / Google Maps
Google also provides amazing tools such as Google Earth or Google Maps… You fly for a while around the globe, see a country, zoom in on it, zoom in again, you see the capital of the country, you keep zooming, you see the different neighbourhoods of the city, more zooms and you see the small house your parents owned when you were a kid! Amazing…
For the moment there are only pictures taken at a certain time but I can easily imagine pictures taken in real time and, sorry again but, this scares me big time too. I knew it was possible to see everything from a satellite but this information was not public… In a few years we might be able to follow somebody with GoogleEarth or Maps. Please don’t think of me as paranoid… but Internet has been synonym of lost of privacy since its beginning, and at a certain level it doesn’t bother me at all, but everything has limits…
- Gmail
Until very recently I was a Hotmail user but because I needed a different account to start my MBA I decided to open a Gmail account. We are more than 40 millions Gmail users in the world… Thanks to my good friend Guerson Meyer I’ve learned that Gmail works with a different protocol than Hotmail (IMAP against POP) which is apparently way more innovative and allows more functions… For the moment I don’t really see many differences but I will try to find out and post what I’ve discovered in my blog very soon.
Another issue (tell me if I'm paranoiac?!)… Google controls the information we seek… but also the information we share sending emails… Way too much data for one guy! We should think about it…
sebi- I don't think that we are 'paranoiac' but more likely 'neturally analytical' for Google. :=) I really agreed on your comment about dictatorship of Google. Unconciously, our ideas are painted with the way that Google wants to drive...Well, we, as 'smart' people, better to watch out this situation though.
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