Gonopoly will soon be a new word in the dictionary the way things are going. Gonopoly is the Google Monopoly. Previously there used to be paranoia about how google will soon have access to every single detail about you. Google search can keep track of what you are searching for. Google mail and ad crawlers in them can learn about your contacts and what you have to say to them. Google ads again can keep track of your surfing information. Things like these could be termed as the thoughts of a nervous internet wreck.
I’d like to add a few more numbers to that equation. Youtube is owned by google and now they can track what you like to see. Orkut is owned by google and they can very well track your communities and friends circle and what you discuss with them. Of course I don’t believe that you will be tracked over the internet. Of course it is very much possible that google stores all the data from your internet life and uses it for its own profitability. Of course its also possible that a hacker gets holds of such information and then uses this to meddle into your privacy. Now there’s very little that google had to do with it, except gather the information in the first place.
Btw, when you install the google toolbar, it asks for permission to track your surfing habits and send them to google, supposedly to improve your online experience. Has anyone ever noticed this or have you just gone about clicking ever single popup confirmation that google threw at you? So, whats there to prevent this toolbar from making a note of your personal information like passwords and bank account details when you are browsing those respective sites. Whats there to prevent a malicious software (something like a keylogger) from hooking into the google toolbar while it is gathering or sending information over http and stealing your private information. Of course, I am not paranoid, and I still think that this is all far fetched, but hey, there is no one that can say that this cannot be done. There is always a possibility.
So, back to the thought that I had. My account at youtube was deactivated for god knows what reason. Now this account is obviously linked to my other google accounts like gmail and orkut. What if google suddenly decides that I am a notorious person and deactivates all my google services. Now I am left without a web identity. Why? because, my mail is google, my chat is google, my networking is google, my leisure is google, my source of information is google. Basically, for anything that I need to do over the internet, I do 90% of that through one google service or another. And what is there to say that google might not do such a thing. Hell, from my experience, they can very well do anything they damn please and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. For a company that does care about their customers, anything is possible. A company, that wont even send a mail, even as drastic as “Please explain yourself for so and so problem within the next 5 minutes”, but instead proceeds to delete every single video that you had uploaded and shared with your friends and delete your identity on youtube, can very much do anything they desire.
And this is one company who’s monopoly *has* to be broken. Yahoo, you have my fullest support in this. A company that I once held highest in esteem and maintained as once of the best places to ever be working in, in the future, has now sunk below all depths thanks to their unethical and un-customer-friendly approach to business.
No Trackbacks
3 Comments
Excellent analysis !!!!
Prashant,
Excellent analysis and I agree totally with you…..
I wish this be published in Rediff and other sites to help scores of users.
Murali
Hm…so far Google suits me, but I can see this happening to me shortly…is it in the nature of a company to morph into a beast as it grows?
With great powers comes greater responsibilities. Somehow the think-tanks at google have not matured enough to deal with those responsibilities.